A Variable Day in the Cold and Wind

I had a nice day out yesterday with Asher, a young fellow from my office who wanted to see what digging on the dogs was all about.

It was about 30 degrees when we started out, but with 25 mile-per hour winds (and gusts well beyond that), it was cole enough to give you a brain-freeze.

I was hoping for groundhog (it had been 51 degrees on Friday), but with a hard rain most of the day Saturday, and now with the cold coming in on top of it, I figured nothing was likely to have moved out of its den in the last day or two.

The one hope, I figured, was to find a fox or raccoon, and so we headed to a farm that had good flowing water on it but not too many trees, as the chance of finding a raccoon to ground is always a bit better than finding a fox.

One problem I was not expecting was that recemt heavy rain had swollen the farm's creek to the point there was no crossing it at the ford. What that meant was that this little farm (250 acres) was effectively cut in half for hunting purposes.

No matter; we would work what we could, and then move to another farm if we had to.

Mountain soon found in the brushy area along the creek, and she slid to ground and began to open up a little bit.

I downed tools, and Pearl stood guard at the bolt hole while I dug down about two feet.

The groundhog tried to exit, and Pearl darted down the hole and grabbed it by the nose, while Mountain came up from the rear.

In short order I broke into the pipe, pushed Mountain off the groundhog, and tailed it out for a quick dispatch.

Pearl got a puncture in her cheek for her trouble, but it was not too serious, and she should be all right in a week or two.

We moved down the creek a ways, busting out a half dozen Canada Geese, an equal number of mallards, and a half dozen white ducks that seem to be new residents to this farm.

Opportunities for hunting wild birds are thick around here, and with no shortage of turkey habitat to hunt both Spring and Fall, and the kids now more-or-less out of the house, I find myself contemplating picking up a decent side-by-side. This might be the year for it. We'll see.

Above the creek, Mountain and Pearl pinged on a simple sette along an area where an fence used to be a few months back.

Not wanting Pearl to open up her puncture, I leashed her up, and left Mountain to see what she could find.

She slid to ground, bayed a bit, and in short order a dog fox bolted out of the sette, running at a canter down hill to the creek.

Excellent! No doubt Mr. Fox would find the groundhog we had just left for his evening meal.

Mountain came out after few minutes, nosed around a bit looking for the fox, and then realized it had bolted off. Ah well! She seemed pretty philosophical about it.

We headed back down the creek, and Mountain pinged on a very big lightning-blasted sycamore tree that had a five-eyed sette running underneath it.

I have dug on this old shattered tree before, and it's really an impossible situation, with a dirt den under the very heavy laced roots, and a hollow trunk above to serve as a secondary avenue of escape (the hole entrance is inside the base of the trunk).

Whatever was inside this hollow tree smelled very good to Mountain, and she would not come off it. My guess is that it was a groundhog or raccoon that had climbed up high and out of reach.

Eventually Mountain came out of the trunk, trying for a new way to get in. I blocked off the main entrance to the trunk with a large chunk of downed timber, and Mountain got the idea -- this one was off the menu -- and we headed off to find a more likely spot.

We walked a few more hedgerows, checked a few field holes, saw the first blue bird of the season, and talked to the farm owner a bit when she drove up in her truck.

She said she had taken out the old square-wire fence because she was going to put in a more substantive electric version to hold back cattle that were going to be grazing where she had corn last year.

All good. Nothing stays the same on a working farm. Her goal with this farm, which she is inheriting from her dairyman father, is to to reduce the amount of fertilizer and chemical runoff going into the Chesapeake Bay. She figures grass-fed beef is the way to go, and she is probably right. I always admire conscientious land owners who keep an eye on the larger picture. An admirable thing, and we always need more of it.

After checking a few more holes, we pulled off this farm to hit another bit of land about 5 minutes away. Here we found plenty of holes, but no one to ground -- or at least nothing the dogs could smell.

In hibernation, groundhogs may go a month or more without leaving their den, and their heart beat will drop from 80 beats a minute to only five. A groundhog's body temperature may drop from 98 degrees to just 38 degrees. In such circumstances, there is very little above ground to tell a dog a groundhog is asleep four or five feet below.

Which is always a problem this time of year. On the really warm days, male groundhogs will be moving around a bit in order to find a mate, but it's still too early for the females to be about, and on a very cold day like today, very little was likely to be above ground.

But, coming up a corn field, we had a bit of luck. I spied a small movement. A groundhog!

Good news. Maybe.

As we approached, I told Asher it always seemed the groundhogs you saw above ground were the ones that gave you the slip -- they see you coming, and as a consequence they tend to go deep and dig in fast once they realize you are coming for them.

No mater. We would give it a go.

The dogs nosed around a bit, and Mountain eventually slid into the sette. She was quiet for a while, but she eventually opened up and then fell silent again.

Hmmmm.

I took an educated guess as to where the den pipe ran, and barred into the middle of the sette. The good news was that I hit the den pipe about two feet down, and once I had dug into it, the sette was effectively cut in half.

We tied up Pearl, and Mountain began to bay again on the left side of the sette. After a few minutes, Mountain opened up to a decent solid bay, and I boxed her at five and a half feet down.

I guess we're going to have to dig a little!

To make a long story short, Mountain was five and half feet down. Unfortunately, the groundhog was a bit deeper than that -- about six and a half feet -- and under a bed of sandstone-like rock which prevented the dog from getting down the last three or four feet of den pipe. Mountain could see the groundhog, but she could not reach it, and neither could we.

It had taken us quite a while to pound through the last 6 inches of rock (what I think geologists call greywacke), and now it looked like we would have to pound another hole six or seven foot deep in order to get this groundhog out.

It wasn't worth worth it -- not for a groundhog -- and so we gave this fellow "best" for the day and filled in. The groundhog would be able to dig his way back through the loose soil to the main den pipe and exit from there.

The day done, we headed back to the vehicles.

It had not been a spectacular day, but any day in which you bolt a fox is not a bad one, and we did account for an early groundhog, so there was a little variety.

Plus Asher got to see what a deeper-than-average dig looked like, even if there was no result for all our effort.

On the up side, Spring is right around the corner, and with it, steady work for the dogs.

I can hardly wait.



Still a bit deeper to go here!

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