Number 24, again!

The weather yesterday was just too much to hunt, so I made Cinnamon rolls instead. Not a bad alternative. I'm not sure if that is what they meant when they said " Its an ill wind that blows nobody good".

                                         The storm front had blown into Idaho by this morning.

Karen had a dental appointment, so I decided to go back to the ranch to hunt after it warmed up a bit. It finally warmed up to 27 degrees by 11:00 AM, so I went out to get Hope. She weighed 980 grams this morning, the highest that she has ever been so far. I have decided that with the weather this cold, I am not going to worry about her weight. If she gets to where she is too fat to chase Jacks, I will consider taking her weight down. She was very anxious for me to pick her up, so she wanted to go hunting.

This is what the Mt looked like when we arrived.

We walked the length of the road, jumping a rabbit here and there. She had a couple of close calls that left hair hanging in the air, so I couldn't find anything wrong with her weight. After traveling the length of the area that holds Jacks, she began to get restless, sometimes moving out a bit in front seeming to hope that there was something there to chase.

I have always so far hunted the area close to the road and fence, as Jacks generally, for whatever reason, hold close to a natural dividing line whether it be a road or fence. This time I decided to go a lot further out, with the logic being that in my past hunts I had not gone out further than 50 yards, and while the cover was a bit thinner, the pressure applied by us was not present, therefore the rabbits would have noticed that the area had escaped hunting pressure by us. The rabbits were noticeably not as thick as they had been, so they had to be somewhere else. Logic indicated that they might be holding further out from the road. Nothing to lose, plus the cover was a bit more scattered, which would favor Hope.

I walked at least twice as far out than I had hunted before, and turned North towards the truck. With the scattered cover, the Jacks were jumping a bit further ahead. Hope was still giving chase, but a rabbit with the time to think, can generally escape. We had covered about half the distance when one jumped fairly close and Hope gave chase. It wasn't long before a scream announced a catch.

There is a Jack and a Hawk in this bush.

I put him out of his pain.

Not sure if you can see, but she is lying on her tail

I pulled her out of the bush, gave her the tin cup of tidbits, and picked her up to feed her. After filling her up, and putting her in the Giant Hood, I took the rabbit out to clean. I discovered that this was not the first introduction to Hope that this poor rabbit had.

He had only half of a tail. The bone had fallen off as well. There had been at least one or two who had lost their tail, but retained their lives, at least for a while.

This is what it looked like when we left.

another storm coming in.

Hope performed as well if not better than she had in any of her flights. We will see how much weight she can carry before she loses her desire to catch.