Apparently I can't count. After coming home today I counted tails, and discovered that I had miscounted. That is of course the reason that I keep the tails in the first place. I don't mind all that much exaggerating my birds prowess, but I hate it when it can be proven other wise.
I had apparently fed Hope way too much last time with Tami and Yogi. This morning even after two days with no food she still weighed 915. I have just about decided that she needs to be under 900 to be agile and desperate enough to fling her self into what ever brush hard enough to be successful. I decided to go anyway, and just quit if she didn't catch something within a reasonable time.
Hunting with Yogi, she is competitive enough to put extra effort in trying to catch one before Yogi could. She shows no aggression, but she was determined to catch all the rabbits rather than let Yogi make first contact. Originally I was concerned that she would become subservient to Yogi. Well that isn't going to happen apparently. Now I wish that every trip was with Yogi.
We had gone to town yesterday and I removed all the hawking stuff from the car, so of course when I reloaded I left the Tee perch at home. I haven't really hunted her from the glove at all, so I was surprised that she really paid no attention to the loss.
We had covered one side of the road, when it became obvious that I was dressed too warmly. I went to the car, when Karen drove up, to give her my sweat shirt. Hope always flies to the car, and this time landed on the hood. She made her way around to Karen's window peering in to see what might be in there.
I decided to hunt an area that I had never hunted before, and meet Karen back down where we had started but from the other side. A lot of the area is just grass, with the Sage beginning quite a way from the road. The path I intended to take would circle around the open grass and encompass some area that I had not hunted before.
We managed to get several chases where she was out maneuvered and I had decided that today was going to be unsuccessful, and I was going to have to hunt again in the morning, so I was heading towards the car. We jumped a Jack that ran towards where Karen was waiting in the car. Hope made a shot at him, but he managed to evade capture. He ran back towards me and stopped at the beginning of an open area. I marked the spot and when Hope came back to me I started sneaking towards the spot. Hope flew at a movement that I didn't see, pulled up and dived into the Sage. A rabbit jumped out about 4 feet from where she went in, and I remember thinking, wow she was really off, then a muffled scream wafted back on the breeze. There were two rabbits hiding in the same piece of Sage.
I hunted for about an hour and half at the most today. While I think that Hope is slowly improving, mostly today was just a very unlucky day for a Jack. Such are the breaks, and we will take it!
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