Back to normal

 There was a little break in the advancing storms and winds yesterday. I think the temps got into the low 60's. I hunted in a tee shirt yesterday and was sweaty by the time we got back in the yard. Our "quicky" hunts were done wearing winter coats and gloves.

I had a visitor from Idaho come over to hunt with his falcons and to experience the other side of falconry. It was soon obvious that this hunt was going to be a bit different than the last two.. We had just barely gotten into the field North of the house, when Hope chased a big Jack around in a circle, then the Jack made his break while Hope was down in the Sage, running across the open field and on to the South side of the property. I no sooner got her back on the tee perch, and she was off across the bare ground of the field below the house after a Jack down there. That was actually where I didn't want to go. The brush and Greasewood are thick down there. She made two attempts at Bunnies that had no problem in getting into cracks and crevices, leaving all of us frustrated.

It seemed that there were not too many Jacks to try for, and all of them were busting from their cover at long range. Its a rare long distance slip that she can get one of them to make a mistake. She still tries however.

We had seemed to cover an awful lot of ground before she managed to get her feet on one. He however managed to scrape her off on a Sage Bush. There was a handful of fur, but nothing else to show for it.

Another mile or two and she snagged another one, that also got away before I could get there to help her. More hair and empty toes. My shoulder was really hurting from carrying the tee perch. We got to within 400 yards of the fence around the house. It began to look as though she was going to go to bed hungry. A  young and foolish Jack rabbit broke cover right behind us, and Hope burned him down in less than 30 yards.

I checked my phone and found that it claimed that we had walked 5.9 miles in our hunt. That should make up for the two easy days that we had earlier.

I was too busy to take any pictures, so I decided to make up for it with this mornings sunrise.

I woke this morning before 7 AM and could see that we were going to have a very nice sunrise, so I snapped these pictures as they developed.