near Crawford was a bit slower than I expected. There were a total of eleven hunters and nine dogs. Eleven hunters and eight dogs went home. I suppose it’s better than the other way around. But, if you're the dog man, it's like leaving one of your kids.
Two of the teats showed up and one pre-teat. I’m always glad to see the kids on a rabbit hunt. I just wish more of them went.

Brag says that 18 shots were fired and I shot ten of them. That’s ok. There were 7 rabbits killed and I got 4 of them. I finally missed twice at the same rabbit. That's worse than the other rabbits that I only missed once. Yep, I shot twice at every rabbit but one, whether I needed to or not. And I let a rabbit crawling through the briars get away for Tiny to shoot. Ok, I couldn't tell from the patch of brown whether it was a rabbit, a rat or one of the dogs that were in the same briar patch. In cases like that you don't shoot
Cuz jumped the first rabbit only yards from where we let out in a hillside thick with blackberry briars. These type of briars are worse on a dog than the cane briars and their assorted cousins because the blackberry bushes are so low to the ground. The hunter, suitably equipped with chaps or briar pants, can bulldoze his way through, but the dogs end the day with thorn filled ears , noses skint and tails bloody.

The dogs were quickly on the trail and the rabbit ran a tight circle to pass by Tiny and his over and under. A single pop and the next thing I knew was that Tiny was stuffing his rabbit in my game bag. I’ve got to quit giving people hints on how to avoid the dirty work.I would have had to listen to his fifteen minute discourse on the difficulty of the shot and the speed of the bunny, but the dog's quickly jumped again.

I missed on the first rabbit I shot at, but nailed him with a headshot a split second later.

The dogs jumped again and ran a tight circle back to pass slightly behind me. Hearing the sound of him in the brush I whirled around and …..missed. As he ran a few steps I fired the other barrel and missed again. Instead of escaping to safety, the rabbit froze. I opened the old 16 ga. Fox and quickly replaced a single shell. Closing the gun I put the bead on his head and pulled the trigger. Click. Wrong barrel. Still the rabbit stayed frozen. With only one trigger left to choose from, a sitting rabbit, and a short distance, the rest was easy.
Less than ten minutes into the hunt and 3 rabbits were in my game bag.

A minor disaster struck mid-morning when the pack took off on a long straight run. When Judy came back out, we were sure it was a deer. Brag caught up with the pack and broke them off with a little assistence of the electric pine limb. Only Maizie didn’t come back out. We weren’t to worried, she seldom ran deer and would soon rejoin the pack.

The next rabbit I killed with a single shot as he crossed parallel to the hillside I was standing on. All I could see was his head behind a log that shielded most of him from sight. He had passed a picket line of hunters strung out along the hillside and the edge of the swampy bottom that he ran the edge of.

My final rabbit killed was with two shots that blended together. The small sager was being run by a single dog while the rest of the pack ran a different rabbit higher up on the gentle slope. I waited till lady came into sight and with Dusty and his friend bearing down on me I moved to pick up the rabbit. It was at this time the other rabbit unseen to Dusty and sidekick and myself broke containment into another bottom.

Several of us were talking on a truck path trying to decide where to stand while we listened to the dogs running a fair ways off. My sudden yells of “There he goes” brought guns up and heads jerking around to follow my finger toward the bunny, by now streaking, through the relatively clean underbrush. I don’t have a clue why I didn’t shoot my self and no one else got off a shot. I told them I didn’t want to be a game hog and wanted to give someone else a chance. From the looks I got, I could tell they were pretty sure I was fabricating again.

Brag got a buck rabbit sometime during the course of the day. With the large size of the rabbit , he might not have had to get him to stop so he could hit him.

The next rabbit I saw, saw me at the instant I raised the shotgun. As he did a back flip my shot kicked up the pine straw where he had been. My final shot was into the briar patch behind him. I didn’t find any hair but the solitary dog running the rabbit (Lady again) quit on the trail only minutes later. Did I get him? No hiar and I couldn’t find him in that briar patch, so No.

Lunch was the tradional (at least among our group) a cold cut (souse meat) and canned meat (viennies) lunch

The final rabbit made me a liar. Tiny wanted at least one more race after a rather fruitless , or at least rabbit less afternoon of beating bushes and briar patches. Even the dogs had given up. Cuz and Rye had become semi-permanently attached to the front seat of Cuz’s truck and as I passed by, I said this won’t take long, there aren’t any rabbits in here. The words were barely out of my mouth when Brag’s cries of “Woopie Whooopie Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Here Here Here” Tiny thinks that Brag puts on almost a good a show as the dogs when he sees a rabbit. I concur.

I ran down the truck trail a few yards and stood at the edge of the briar patch when I saw a brown patch crawling under the extremely low lying briars. I flipped up my gun but the dogs were so close under the same briars. Dog? Rabbit? I held my fire as I peered into the thickness. There was a flurry of movement . I could make out the shorter dogs, Lucy and Judy and then the rabbit broke before I could shoot. There was the pop of Tiny’s over and under. The larger dogs got wedged in the briars and struggled to get free while the puppy Lucy and the grand ol dame of the pack Judy got praised by Tiny.

As the sun set, we waited to see if Maizie would turn back up. We were still short one dog when Brag and I headed in the direction of Phenix City. Maizie had violated the cardinal rule of rabbit dogs “Don’t miss your ride back to town”.

Update: Maizie is home. I got a call after morning worship services and picked her up at the gentleman’s house less than a mile from where we turned her out. She sure was glad to see me, then she remembered why I had to pick her up. I'll do a post on the dog finder and a buck he killed in Hurtsboro. 25 points, 18 on the main beams and 7 at the hairline