It has been full on winter here with a lot of below zero days and more snow than usual for our area.
The front pond with pasture behind.
The native grasses have stayed up pretty good which is surprising with the hard winds and snow we have gotten. Plenty of deer beds out in the field.
Yesterday I got together with two of my oldest friends for our annual bunny hunt, we have known and hunted together for around forty years. We use small bore shotguns for the hunt being that it isn't a volume hunt, it is a fun hunt and with a beagle. My buddies use 410's and I carry a single shot 20.
We normally start out at my buddies farm hunting a small woods he has then shift over to my farms. This buddy coyote hunts in winter like it is his job, he has a group of guys he chases them with dogs. I have gone along with them many times and it can be pretty exciting.
My other buddy lives about an hour away and has a beagle (Sadie) that is pretty good. The funny thing about her is the way she barks when chasing bunnies....not the " ARK..ARK..ARK.." sound that most beagle have hers is a Yosemite Sam angry "AUROOKGRRR..EROOKGRRR..YEOOOKGRRRR..." like she is mad at them that makes me belly laugh out loud every time she is running a bunny. And she is slow enough that the rabbits don't really take her very serious and are usually a good fifty yards ahead of her loping along at an easy pace.
It is around 15 degrees and really windy when we start out at my other buddies small five acre woods that is really thick and usually has a few bunnies in it, about five minutes in we start a rabbit and Sadie starts the chase making her funny growling bark.
About this time my buddy that owns the woods says something about a coyote and starts running for the truck...hits a log and falls flat on his face....hard. We of course laugh at him and wonder what the hell is going on. He gets up still babbling something about a coyote but we cant quite make it out....he jumps in the truck (owned by my other buddy) and takes off across the field to his truck.
Sadie...still bark growling circles the bunny around and I shoot it, we are gutting it when my buddy who has gone crazy comes flying up in his truck yelling "get in, get in"...so we scoop Sadie up and jump in with him.
Apparently while we were walking through the woods a coyote jumped on my buddies side and ran north followed by another inducing his panic and mad dash...his truck which is loaded for coyote running and that has a radio is what he had to get to so fast to call his posse of yote hunters over from wherever they all were looking for tracks. Well within ten minute trucks had circled the block and these two coyotes were running down the middle of the section.
My buddy gives me a 12ga some buck shot a radio and drops me off along a creek and tells me to hurry down to some post a half mile away then takes off with other buddy dropping him off around the block doing same. I was glad I was dressed warm out in the open with the wind....the coyotes came by me about 200 yards away..too far. But I did get a good look at them, one was big with a messed up tail and a cool white patch on his chest, the other trailing it was just a standard looking yote. After a while I hear three shots and turn on the radio from the chatter sounded like someone had gotten one and I was to walk back to the road to be picked up.
So the yote that was still on the move jumped to the next section...repeat of first scenario.
By now my buddy was back to normal and very pleased with the result so back to bunny hunting we went.
We hunted out the original spot jumping a couple more rabbits giving Sadie a nice run then went over to the Little Woods and really put her to work. Seemed like every time she got a bunny started she would flush another which is typical for that woods. It had to be confusing for her the amount of bunnies that were in there and the crossing scent trails...from there we went to the Big woods and jumped a few more.
All in all I would say we started over twenty rabbits, got in a lot of walking, some good conversation, great tailgate snacks and had a blast.
Our total for the morning was two coyotes, seven bunnies and a truck load of good time.
