you've had a good rabbit hunting season when you can walk down to the dogpen, say "rabbits" and you're dogs start whimpering and hiding in their houses.
And your Christmas chaps and boots, look like this

You know, someone really needs to make a line of hunting clothes for real hunters, not the tree stand sitters

I asked the three little girls at my feet.
"I ain’t blind you know and I’ve been standing here for fifteen minutes. That rabbit didn’t come by me."
The girls ignored me and continued smelling along the relatively new logging lane that had been cut through the pines when they had been thinned last year.
Suddenly all three girls opened up at once and dived into a patch of bushes only a few feet from me and the race was back on.
I felt rather foolish and owed the girls an apology. The rabbit had not only crept past while I faced in the wrong direction but had tried to wait out the hunters.

in two races on this, next to the last day, hunt in Seale Alabama.

The one we got was a small sager that ran the dogs out of hearing once, before coming back to cross an old logging road repeatedly till I finally hit him on my third shot.

Whats left of The Rabbit Journal pack is about wore out. We lost four trained dogs this year, leaving us with Lucy, Katie and Penny, the pup. All are a little tenderfooted, but should hold out for our last hunt tomorrow afternoon.
In attendance will be Plunker, Brag and myself. Hopefully, Rye will attend.

even if it is late in the day, just to tie you in numbers.
That’s what I told Brag.

We started out across the road in a water filled bottom. The pack split with Precious (jeeze what a name) and Penny trailing near me, when Kate, Lucy and Lacey opened up on a hot trail further down the long narrow bottom.
A few minutes later, both Precious and Penny gave up and ran to the rest of the pack to join the race. The rabbit moved up on the adjoining hillside dipping repeatedly into the bottom trying to shake the determined dogs in the water.

I had just finished crossing the narrow stream, trying to get to the edge before the rabbit dipped back down, when I heard splashing a few yards up.
Rabbit!
I spun and fired a shot that had the buck, fipping repeatedly in the air before dying. I stood there for a few minutes before realizing that I had shot a stray that was just trying to get out of the way.

The rabbit shifted to the other side of the bottom, where Rye and I took up positions, me on the top line where the pin oaks met the pines, Rye, 20 yards down in the bottom.
I saw the bunny a long way off and tracked him till he made a right angle turn between Rye and myself.
I didn’t realize that Rye had shifted up the hill and the rabbit was racing straight toward him, when I rolled my second buck of the race.
Not that I would intentionally cut off Rye.
Heh

Later in the morning, a third buck froze in place when I lifted my gun. I had all the time in the world to line up on his head before I gently squeezed the trigger.
Snap!
I started cussing the gunsmith for all I was worth as I tried to find the rabbit that had disappeared at the click of the firing pin. The 16ga Stevens had just came back for the gunsmith because the right firing pin was dropping hard enough on the shell to set it off. I opened the gun and sure enough I saw the dimple that the pin had made on the shell.
I removed the shell

of the EARH&SESC went on a rabbit hunt in Rutherford today.
Yep, we're wearing the place out.
"WE" got seven and lost four.
I'll post the details later though, I have to help 2 with his Skeeter down at Florence tomorrow morning. Then meet Brag at 1 for a afternoon hunt on 39.
The post might combine the two hunts

Mystery has passed.

I told you that we were keeping Mystery in the pen because she quit hunting and the weight poured off of her. We knew that it was a matter of weeks.

It's a shame, but this is the best picture I have of Mystery. The rest are group photos

It's from the hunt when Plunker and Brag became obsessed with a rabbit that ran into a hollow tree.

Mystery first turned up on a hunt in Chambers County at Plunker’s place. The title of that post was “Will hunt for food”.
I was soaking up the sun with my hat over my face when some of the teats with us informed me that the dogs were back.
“How many?” I asked to comfortable to look.
“All five”
Five? We didn’t turn out but four.
I lifted my hat to see what looked like a poor starved beagle puppy. A closer look showed that she was a full grown 11 incher with no hair on a bleeding tail and no collar around the neck.
The mysterious stranger tagged along with us to the trucks and gladly partook of some lunch.
Brag and I agreed that we didn’t need trouble and wouldn’t be taking her home.

Later a rabbit ran in front of me followed by the pack…..with the stranger in the lead. Her voice sounded like a three pack a day smoker, but she was burning up that rabbit. Later I compared her voice to “the cry of the strangled chicken. One of us killed the rabbit later and before we could get to it, she had eaten a good bit of it.
When we packed up to leave, the girls lined up behind the pathfinder waiting to be put into the box. Mystery joined the queue. She had hunted so hard, we didn’t have the heart to leave her.
Doc Caldwell, the Rabbit Journal’s veterinarian, gave her the annual shots and a routine exam that turned up no obvious problems

We never knew her to run anything but a rabbit.
On our Jeffersonville hunt, we hunted with some good ol boys out of Atlanta with a pack of 15 inch male dogs. They ran the Rabbit Journal pack into the ground. Kate and Lucy quit. Julie and Dixie ran but mostly on the tail end. Not Mystery. She didn't quit and was often in the lead after straightening out the trail for the other dogs. Later, all those boys could talk about was that little dog that sounded so funny, but ran with the big dogs.

We gave her a good life while she graced us with her presence. Good food, petted and seldom a harsh word. In return, she gave us a dependable performance while she could.

She was a good’un.
Rest in peace, Mystery.

on the last Saturday of the 07-08 season was decent.
Not special, just decent

Hunting property, generally runs in cycles, the same as rabbit populations.
Rabbits are scarce in pine plantations as the trees mature, the same as fish in much of the oceans, and for the same basic reasons--food and cover.

The Capps place has been on a downhill slide

of the 07-08 Rabbit Season in Alabama will be out past Crawford only a couple of miles from my new place, Rabbit Run.
I've mentioned it a time or two

and members of the EARH&SESC offers their deepest condolences to Plunker and family over their recent bereavement. The loss of a loved one is always hard.

If you fall, I want to go to the hospital with you cause I want to hear you explain to the doctor why you

on today's hunt. It was a rematch in Rutherford.
Cuz 3
Rye 2
Plunker 1 1/2
rimfire 1 1/2
Brag 1
Details later

Saturday's hunt at Stone Wall was set up and controlled by djmed.
Now, all of you know djmed.
He’s a regular with the EARH&SESC. And since he works for Master Graphics in Auburn, Alabama, he is our resident t’shirt and hat man.
Our host at StoneWall was Fred Weygand. You might remember who was our highest percentage shooter on the hunt.

If StoneWall Plantation was ever a “farm” I would sure have hated to plow it.

I’m a little to tired to write it up tonight, so I’ll give you a barebones report

“We” got 8 with 35 shots fired.
Now there was a tie with three of us getting 2 rabbit’s a piece, but should we really keep score that way when the top three also fired the most shots?

Maybe the proper way to score the top man was the one who was

Happy Valentines Day, GF, but Happy Anniversary.

While I do appreciate the "two for one" day, couldn't you have picked a better month than in the middle of Rabbit Season? You do know that next year it's on a Saturday?

I've tried to tell her that if she had worn a dab of Hoppe's #9 instead of CHANEL 5, I might have married her sooner. That's if someone else hadn't already snagged her up. And just look at all the aggravation it would have saved her mother from worrying about GF becoming an old maid,

Gf decided to strike while the iron was hot, wanting to get married within a week or two of the "decision", a decision she wasn't willing to grant me a reprieve from when we found out that I would live for a while longer. She said "To heck with a wedding, lets just go to the justice of the peace."
I tried to hold out for a respectable period of time for the engagement.
You know, like a couple of years, so she could enjoy wearing her engagement ring.

I had always moved our relationship along in proper sequence as we "upgraded".
We upgraded our relationship to a "understanding" from our 5 year "permanent date" several years ago. The exact details of the "understanding" were to have been determined at a later date.
The "understanding" was to have lasted at least a year or so before we upgraded our relationship to "pre-engagement" status, for a yet to be determined duration, followed by a suitably long engagement to determine if we were compatible or not.


And, by the way, the reason we decided to get married is not for what some have alluded to. She had her sixteenth birthday long ago. Just not as long ago as mine.

Some of you know that it is a fairly large age gap. Some might even call it a generational gap.
Another way to put it is the way a friend did, “Well, if you couldn’t get it right the first couple of times, maybe it is best to grow your own.”

But despite, Ms Janis’s assertion that I was marrying a 22 year old and someone else wondering how I could have such a good looking cousin (was that you Richard?), GF was neither related or still in her twenties. We dated most of that decade.

Now GF says there are all kinds of benefits to being married to me. For instance, I can get her the “Silver” benefits of free checks and stuff at the bank. And senior coffee at Mc Donalds. And don’t forget all the AARP benefits. Plus, she doesn’t have to worry about my mid life crisis since she was it.

Gone rabbit hunting with Cuz and Rye.
Back tonight

We had a great hunt in Rutherford.
As djmed noted, we had 8 by lunch with the only spoiler being Cuz’s Betsy running a deer. Then when Brag was trying to call Betsy off, Penny, Lucy and Katie thought he was calling them and went to Betsy. Katie, of course, broke off when she realized it was trash. Penny kept going and Brag lit her up with one of eight levels of stimulation. Lucy avoided the electric pine limb by way of a new tactic. She was running silent and Brag didn't know she was on the trash until it was to late to shock her

All of the morning races were short. And Cuz was hot. He was high man for the day with four

scheduled for tomorrow near Rutherford.
It's the property that we were supposed to run last week.
So far, it looks like djmed, Plunker, Cuz, Rye, Brag and myself for the regulars.
We will have Mark and his friend with us.

Thursday, we have a hunt up the road from "Rabbit Run". The only ones that have committed to that hunt is Cuz, Rye and myself. Be nice if One Dawg could shake free.

Saturday's hunt is under djmed's control. It looks like it will be the same place in Opelika where we first met djmed in a hunt titled " @%^& Dogs!"

for you lineage aficionados.

For those of us that don't care about the pedigree, only that they hunt rabbits, it is good to see the breed appreciated.
I just fear that the puppy mills will breed them into bad health and stupidity if they become to popular.
But, still, 483 years to win the hound group?

Update
Congrats to Uno for winning Best of Show. I wonder if he hunts or is he just another pretty face?

by Alan Clemons in the Huntsville Times.
Nary a mention of rabbit hunting

Is the name of this post and is a general truism that is, well, true.

We started off Saturday’s hunt in Harris County after meeting the deer hunters who were our hosts at a Awful House in Columbus. We were halfway to the property before Brag asked where Plunker was.
Yep, we had forgot the only member of our group that actually owned land for us to hunt on. And even worse, at least for me, was he was the “fence man” that was going to help me with the “girls” new pen when I move to Rabbit Run.
I could see the points that I had earned helping get Plunker unstuck fading into the distance.

I called his cell phone and arranged for him to pick me up at the entrance, so he wouldn’t miss his turn in.

The property was mostly open hardwoods with thin stands of pines and light bottoms.

The whole morning was spent (at least by the members of the Rabbit Journal)wishing for thickets of briars and such. Why, I don’t know. We kept races going all morning though like all the Georgia rabbits this year, they were more like cross country runners than 440’s running on a oval.
How did we do?

on Cuz to tell us if tomorrow's hunt is a go.
After we freed Plunker on Saturday, Cuz took Brag and I by a place that he was trying to get permission to run. Even after the heavy rains before last Saturday, there were still plenty of fresh rabbit tracks in the mud. A quick walk by Brag and I showed that every stump we saw had a handful of fresh pills on them.
Thing is Rye has been sick and Cuz might want to save it till he feels better.

This Saturday's hunt is to be in Georgia again.

The dogs, led by Lucy, jumped the second rabbit only yards from where Rye had stopped the first one that was charging the paved road.
I was watching in Hover’s direction when I saw him tense up, raise his gun to his shoulder and fire a shot.
“Missed” was the call. And his life long record of 1 still stands.
Cuz and I had been standing fairly close together, only a few yards separating us, discussing his newest “free” dog. The rabbit bolted between us. Cuz started up with his gun, then waited till the rabbit cleared the gap between us before mounting his gun to his shoulder and firing a single shot
“Missed” was the call. Heck, I already knew that because I fired almost immediately after.
Missed was the call
The rabbit raced down the lane as I thumbed back the hammer for my second shot. In the excitement, I had forgot that I wasn’t using my double barrel sixteen’s. And, besides, they didn’t have hammers anyway.
One of the teats, Dustin, Cuz’s grandson, made the kill

Now a very cautionary note.

I read my email yesterday after a hot shower and unwinding a bit after having to dig Plunker out of a couple of holes and it seems that the East Alabama Rabbit Hunters & Souse Eaters Social Club has gained some notoriety.
The email almost got flushed, even after getting by my spam trap. A email with the subject line that says, generically, "your site" has me reaching for the delete button.
I read it, finger on the button, to see which "enhancement" potion or "No Prescription" needed medicine they were pushing.
It was neither.
The email was from Alan Clemons, Outdoors Editor @ The Huntsville Times. It is a heads up that the EARH&SESC would be featured in his Sunday column.
You mean they Pay people to write about hunting and fishing was my first reaction? I need me a better agent.
We are, of course, deeply honored despite the lack of a hot link to our site. That seems to be standard with most news organizations that have a irrational fear that if a reader leaves their site, they never return. The Rabbit Journal has no such fear.
We might even allow Mr. Clemons to join our esteemed organization for a hunt this year if logistics and a faulty memory allow. I will say this. The 07-08 season is rushing to a close.

Brag and the boys took the girls out for another hunt today. I will only be able to give you the barebones of the hunt later since it is Sunday and a day of Worship for me

from today’s hunt, but not enough time to write it up tonight.

A few quick thoughts.

It was a interesting day.

Hover got a call that someone that they had caught Coco. She got lost (read “ran a deer”) with Suzie almost two months ago. Suzie’s collars were turned over to us when they were found on the side of the road.

We had three rabbits before nine this morning.

Hover had to leave early so he missed a lot of the fun. Like when Plunker