On a roll!

Tami and Reuben went with us today to hunt Puddy. Tami hasn't had much of a chance to see her hunt. The last time was when she killed the Vole, so I was hoping that she would get a good chance at a Jack this time.

She still hasn't gotten used to hunting in the evening and she thinks her throat is cut by the time I pick her up at 1 PM. Her weight was 835 today and she has started occasionally screaming when she sees me walk by. Today for the first time she gave a couple of calls as we were driving out of the yard, she was in her box. That is new.

We parked the car and had traveled about 75 yards when she took off flying over some really big Sage, but didn't find the rabbit, so she circled and landed back on the perch. Karen was near and I directed her into the Sage to see if she could jump the Jack. She wasn't having any success so I joined her. We had just about covered the patch, when the Jack jumped just off my left arm. Pud was off and slammed into him between bushes.

 Talk about stopping a Jack with your face. All I could see was a screaming Jack sticking out of a bush, so I pounced on him. Poor old Puddy was stuck behind a bunch of Sage branches with the smallest an inch in diameter. I had to break and up root a goodly portion of the bush to get her out. She was not letting go.

 I just broke her a path and pulled her out and into the open. She didn't want to let go even for a skinned front leg. It took quite a while to convince her that if she took the leg that I had given her, she could eat it at her leisure.

She finally let it go and I cleaned it and cut off a back leg and kept the head for her to eat.

The whole hunt took about 10 minutes from beginning to finish. It seemed to take forever for her to get so full of rabbit that she couldn't eat any more. We were back home in less that two hours having driven 40 miles.


 Jessie is up to 250 feet on the balloon and her strength is returning. She only took about 5 minutes to regain her breath today.