Apparently I was mistaken about the Raccoon that I caught. I had thought that he was a orphan, because of the amount of chicken that was eaten off the kills. It was almost nothing. There were no holes dug under the wire, no evidence of entry at all. It appeared that the little one had just squeezed through the wire. I was there fore surprised to find a small female Raccoon in a trap that I had put in their normal travel route around the fenced area of the pen. Hopefully that is all of them. I spent some time yesterday sprucing up the chicken run. The wire is quite secure, but it isn't buried wire, so digging in is a possibility.
Karen went with us this morning for our hunt. She bought a Ace bandage that was supposed to help stabilize her knee, but it was too tight and pinched, so she left it home.
I checked the pond that I normally fly and while there were ducks on it, there were also cows in the fields surrounding it as well. We started driving in, and the cows assumed that we wanted them somewhere else, and started moving in front of us. I parked the car in the hopes that they would settle down and go on about their business. Everything was fine until we topped the hill above the pond. They all felt guilty and left the fields. Had I not already turned Jessie loose, I would have turned around and left. Jessie took a great pitch and we just walked up in sight of the ducks, and they flushed. Jessie turned on a Mallard and started down. The duck felt her coming and turned back towards the pond. She broke off her pursuit and tried another one, that one did the same thing and she never closed with it either. She picked her pitch back up and I walked down to the pond. A couple busted out the shallow end and she started for them, but was behind too much, she then turned an outside loop and chased another one, but it got into the lower pond. Jessie never came back and I was unsure if she had caught something or not. I left the ladies at the top of the hill and walked down to see what was going on.
By the time that I got down there she was back up in the air. I flushed the lower pond, and she made chases on the ducks that were flying, but for some reason did not follow through. She did this four times on separate flushes. Finally she chased a Mallard over a hill in what looked like a successful pursuit. I walked up to where I could see in time to see her land on a telephone pole. I crossed back over the fence and swung the lure. She came, grabbed the lure, and settled down to eat. When she finished eating the tidbit, she decided that she wasn't done playing and took off again, ignoring the food on my fist. I was disgusted and walked back to Karen and Tami. Jessie had landed on a hay stack, then left and landed on the ground. I swung the lure for a while, but she ignored me. I walked back to get the truck and the telemetry receiver.
When I returned I could see her sitting in the field, so I walked down there and she ignored me until I got to within 50 feet of her. I tossed the lure ( with a sliding weight on it ) in the air and she flew back and forth trying to snag the food on the lure. Finally she sat down on it, and I began to approach her. She jumped up and had managed to get the weight and line all in a ball in her feet and took off with the lure, flying down around the hay stack into another field. ( the lure has a 12 or 14 oz lead weight on a 8 foot line that can slide either up or down. Its purpose is to bounce along the ground either catching on the brush or hitting the ground breaking up the birds flight, thus deterring the bird from flying off with it.) She was sitting in the field rather winded from her efforts. I walked closer to her murmuring curse words of endearment. She again attempted to take off, but was too tired to do so. She began eating and when I got close to her jumped to the fist to get the meal that I had offered to her earlier. I had apparently been punished enough.
The Harris Hawks had gotten less than usual for a meal the last time that I had flown them because they just didn't seem to want to chase Jacks. Peg spent every effort to try to talk me into feeding her yesterday and was down about an ounce from what she had flown at before. Sue was down as well, and both were "sharp set" for a change. They were putting on a show today when ever we got a Jack up in front of them. They just would not quit the chase until the Jack managed to totally elude them either by hiding or making his escape when they couldn't see him. Sue and Peg were crashing the brush like crazy, putting in shots that evoked a lot of "wow" exclamations from both of us. Sue took a diving shot at one who only escaped by jumping over her as she hit the ground. It was like popcorn on a hot griddle. Karen was keeping close in the truck and could see better there than on foot. One of the girls ripped a hand full of hair out of one of the Jacks during a pursuit. It just couldn't last, they were trying too hard. Finally Sue, after both she and Peg had taken a couple of shots each, saw an opening and slammed into one that tried to hide.
My tidbits had spoiled, so I ripped off a Jack front leg for each as a reward. I really didn't want to feed them that big of a chunk of meat, but I knew that we had 15 or 20 minutes before it hit their stomach and dulled their enthusiasm for the hunt. We traveled on and began to bump Bunnies. The girls weren't at all reluctant to chase them. We had just gotten back to the road, when they began to relay a fleeing Bunny. He managed to evade three shots, but Sue put in a forth one that put an end to the chase and the day. I tore off a front leg and walked back to the truck to clean the Bunny and cut off their meal for the day. We fed them up when they finished their treats. We still finished earlier than normal even with Jessie screwing things up.
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