was the greeting that Cuz gave Brag and I as we pulled up next to where he waited with Rye and Tiny.We were a whole ten minutes late. Nothing compared to how much time Brag and I often had to kill waiting as Cuz fiddle farted getting his gear together.

We were going to hunt the same property where Brag had pulled Cuz’s full sized Dodge out of a mudhole with his “Toy”ota city truck.
Heh It is a beautiful piece of property that was at one time pasture land before being planted in pines a few years ago. The pines weren’t tall enough to shade out the grass yet and patches of briars and thick stands of dried dog fennel and poke stalks gave rabbits plenty of hiding places. And rabbits were everywhere.

I started off the morning killing a large buck rabbit as he shorted the edge of some small planted pines going into a thicket below a small lake’s dam. A few minutes later, I took the next rabbit with a single shot as he ran a tight circle back by where I jumped him.
A little later, I used both barrels of the old 16 ga. Fox to roll another buck being run by Dixie and Maizie while at the same time, Rye knocked down one being run by the other half of our pack of dogs. Rabbits were everywhere and at lunch time we had killed five.

After lunch the pace picked up. Eight were killed and several were lost by the dogs after I or one of the others missed a shot.

Late in the day, I stood in some calf high white weeds at the base of the dam when I heard a rustling at my feet. I glanced down to see a rat or something crawling under the weeds. The grass rustled as he went on down the trail and disappeared. The dogs came by a few minutes later and Rye shot the last rabbit of the day, Number 13. I could have sworn that it was a rat, not a rabbit.

We decided that we couldn’t stop on 13 and Cuz grabbed Judy and told her “ Get us one more and we’ll go home.” That was a mistake. Judy don’t quit. The sun was setting, when we finally broke the dogs off without getting a shot.

It was a good day. Cuz and I got five each. Rye got 2 and Brag got one. Tiny left before lunch with 0. The dogs haven’t ran any trash in weeks. They seem to be getting better and better, but we only have a couple of days left in the season.