Moxie in the Hole

Went out with Chris on Sunday for a short day in the field.

Lots of blank holes with no one home, until we spied this large sette in the middle of a soybean field. A little of the eat-out around the sette can be seen -- one reason farmers hate groundhogs.

This groundhog was worked to a stop end, and it was a very shallow dig. Moxie took a few hard hits before we got the 'hog tailed out and dispatched. This was a nice pot-bellied groundhog which tipped the scale at a little past 13 pounds.

We scouted around a bit more, and then Chris had to call it day. Mountain, of course, got lost in the forest on the way back, and I turned around short of the car to see if I can find her, thinking she had gone to ground. Meanwhile, while I was out looking for Mountain, Chris found her at the truck and walked her back to stake her next to the pile of tools I had dropped on the path.



A nice deep hedgerow sette showing wear at the spoil pile.


Sailor and I headed back down to where we had last seen Mountain and, as luck would have it, Sailor found in a nice hedgerow sette. I stayed with her long enough to make sure it was not a skunk, and then left her while I went back for the tools (and Mountain).

When I got back to the hole, Sailor was still hayin hup a storm, and the box said 7 feet down so I sat on a root and let her move it around some more. No way was I going to solo dig a 7 foot hole unless Sailor got into trouble, which seemed unlikely at this point. After another half hour Sailor came out, saw me, slipped back in, and bolted it out in short order. She no doubt had it bottled in a stop end. When she came off of it to look for me, it no doubt moved out to a bolting position.

All good, and as hoped. Only a mad man wants to solo dig a 7-foot hole when the temperature is 90 degrees!