“Because Lucy, I want to check out an area I want a bow stand in during deer season”.
“Why do you get to chase deer, Boss, but you get mad if I do?”

Lucy was right on both points. There were a lot of rabbits where we started this morning. And I do get mad if she chases deer.

Top dog today was Dixie

I don’t listen to the radio much on the way to our hunting lease on a pine plantation in Seale, Alabama. Instead, I prefer to be alone with my thoughts on the ride down the back roads to Seale. It’s a time of reflection and remembrance for me. I’ve been riding these roads, off and on, for over thirty years, so there’s a lot of remembrance going on. Since I haven’t had much company this summer, it’s a good thing I don’t mind being alone. Riding 39 instead of 431, at least gives me the illusion of it still being an isolated area. But more and more people are moving in. And bringing their fear of the dark with them. Some areas on Oswischie road are lit up with so many lights that it looks like one of Carl Gregory’s car lots.

This morning, right after I thinned the possum population by one, a deer cut in front of the old pathfinder. I would have liked to stop and put Lucy on the trail and break her once and for all, but since the deer was crossing one of the new front yards that are sprouting up, I kept on going

I was still putting on my snake chaps in the dark when I heard Dixie’s cry down in the Devil’s Walking Stick thicket. Her sound wasn’t the bark of “I’ve found a scent. Come help me”. No, this sounded more like she bumped the bunny with her nose.

Lucy, Julie and Kate rustled the bushes right in front of me as they raced in Dixie’s direction. Those three had been waiting for me to finish dressing and pouring up a cup of coffee to take along. Lucy started hollering for Dixie to hang on, she was coming.

It was a good forty five minute race that ran the length of the Devil’s walking sticks twice before crossing the logging road near the old sawdust pile. That pile was there when I started hunting the property at the tender age of 18. I'm 53 now. The “girls” kept on the track in full cry. This is the spot on the hard pack that the rabbit usually loses them on, but not this time. The race circled near “the pond” a shallow wet weather puddle and came back to the road. This time the wiley rabbit lost them.

I’ve seen the rabbits that hang out there run down the hard pack, turn and run halfway back before making a long jump into a pile of debris. This time I was on the wrong end of the race to see what happened. By the time I got back to their end, the pack was milling around, the track completely lost.

We jumped, make that Dixie jumped, the next rabbit as we walked toward the upper gate. It was another good race with the rabbit crossing a power line three times and running up and down it another couple of times. I missed several times with the digital camera I carried. That shouldn’t surprise most considering how much I was missing with a gun last year.

While I sat in the deer stand, I watched a second rabbit moving through the brush trying to stay out of the way of the real race.

After the hounds lost that rabbit, Kate found the other rabbit and a third race was on. It was shorter than the first two as was the fourth race that started only yards from where I had turned the dogs out.

I loaded the dogs with only Lucy protesting the move. It was a short drive to the “back” where djmed (the official t'shirt outfitter for the East Alabama Rabbit Hunters and Souse Eater's Social Club), Brag and I had a couple of good hunts last year.

The girls walked along the edge of the bottom with Julie dancing in front of me
“Julie, go find me a rabbit.”
“Nuhuh Boss, to many deer around here. I don’t want you to get me with that electric pine limb”
“You don’t even have a collar on Julie. “Don’t matter and listen to the runt. That ain’t no rabbit.”
“How do you know?”
“Cause here comes Dixie and Kate, hauling fanny.”

Sure enough, there came those two looking back over their shoulder like something was going to get them. Giving Lucy a little of the benefit of the doubt, I nicked Lucy on 1 and called her off.

We had completed the leg down with nothing to show for it and were on the way back up the ridge at the top when Dixie jumped. I saw a flash of the rabbit then the four hounds came past at full voice at full speed. I waited for the rabbit to turn back but then the girls lost him. They were quite for a few minutes and then acquired the scent. It must have been a different rabbit. They went over the hill and into the clear cut over the property line. I could hear them running, making several large circles before losing that rabbit and going quite. Ten minutes later, I heard Lucy open up, a little further away. She was soon joined by the rest of the pack and the race was a distant sound, but still definitely a rabbit from the circles it was cutting.

Finally, like last Saturday, I ran out of patience and went to break them off. It was a good day with seven races before eleven o’clock. And only six weeks till rabbit season.