Dec 15

 Today was supposed to be my normal hunting day with Hope. The weather has been pretty ?warm? figuratively speaking. It was 19 this morning, so I haven't been worried about Hope freezing to death.

We had a really nice Sunrise this morning, and with the snow supposed to start after noon, there was plenty of clouds to color the canvas of the clouds.

After a leisurely breakfast, Josie got my attention with her quiet "burf's" that she uses when she is warning me that there was an intruder down by the creek. I looked and looked where her nose was pointing, but could not see anything. I got the bino's and began scanning the brush and Cattails by the creek. The first thing that I saw was a Magpie. They usually follow Coyotes in the hopes of getting a few scraps if they kill something. It took a lot longer for me to actually see the Coyote, even with the Bino's. I told Connie and she eventually saw it too. I got my rifle and stood in the doorway intending to use it for a brace if I could ever find it again. Its 300 yards to the creek and the Coyote was in and out of the brush, never giving me a clear shot. As soon as my hand got numb it decided to go somewhere else. I managed to stop her, with a quiet yell, long enough to get a shot off. I was by that time surprised that I actually didn't wobble off the target too far to do more than scare her. 

Connie and I retrieved her with the quad and I hung her up in the Hangar,  then I tried to get Hope on the fist to go hunting. I really wanted to see if being out in actual snow in her new housing situation would convince her that snow was normal. I was hoping that she would go ahead and hunt as she normally did. Nope! she wanted some tidbits , but really still didn't want to come to the fist. I eventually managed to lure her close enough to get one of her jesses so that I could at least weigh her. I won't be able to hunt until Thursday so I wanted to know what she weighed.

 The last time I flew Hope, I didn't feed her as much as I normally would, so I expected to see her a bit lower in weight this time. Surprise, Surprise! she weighed more than when I put her in there - again!  1080 to be exact. Apparently the Mice are still in good supply. Until she cleans out the supply, its going to be a bit hard to go hunting again.

We were both dressed for the cold, so we decided to at least go for a walk so that we and the dogs would get a little exercise. 

While there is no one here to pass Covid to Connie found that the mask kept her nose warm at least, while we sat on the bench at the end of the runway.

The tracks in the snow seemed to indicate that there was loads of Jack Rabbits using the runway, but I think its just one really tired ole Jack that keeps running up and down and across the runway giggling while he contemplates the cussing I will do when I can't find any thing to hunt.