…..a couple of years from now when the brush and undergrowth comes in where the pines have been thinned. A smaller section was thinned two years ago and we ran quite a few rabbits in that area now that the briars, muscadine, honeysuckle and general brush has grown.

But for now, while it’s really clear between the piles of trash from where the pines were thinned, it won’t be any worse than it was when it was a shadowed, pine straw carpeted with no food or cover for much of anything. Plunker, djmed, Cuz and Rye are going to be shocked at the change on our thousand acre pine plantation hunting lease in Seale, Alabama .
A minus (or maybe plus, depending on your point of view) is that most of my deer stands are now rifle stands instead of the shotgun stands I set up. Most of you know that I prefer to completely penetrate a whitetails defenses to make my kill up close and personal, not shoot them like a cow in a feedlot. They did leave two of my oak groves in tact, so it’s not a total loss. As Brag and I passed the cabin, the cabin rabbit shot across the road. Brag and I quickly agreed that starting the dogs on a hot track was just the ticket in cool early morning light. Lucy was first to hit the trail and the race was on. They only ran it for twenty minutes or so before losing the track. I suspect that they lost it when it crossed the still bone dry (despite the evening showers we’ve had) dirt logging road.

The next race was a good hour. I went for a speed walk, both to keep the heart doctor happy and to see what the loggers had done to my deer hunting area. As I came back, I could still hear the “girls” in full cry, not to far from me, so I decided to cut cross country. Turned out that I was hearing them on top of the third hill top over. And the easy walking ended at the base of the first hill as the thinning ceased and a creek bottom tangle started
At the end of the race, all the dogs but Lucy came out. We had planned one more race this morning but that plan faded as we called and waited on Lucy. We finally drove over to my deer stands so I could show Brag the progress the loggers had made, figuring Lucy would be waiting on us at the cabin.

Back at the cabin and still no Lucy.
We unloaded the dogs to try and start another race and maybe have Lucy come to the running dogs.

I led the “girls” across twenty yards of brush underneath the residential power lines and into a gloomy shaded section that hadn’t been thinned. Dixie jumped this rabbit near the edge of our lease that bordered on a three year old clearcut. It was another small sager. The girls had only been running for a few minutes when I heard Lucy top the next ridge (you people from truly hilly country would laugh your butts off at what us people from the plains call a “ridge”) I thought that she was giving voice to her “Hang on, I’m coming” call, but she faded on down the length of the ridge and then back on the opposite side. I crossed the ridge with Dixie who confirmed that Lucy was on a rabbit. There wasn’t any quit in her today.

Lucy loves water.
A lot of my pictures of her feature her setting in some pool or tire track filled with water. Once when she was still a puppy, we hunted a piece of property that had a good sized creek with a strong flow. The older dogs plunged in one at a time to swim across. Lucy hit the water and the last we saw for a bit was her head as she was swept around a bend. She made it though, catching up in a few minutes
One thing about her, is that when she was growing up she always wanted to do what her Aunties did.