Peggy's turn.

Today was a late start to go hunting. Tami's relatives were leaving, and I was waiting on a guy to water down the runway. After last weeks rain and subsequent rutting of the runway, I was forced to drag it again, which of course turned the whole thing to powder.

We finally got out about 3:00PM. The crew for today  was Grace, Reubon, Tami and Thayen. It was Reubon's first time. Sue is doing much better about accepting people in the field and paid no attention to anything that we did with the exception of our rousting of rabbits. She showed no preference as to who was holding the perch.

Peggy was showing signs of getting into the groove. She was putting more energy into the chases and this time she stuck it out all the way without giving out. Sue is really hot for the rabbits now with the last two trips resulting in success, and is starting to "throw up" higher in the air to look for the balky rabbits. She had a couple of foot races that were astonishing even though she did not connect with them. No matter, she is putting it together. I saw several indications that she is starting to figure out the rabbits escape tactics and is trying to counter them. She has also over the last few trips begun to pay more attention to the holes that these little jokers escape in.

I had to coax her out of several just today.

This is apparently a good year for Pheasants, and the two hawks spent quite a bit of time trying to catch Pheasants in the tall Bull thistles. The birds managed to avoid them, but we had a young of the year male Prairie Falcon come in and join a Northern Harrier in strafing Peg and Sue. He was just 30 feet over our heads flying around. One of the birds flushed a Pheasant and the little guy gave us an exibition as to what he could do. I think the Pheasant was a bit big for him even though he sure crashed it into the weeds. The Bunnies were every where, and we suffered no shortage of slips. Peg crashed into a Sage inches behind a Jack, and as I say was beginning to show signs of the old Peg from last year. I saw both birds anticipate what the Rabbits were going to do, and try to cut off the little buggers. It is getting more interesting all the time. It won't be long and they will have it figured out.

I was considering heading back to the car and calling it a day if they didn't catch anything. Karen has another Dr's appointment on Thursday which would be my normal day to hunt them. So if I didn't feed them, they would be ready to hunt tomorrow. I no sooner decided that and Sue took off across the field after a Jack and did a nice throw up and crash after him, so we decided to do one little loop through that area. Tami had seen a Bunny sneaking through the Sage, and I went down to try to cut him off.  Sue whipped off the perch and did a wing over in the Thistles, flushing out a 3/4 Rooster Pheasant. That part was fine, the problem came in when he headed towards Tami and Peg. He was scratching for altitude and Peg climbed to meet him, throwing out a long leg and snatched him out of the air. As you know Peg has a deformed leg, so she didn't kill him. I was able to get in and give her a hind leg of rabbit, and was able to release him back into the Thistles. Just one more day and it would have been picture time. ( Season opens the first. ) As it is, it is just a pain in the butt. They probably won't catch any more when there is no danger of me being arrested.