Dec 28, 2020

Apparently I fed Hope entirely too much Jack the last time, and it took me a few extra days for her to lose enough weight that she wanted to come to me. That's OK, its a bit tough to find as many Rabbits as I would like, and since I am doing this for her, who am I to complain when she doesn't want to thrash around in the Brush chasing uncooperative Jack Rabbits. She weighed 1034 grams yesterday, and she reluctantly came to me after a bit of coaxing. She has found that she gets one chance to stay on the fist, or its another day without fun or food, so she decided to stay.

I had decided to see what was happening with the Jacks that lived at Arock. I hadn't hunted there for quite a while, and it seemed to me that the later the winter, they would begin to sift into that area, so it was time to check.

There seemed to be a good population there, but they were all flushing a long ways out. We put in 3.5 miles chasing quite a few Jacks and getting made fools of by the local Bunnie population which seemed to be doing well. The little varmints are quick and very tricky and seemed to be able to pull a rock crevice out of nothing, just as Hope closed. I decided that she could be suffering from an an enlarged waist line, so we went home with no dinner, for her at least.

Today however was another day and she weighed in at 1020. Bruce came over from Boise, so we went over to the ranch to see if we could do a bit better at a lighter weight. In all honesty the Sage at Arock is quite tall and very thick. I am amazed that she catches any thing there at all.

The area that I hunted today was small greasewood with scattered Sage. We made a rather large circle without seeing any thing at all. As we approached the road through a rather small and sparse cover, a Jack jumped about 15 yards in front of us and she burned him down with no problem.

   As you can see the scant cover did not do the Jack any favors. One flight, one kill!

I wish all of you a Happy New Year, and hope that you are well.