A light misting rain escorted us out to the property past the Dixie, Alabama community where we were going to close out the 04-05 rabbit season. Brag and Tiny decided to lay out of work for the last hunt to join Cuz, Rye and myself, rimfire.

The dogs jumped as soon as we let them out of their boxes near the old farm house amid the planted pines on the former pasture land. It was a long race with the five hunters jockeying for position. It was wetter than the inside of a cloud in the planted pines and I was soaking wet when I fired a shot at the bunny streaking through a briar patch. Julie cast an accusing eye as she followed the unhurt rabbit toward where cuz waited. A shot rang out followed shortly by the sounds of silence as the dogs shutup….only to open back up. Cuz told me later that it looked just like Julie gave him the dirtiest look as she went by. Heh, welcome to the club.
The dogs ran him for almost an hour and a half before Brag knocked him down.

By lunch the score was Cuz 1
Rimefire 0
Brag 2
Tiny 0
Rye 0 We stopped at that point and put the dogs in their boxes with a can of Vienna’s while the rabbit hunters feasted on souse meat, hot sauce and other rabbit hunting delicacies after changing into our spare shirts. The souse meat was real homemade and not the store bought kind from some meat company.

I started off the afternoon hunt with a fine shot on a running rabbit with the dogs right behind. I followed that up with a clean miss on a wlking rabbit that Cuz dropped about 10 seconds later as the rabbit fled past him. The rabbit would have probably been safer to have taken his time and given me a second shot. I made up for that later, closing out the day with 2.

The misting rain stopped except for a few scattered sprinkles as the afternoon wore on. Julie finally just stopped hunting. She was just wore out after this last week of the season. Dixie and Maizie didn’t know the word quit and hunted up to the end with Cuz’s two dogs, Judy and Lady. The last race was over two hours before Brag finally nailed him with his 20 ga pump Remington

I quit about 3:30 and went to the truck and changed clothes for my appointment with Dr. Bubba, my heart doctor from Opelika. I got the details from Brag when he dropped the dogs off. He said that we got thirteen rabbits on the last day.
Brag 6
Tiny 2
Cuz 2
Rimfire 2
Rye 1

They found Julie at the end of the day, asleep in the box I dropped off the back of the pathfinder for Brag to haul the dogs home.
I called Cuz later just to confirm the details since like fishermen, rabbit hunters are confirmed exaggerators of the truth.
I’ll see ya’ll next season meaning in a week or two after I rest up from the heart catheterization. It seems I have a left bundle blockage. Oh by the way, I’m getting the new dog in a few weeks to.