Oct 12th #5

Tami was busy, so Hope would not have a "wing man" to back her up today. I was also trying a new area that I had not hunted so far. The effects of the last winter depends on the country that the rabbits were trying to survive in. Here on the flat ground there was nothing to stop the wind. The ground was covered with at least 18 inches of snow and ice for more than a month. I imagine that most of the rabbits could not get enough calories to keep warm and combat the cold and wind. The Antelope and Deer suffered enough of a winter kill that the F&W restricted the tags for this area by about half. Yet on the other side of the Mountain that I hunted today a rancher there told me that there were lots of Antelope down there. Any way there are pockets of game around, I just have to find them.

A rancher at the base of Blue Mountain was telling me that he still had a lot of Rabbits. Tami and I had intended to try it on our last trip, but the wind was just howling down there and we elected to hunt here. Its about a 27 mile trip down there. It was 25 degrees this morning, so around 10 AM we loaded up and headed down there. Hope weighed 906 grams, or 31& 3/4 ounces.

I decided to start at the same spot that I had hunted last year. The Sage is short and I had found a fair number of Rabbits. Karen and the dogs stayed in the car and was going to pace me on the road while I hunted. I got into the Sage about 25 feet and a Jack jumped right beside us. Hope overtook him in about 15 feet, but he turned under her and started back in front of me. Hope continued her forward flight using her momentum to get some altitude. She turned and slammed into him right in front of me. She had him by the butt, and he was trying hard to get away. I tried to grab him, but he turned and drug her across a short open space and tried to scrape her off on a bush. That didn't work, and I soon broke his neck, putting him out of his misery.

Hope again was really excited, but this time I was able to eventually get her off the Rabbit and onto food. It was so cold that I felt sorry for her having to eat cold meat after a night of freezing temps, and cut off a hind leg that was nice and bloody warm. She liked that a lot.

On our way back home we could see several bunches of feral Horses feeding in the distance.