Last day of Hope's Forth season

 In a lot of ways I am sad to be quitting for the season. This year has been one of the most enjoyable and satisfying of all the years that I have hunted Jack Rabbits. Of course I miss my old hunting partner, Karen, but it has still been an outstanding season.

For one thing, I was running out of string. The string on the left was last years catch, the one on the right is compressed quite a lot, and there is a Quail head hidden in there somewhere. I did the math today and found that there was a possibility of 140 days to hunt this year. I only fly every other day, and I wasn't always able to do that. I only doubled one time, but I can't remember not catching anything at all, other than today. We put in 5 miles today, saw 4 rabbits, and she pulled hair on one of those.

Of course I did hunt a bit longer than normal this year, most likely due to not having any below zero weather for one of the few years since I came here. Normally December is a real bitch for cold weather.

Here is a view from all sides

There are a couple reasons for stopping. One of them is that I walked 5 miles and saw four Rabbits, the other is that breeding season is on the way very soon.

swollen reproductive tract of female Jack Rabbit.

My friend Pat, in Burns has also stopped, due to the swelling of the rabbits reproductive system, as well as the annual gathering of the Eagles in Burns. While I don't have Eagles to contend with, I do have what I consider a shortage of Rabbits. Hopefully the ones left will be fruitful and multiply this year.

One of the main reasons that I didn't want to stop is that there is no way in hell that I am going to take a 5 mile hike every other day without a hawk on the fist as an incentive. I guess I will just have to find a way to quit eating and go to an every other day regime such as what I used on Hope.

So until the weather clears and warms enough to fly and fish, I will most likely be a little quieter than you might be used to. Thanks to each of you for reading my wanderings.

Jan. 14th

 I am going to have to quit feeding Hope the Liver and Heart. She gains too much weight. I picked her up today and found that she weighed 1050 grams. She hunts at that weight, just has to do it longer. At least that is how it appears to me.

I got her and the dogs in the car, but couldn't find my tee perch. Sigh! After a bit of thinking, ( apparently not my "long suit".) I remembered that I had leaned it against the bumper when I put her in the car after we hunted the last time. Not knowing how much traffic is on that road, and whether someone might have picked it up or driven over it, I made a new one that would work in a pinch. I was quite pleased to see it laying at the edge of the road, unharmed, when I got to where I had left it. I saw four rigs on that road while I was there, but apparently no one needed a tee perch.

I picked it up and went a bit further down the road. Its more than a mile across the flat before the ground starts to rise and there are grassy open spots with no Sage, along the road, and I was curious to see what they would be like. We had just started into the Sage when a Jack broke from cover. Hope took two shots at him, before he left her sitting on the ground. We had three more chances, most long range, before we seemed to run out of Jacks. I had walked a huge circle with nothing to show for it. I zigged, I zagged, I went into cover, then to the edge of cover, finding nothing. I eventually got so far from the car that I feared that she might catch something, and I would have to carry her back on the fist. So I got on the other side of the road and walked back towards the car,. We didn't see a thing. I crossed the road into some bigger Sage and just started walking away from the road. After about 1/4 of a mile We hit a long distance Jack and she gave chase, missed! There was a little rise in the ground, not much more than five feet or so, but it seemed enough different that some Jacks were using it. I think for a vantage point. ( then again, I could be imagining it. ) We jumped another and she rolled him, but ended up with nothing but hair.

I had just about decided that we were going home empty handed, when she took off after another long range Jack. This time she didn't come up on a Sage as she usually does after a miss. I marked the spot and took off, still doubting that she might have gotten him, as I didn't hear any screams. Joe had as usual ran to where she had gone to ground, but came back in my direction, so I slowed my pace. Finally I heard a muffled hum in the Sage in front of me, and there she was, right in the middle with a waded up Jack Rabbit. He was tied in a knot and couldn't scream. I killed him and gave her the little cup of joy that she likes so much.

 

We put in 9467 steps or 4.29 miles to catch this Jack. When I got home, I weighed Hope to see how much food I had given her and found that She enjoyed 200 grams, or 7 ozs of Jack Rabbit. We will see how much of that goes away when I pick her up again. It was quite warm,  52 degrees, so I don't think she will lose that much weight. Our really cold weather is in December and we skated right on through that. 

I had noticed that there didn't seem to be much "cutting" of any of the Sage, and paid special attention to that this time. I could see where the Jacks had fed on some of the Sage, just not that much, so I decided that the population using this area is not all that big, but they are there, just not in the numbers that I would prefer. I also examined the stomach contents of the Jack that she killed and all of it was green, and quite moist, so I decided that they were mainly feeding on the Sage. All the grass is dried and a tan color, and doubtful of having much nutrition in it at all.

Jan 12th 2021

 I normally would have hunted yesterday, but I had an appointment to get my Covid shot at the V.A. Clinic in Boise Idaho, Monday at 0745. ( The toughest part of that was a 4 am departure.) So when Hope killed her two Jacks on Sat. I gave her one of the heads to eat along with all the other chunks of Jack that she had with her normal meal. One needs to clean the raptor's system occasionally with either fur or feathers, and this was a good opportunity to do so.  I knew that she always gains weight when she has a head to eat, so I figured that I would be able to skip an extra day before I needed to fly her again. 

When I picked her up this morning she weighed 1041 grams. About 20 grams more than what she is the "hottest" at, but she was anxious. The storm that is forecast for this area was not due to arrive until the early afternoon, so we loaded up and headed out about 10 AM. I stopped closer to the Hwy in an area that I had seen quite a lot of tracks the other day with the fresh snow. There was not much indication that anything lived there, now,but I kept walking.

In the Sage flats here the Jacks have "cut" lots of branches off the Sage to eat. That seems to supply most of the food that they are eating at this time of the year. However I was not seeing any indication that they were eating it at the new spot. There is not much vegetation other than the Sage in this area, so I am a bit puzzled as to what their food supply really is there.

I was getting further and further from the car and had only had two long range flights, so I decided to cross the road and head back to the car, which was dwindling in the distance, with the intention of moving further up the road. Almost as soon as we started on the other side, she took off after one, much too far away to have much of a chance to catch it. I kept moving back towards the car, and she soon joined me. Within a couple of minutes one jumped close to us and she burned him down. The Sage was pretty dense, but small, and he was dragging her through bush after bush. The Sage wasn't all that big, so he couldn't scrape her off before I caught him by the head. 

  Since she was already heavy, and I gave her the liver to eat along with a hind leg of her previous catch. I am pretty sure that she is in no danger of starving to death anytime soon. The weather is supposed to be a bit crappy for the next little bit any way.