heavy with the promise of rain, the sound of the three adult beagles nosing a warm track had the eleven and a half week old rabbit dog in training, Lucy, moving between Brag and myself on the dirt road. Brag, Uncle NoPass’s grandson and my rabbit/dog partner, had convinced me to run “the gate” this morning, a patch of exceedingly thick planted pines about a hundred yards between the gate to my hunting lease in Seale, Alabama and the paved road.

The three adult beagles went into full cry as the track became blisteringly hot.
As we watched, Lucy suddenly plunged into the undergrowth to be with her new Aunties, Maizie, Dixie and Julie.
The rabbit, a young sager of the “dodge’em” variety instead of “let’s run the feet off them hounds“ type, had the dogs run in fits and starts. I watched the young rabbit come out of a blackberry briar patch only to immediately hook back in only a couple of yards from where it come out. I could see it’s ears twitching as it sat quietly at the base of a small planted pine. The dogs ran past it, losing the trail where he hooked back. When I looked back to where the young sager had been setting, he was gone, back into the same patch he had just left.

In one quite period after only ten to fifteen minutes, Brag called “Lucy” a time or two. I felt like a nervous father of a impetuous six year old. Neither one of us had expected her to follow the older dogs this quickly. This was only her second time on a pre-season exercise. With a sense of relief we heard the sound of a halfway whimper bark and saw her prancing across a clear cut area toward us.

Of our three dogs, Maizie the playful motherly type, Julie, the irritable grumpy high strung and Dixie, the indifferent, Lucy had decided that her best buddy was Julie. Lucy follows her, jumps on her and generally harass her. Julie, for her part, growled and snapped at first before finally settling into a resigned attitude. Julie reacquired the track and let go with her high pitched squeal. Lucy stopped, looked back towards the now excited dogs and then at Brag and myself leaning against Brags little pickup. She started back to the woods, then turned around and came to us.

She spent the rest of the morning walking the roads with Brag and me, occasionally striking off on her own down the lightly graveled dirt road leading to our collection of shacks that we called cabins, before coming out to check where we were. When the older dogs came close she would stop and look intensely into the woods in their direction. If they came up on the road she would race to them and into the brush and pines, but never more than a few yards before coming back out onto the road.

I saw the young rabbit one more time before the dogs lost it for good. It came out on the road, ran down it for several yards before turning back into it’s “yard”. The dogs lost it in the collection of puddles from last nights heavy rains.

We crossed to the other side of the logging road and made a long walk down a firebreak that separated the thick small planted pines and a section of more mature loblollies that had been thinned over the last year. The last two times we walked that section we didn’t find a single rabbit. This time was no different.

We loaded the dogs up and went to the cabin to run the cabin rabbit. Lucy regressed as we walked down the powerline from a rambunctious six year old into a petulant two year old. Tired, she started a constant whimpering. Maizie, Julie and Dixie, couldn’t seem to hit a hot track. They would find one that would get their interest but would soon play out.

It was only at the end of that section of the powerline where it crossed the logging road below the sand pit that they jumped. The rabbit was jumped where we had jumped for the last two weeks and crossed the road where a shallow wet weather creek flowed. The little bunny ran tight circles through the thick low growing vegetation, crossing the road twice. Tired though she was, Lucy showed some interest in the scent on the road before starting her whining again. I put her into the box and she promptly fell asleep.

Julie gave up first followed by Maizie. Dixie kept trying to sort out the track. Julie and Maizie seemed totally spent even though it was a mild morning and the races had been relatively easy. Dixie was the one who worried us when she came out, head and tail down acting like a whipped dog. At first, Brag and I were worried she had been snake bit. But she showed no signs other than pulling up lame. She had improved by the time we got them back to Phenix City and into their pen. At supper tonight, Dixie still was acting off her feed.