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 since we first hunted the property a few years ago. Back then, we had double digit mornings as well as days.
I could understand why they would want to keep it secure with all those rabbits.

But last year the property yielded fewer rabbits, so I don't know how they justify all those locks.
This year, albeit, only on one hunt, all the permission we could secure, we got 5.
Of course, we jumped 12, but we worked and walked hard for those. The Capps place is still a good place to rabbit hunt, but it is no longer special. The BirdHunters place in Pittsview suffered a similar fate as the habitat changed.

The pines were more mature, leaving the briars thinner and fewer. The pine straw carpeted the ground smothering what was a bright green pasture grass.
Only on steep hillsides and the drainage basin below the lake dams, in what were in years past impenetrable briar patches could we jump.
Even then getting a shot was difficult.

Final Score
Tommy 2
Dustin 1 1/3
Brag 1
Djmed 1/3
Katie 1/3

I saw three rabbits and only had a shot at one.
The first rabbit was directly between Cuz and me who were only separated by a distance measured in feet or at the most several yards. That wasn’t the reason I didn’t shoot. I just wasn’t fast enough and it was so thick that I didn’t know he was there. If I had of shot he probably could have checked his boots for my shot pattern.
Just kidding, I would have been shooting into the ground, but I bet it would have scared him pretty good.

The next rabbit would have taken a .243 with a scope. I saw him running down a fence line as Rye and I entered a section of mature pines. “There’s a rabbit, Rye”
“Where” scanning the thin pines 20 yards out or so.
“At the other end of the pines along the fence”
“That ant is a rabbit?”

The third rabbit was a little sager who took off from a bush when my foot landed next to it. The shot would have been easy, because he hung up on the vines for a moment, legs kicking like crasy while trying to run. But it was the first race after lunch and I wanted the dogs to run and loosen up.

There aren’t many pictures today. Every time something happened or someone saw something interesting, like the stump covered in rabbit pills with some coyote scat in the middle, I was on the other side of some particularly thick patch and couldn’t make it over.

The five we did get came in a late morning cluster with shots booming from every direction. Why, some people even hit rabbits while others didn’t, eh djmed? Still you did earn an assist on the rabbit that you shredded its ears that Katie caught after Dustin shot and probably missed.

Speaking of Dustin, Cuz’s grandson. He has a new beagle. Dustin named it “Boss”. There is no way that I’m going to call any dog “Boss”. Besides, it will confuse the “girls”. Henceforth, I will refer to it as Dustin’s dog…plus whatever adjectives that he earns.
Brag and I will be helping to train it on this summer’s exercises in the Rabbit Journal 08-09.