yesterday was only fair. We were two for four. But on the good side, the dogs, Julie, Dixie, Maizie, and Judy didn't run any trash.

Dixie and Julie conferenced for a minute about a scent before jumping the rabbit in the bottom below and running it to Dustin and Tyler who had showed up later that morning with Dustin's dad.

Rye and I started the day alone. The dogs trailed for fifteen minutes or stubbornly staying with a scent that they had picked up near the powerlines on our hunting lease on a pine plantation near Seale, Alabama. I was walking slightly ahead of the dogs through a thin screening of brush when the dogs opened up behind me. I snatched my leg out of the way of the charging bunny and turned to face the cottontail yelling "there he goes" as he sprinted away. I didn't have to bother, of course. The dogs were sprinting right behind them. Mazie in her eagarness to catch the rabbit she could see, ran between my spread legs with Julie and Dixie brushing my legs on on the outside. I fell to a setting position as Judy, our oldest dog waddled past, giving me a quizzical look before trying to catch up. Try as we would, Rye and I couldn't hem up the rabbit by ourselves as he moved in and out of a thicket of Devil's walking sticks. Those thorny shrubs are the exact right size to grab hold of when you loose your balance


We lost that rabbit before jumping the next rabbit in the bottom below where Julie and Dixe conferenced.

The last two came after lunch. Mazie's tail had taken a beating this morning and was a bright blood red above the briars. We crashed through the briars and thickets on a long loop not jumping a single rabbit till we were a few yards from where we started, only on the oppposite side of the road from where we started.
The rabbit lead the dogs down into a creek bottom starting a long loop. As I listened to the dogs trying to find him again after losing him in or near the creek, a rabbit came from that direction heading for the same briar patch that we had jumped him...the one I still stood in. I stood near the rabbit and listened as the dogs reacquired the scent, waiting for the dogs to come back. Instead they moved even father away. Deer? No, the ladies had behaved themself all day. They had jumped another rabbit while trying to find the one I had just shot. We lost that one as he crossed onto some neighboring property, where the lease holders demanded no trespassing for any reason. Sigh!

It was a good day and Brag and I plan to hunt this afternoon after church.