Every Saturday without fail, Brag and I have ran the dogs since turkey season ended here in middle eastern Alabama. Invariably, we have had nice fairly cool running weather with a dew or more on the ground, even now in the dog days of August. As a matter of fact, the last tough hunt, weather wise, was our last run at the Capps place out past Crawford, Alabama. That was the last time Rye, the current elder of our rabbit hunting group tentatively named the “East Alabama Rabbit Hunters and Souse Eaters Social Club, attended. The heat got to him that day.

Today, there was a light misting drizzle as we loaded the dogs for our Saturday trip to where our hunting club has a lease on a pine plantation near Seale, Alabama. Thirteen week old Lucy settled down for the ride, sharing her compartment with docile Maizie. She’s getting to be an old hand at the transport end of the game, this being her third trip. Part of the road was in it's usual state of disrepair.

The long walk down the straight firebreak that ran on the top of a long,,,,well I suppose us flatlanders would call a ridge, though you people from steeper climes would laugh at such a description, from where we parked the pathfinder. Halfway down the break to where we had planned to start, Julie’s head snapped down to the damp pine straw. Dixie, Maizie and even little Lucy went over and conferred over the scent for a minute. The dogs started circling out through the even darker shadows in the dark planted pines till Dixie’s bawl brought the other three to her assistance. The wonderful sound of the three adult dogs chasing their quarry in full cry rose from the bottom to mingle with the call of a whippoorwill in the predawn darkness. Lucy came back after only thirty yards or so. She paced between Brag and myself, watching down the hill in the direction of the running dogs. Every so often she would venture twenty-thirty yards out into the loblollies before coming back to the firebreak road.

The rabbit crossed the road three times. Once crossing the pine straw littered break and immediately re-crossing at almost the same point. Maizie, Julie and Dixie ran that rabbit for almost two hours before losing it for good. After fifteen minutes of silence, Brag and I hollered a few times and the dogs came out to us.

The second race started only a hundred yards further down the same break where the hill fell off into long slope of briars, pines and honeysuckle vines before ending in a wet dense bottom. The jump came only yards away from one of my deer stands. All four dogs took off.

After ten minutes, I heard Brag yell “Lucy with you?”

“Nope, I thought she was with you”

Ten minutes later, as the sound of the older dogs running hot and fast two hundred yards down in the bottom, we called out “Lucy” several times expecting to hear her whine and she made her way back.
Silence except for the running dogs.
Brag and I moved to intercept the dogs and then move along their back trail till we found her. There was no way little 13 week old Lucy could keep up with her three older aunties running hard through the thick brush.

Brag, who caught up with the dogs, thirty minutes into the run, in a thick stand of pin oaks, called out “Here she is, running between Dixie and Julie with Maizie bringing up the rear.” Lucy might not have known what she was doing, but she knew she wanted to be where the excitement was. And that excitement wasn’t standing up on the road listening to others having all the fun.

The race ended after another hour with Brag and I keeping a close watch on Lucy

Butterflies broke like covey’s of quail along the old logging road leading out to the paved road. Since it’s August it’s to early for the Sulphurs and Monarchs though we did see a few. These butterflies migrate south in September and early October. Instead it’s been a bumper crop of Swallowtails and other, smaller, less grandiose butterflies.

Mud dropped off the pathfinder that we had collected on the wet and muddy logging roads as we hit the paved road home. Two races, both over a hour and a half long in deer country with none of the dogs paying the slightest bit of attention to the fresh deer sign that abounded in the planted pines.

After giving the dogs fresh water and some feed, Brag took Lucy with him to visit Uncle NoPass, Brag’s grandfather. Uncle NoPass, 84 years old, hasn’t been doing well lately. Strokes, heart attacks and senior dementia has caught up with him. Brag later told me that Lucy had given my uncle a brightness to his eyes that had been missing lately. He even told Brag he wouldn’t mind riding along on one of our weekly trips. A puppy has that effect on dog men, especially old ones. We’ll try to set it up, but he has canceled the last two times. Maybe this time…….