about Brag’s dogs.

Yep, his dog’s, Lucy and Suzie, misbehaved straight out of the box this morning while my dogs, Dixie, Katie and Mystery acted paranoid.
I should have listened to Dixie. She tried to tell me that there were just to many deer around. Both her and Kate hung out at my feet, not wanting to venture out.

Suzie jumped and Lucy went with her before I had time to get the remote control out and put on the antenna.
Hover and his pup, Elmer, went with me up the path and we cut them off at BJ’s property line. Trouble was, they weren’t running a deer when we caught up with them. They weren’t running nothing, so it’s useless to make them piddle on themselves when they won’t even know what they did wrong.

Hover and I walked them down the road, across the creek and up to the sand pit. They jumped and the race moved into the next bottom. It was kind of confusing, the dogs were so scattered out. The next thing I knew Katie was trailing next to me as the rest of the pack ran up the facing hill.
Hover and I caught up with them at the Florida Boy’s stand. Dixie, Mystery came out, but Suzie and Lucy had put the next ridge between them and the remote. The remote, by the way, has a broke switch. I don’t’ have a clue when that happened.
That was the last we would see of those two that morning.
I don’t know what happens every year about this time that turns what have been reliable rabbit hounds into trash running dogs, but it does, most every year.

We got back to the truck and started loading the remaining dogs, so I could show Hover out before returning to find Brag’s wayward hounds. It was then that Brag’s dog Mystery turned up missing. I looked for ten minutes or so, before guiding Hover out.
When I returned Mystery was trotting down the road with a relieved look.
She hates to miss a meal.

I really should have had the pre-season race at Jordan’s in Opelika written up by now.
We had three good races on multiple rabbits. We suspect that they changed rabbits in mid race at least once.


Lucy and Suzie behaved themselves and all the girls had good races

Terms of ownership here

We were finished for the day and I decided to check one of my deer stands to see what happened to it during the recent tree thinning on the pine plantation near scenic downtown Seale, Alabama.
I saw the two deer down the unused lane that in a previous planting had been a firebreak and kept walking toward them. The “girls” were completely unaware.

Suddenly, her head snapped around when she winded the deer and took off.
I started yelling.
The other four came back when they realized what the excitment was about, though my little Lucy kept looking in the direction of the fading barks with a wistful look. Between my stern voice and the fact she never got out of “hat” range, she decided to behave.
I know of at least one girl that will

has a running back like the rabbit we ran on our second race of our weekly pre-season exercise.
He held his position in thin cover, letting the dogs run past him. The girls milled all around before the sager broke, running in my direction when Lucy was almost on top of him. Seeing me, he reversed course, back into the converging dogs, weaving his way through before leaving them in the dust.

4:30 a.m., sure, comes early.
Bout 4:30.

Hover and Elmer bowed out of this mornings 07-08 pre-season exercise.

Plunker says that his Honey-Do list is getting pretty long and he has to go shopping for some new furniture since Wiggles moved out and took part of the furniture to his new fraternity home.

Cuz has "out of town" guests coming. Personally, I think it's because Cuz hates getting up so early.

Rye says it's to dang hot.

djmed, the resident Rabbit Journal t'shirt and cap man, is, well, let's be charitable about this and say "smitten" by a young ladies charms.

Tiny is fishing the lakes in Pittsview.

OneDog says he might show

Sigh!
I would bet it will be just, me (rimfire) Brag and "the girls" of the Rabbit Journal's pack. That's if Brag shows. I didn't hear from him Friday evening.

Saturday’s pre-season exercise beyond the fact that Brag and I met Hover and Elmer.

Elmer is a four month old male with field trial lineage, not that that matters much to me and Brag.
Heck, the closest to papers the “girls” have is the rolled up one that I threaten them with during some of the late night cat calls.
You know, yodeling “Here Kitty, Kitty, Come play with us”
Over and over and over and over, as Kitty sit’s a few yards from the fence and performs it’s evening toiletries. The eleven o’clock cat call is regular as clock work since Kitty’s servant puts Kitty out every evening during the eleven o’clock news. It’s Kitty’s boyfriends who stop by to see if she can come out to play at two in the morning that makes me get the paper out. And the refilled bottles of water. They throw pretty good.

Oh yeah, Elmer

make her first mistake of the season. The rabbit came down the edge of the oaks from the three o’clock position to the nine o’clock before making a series of long jumps back to the five o’clock position. It froze slightly to my right as it either saw or sensed me. I think it’s intention was to race away to the six o’clock direction dead away from the girls who were hot on his track. I had spoiled that plan and he shot back towards the eight o’clock.

of the morning that lasted for almost two hours and I was soaking wet. The pine plantation in Seale had received a thunder storm the previous evening and the brush still dripped water from the leaves in this, the early morning hours.

I listened to the dogs running in a thicket above me on the slope with the camera holstered as I ate a granola bar. The sager ran to within a few yards of me and froze, looking at it’s back trail.

Brag and I met Tiny, camp cook and supervisor of the Teats, at Seale near daylight. We ran the area near one of the Florida boys deer stands.
Three decent races.

…..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.

Brag and I are going to Seale, Alabama tomorrow morning to run the “girls” on Cuz’s hunting lease in a pine plantation.
I figure I got a free pass since I just started the Lyme medicine, but I still plan to drench myself in insect repellent.

heralded dawn as Brag and I pulled into the back fifty acres off of 39. That small plot butted up against the 1000 acre Seale deer lease where Brag and I spend many summer Saturday morning’s exercising the Rabbit Journals pack of beagles.