It was a fast day in the field on some new land. The dogs located their first groundhog very quickly. After a struggle to get past a root and a sharp turn at the entrance, Sailor bayed the groundhog to a stop end. I boxed for location, found the pipe with the bar, sank a quick hole, and dispatched a small and thin Spring groundhog.
The dogs and I noodled around a hedge between two fields. There were quite a few holes, but no one home. We headed up hill and a little ways into an area recently planted with new trees.
The dogs headed over to what looked like a possible fox sette, and I grabbed them and staked them out before they could enter. I looked over the sette for any sign of fox. There were no tracks and no scat, and no food of any kind at the entrance. I had checked this sette twice on very cold days and no one had been home then -- it was almost 70 now. I took a picture of Mountain (below) and then released her to check out the pipe. Mountain paused for a second at the entrance, and then slid in. A few seconds later she began to bay.
A groundhog, no doubt.
Mountain continued to bay, and then she was mixing it up a bit. I boxed for location and got her about four feet down. I began to take off the first foot of soil when -- BAM -- something large bolted out of the hole to my left. I turned to see a large fox with a cross-coat high-tailing it out of the hole with Mountain hard on its tail!
Wooeeee. That was unexpected! Mountain disappeared into the forest after the fox, and I repaired the soil divot and packed up the tools. Now where was Mountain?
Sailor and I hiked up the ridge into the woods and I whistled and called. Nothing. No doubt she had followed the fox to another hole and was underground with it.
I tied off Sailor and walked away from her. She hates it when I do this, and it will always get her barking. Bingo -- she barked and I called, and we did this intermittently for about 25 minutes. No Mountain. I gathered up the tools and headed back down the hill in the direction I had come. As I got near the base of the hill, Mountain showed up on the other side of the creek. She made sure I saw her, and then headed off in the opposite direction -- the direction she had just come from.
This is Mountain's "Come here Timmy" routine. It's just like Lassie -- "Come here Timmy, Mr. Maypole is down the well with a broken leg." Mountain's "Come here Timmy," routine is just as clear, and it's actually pretty funny. I love the fact that the dogs and I can communicate a little bit about the work. We are a team, and I think they value my input almost as much as I value theirs.
I headed off in the general direction Mountain had bolted, and sure enough there was another big fox sette in the forest up the hill from the path we had walked in on. I had missed it on the way in, and so too had the dogs. Mountain was now inside this sette and snorting, but not baying.
I moved back from the sette and tied off Sailor and sat down. I had no nets with me (taken out of my kit just that morning!), and there's no need to dig a fox sette this time of year. Bam -- the fox was out again from a secondary hole about three feet from the main entrance. The fox bolted up the hill, went over the ridge, and was out of sight.
This time, Mountain did not follow very quickly, staying inside and checking for the unseen fox. Where had it gone? At last Mountain came out the main entrance to the sette (picture below) with a little "shaving cut" on the front of her muzzle -- gotten at the first hole, no doubt.
We packed up the tools and headed back to the car, but the dogs found again as we exited the woods. A quick dig, with Sailor finding, and Mountain swaped in at the end. In the picture below, the groundhog is quite dead (a fast dispatch with a blow to the head) and it simply slipped back down the hole while the two dogs were ragging it.
It was still very early in the day. We had gotten a bit of a late start (due to daylight savings), but we had found a few critters pretty quickly, and now I decided to check a Wildlife Management Area that I had never visited before but, as luck would have it, is only about 25 minutes from my house.
The directions were simple, and I was pleased to see that the land was purchased with Pittman-Robertson money, which meant it was primarily intended for hunting.
There are 2,000 acres here, some in forest, about 60 percent in fields bordered by hedge, and also a wetlands area. The soil is good, there is parking, and only shotgun and bow hunting are allowed (no rifle or pistol) so the chance of the dogs getting shot, even in deer and turkey season, is not too high.
I walked a 200 yard loop into the WMA and counted five holes. This land was an excellent find!
Finding this new bit of hunting land put a nice cap on a splendid day, and so I headed home early to clean up the dogs, have coffee with the wife, and throw some some steaks on the grill out back.
Life is Good.
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