Gretchen Pelham photo
While packing hounds to the first covert on an autumn hunting morning a couple of seasons ago, I quickly noticed the absence of spider webs laying in the morning dew that so often are the bane of scenting here in the excessively drained sandy soils of my hunting country. Sure enough that harbinger proved accurate when precocious ten-month-old Dooley opened on riot, indicating that scenting conditions were indeed optimal. Whippers-in were out on point, so I had to break out my shooting iron to get the attention of the easily swayed new entry that joined the persistent Dooley.
After counting all twenty-five-and-a-half couple and telling them how disappointed in them I was, I moved from Manly Crossing and recast them into Cow Head. That particular cast was mostly to settle them down and perhaps jump another deer, as that location offers the opportunity for quick correction.
They hit with a screaming cacophony of music and while Cow Head is only slightly more than an acre in an amphitheater-like draw, the pack did a roaring loop inside the covert before our pilot was viewed slipping down the creek and crossing into Carroll’s Branch. I positioned whippers-in in likely directions, and a grey fox was tally ho’d at Witch Doctor Crossing.
Hurrying to Fell-In Bridge, I arrived in time for road whips to tell me the quarry had crossed a few seconds before the hounds. Second Flight Field Master viewed the quarry (reported later it was a coyote), and all hounds were on a minute later towards Bubby Crossing. I hustled that way. Hounds swung up towards Keating’s Head but soon turned east towards Pitcher Plant Hill. Navigating the twisty trails with First Flight right behind me, I arrived to see the pack come out onto Old Mail Road and race down it before crossing Firebreak #1 and pouring into Carroll’s Branch again, still heading down stream. Organizing whippers-in to the South Side of Carroll’s Branch, I hurried on to Van Urk’s Crossing just in time to see a coyote come out and confirm my burgeoning suspicions that our pilot was no longer a grey fox. Hounds came out, checked, but Drama caught it and they poured back into Carroll’s Branch. Heading to the South side we barely missed the Pack crossing Octabony and hurried on to Edminsten’s Crossing in time to think, It sounds like they have come out into the uplands on the North side.
Sure enough, for really the first time the coyote swung in to the upland for a quarter mile before pressure from the pack was too much and returned to Carroll’s Branch, crossed Firebreak #3 and raced up Paige Head. We followed, having to hurry for the first time to catch up as we were thrown behind from having to loop around the head. Huntsman’s intuition roused me out of my pleasant gallop. I picked up the radio and dispatched the road whips in a hurry to Dead Man’s Curve to start trying to turn the coyote from the hard surface road.
Sure enough, hounds beat me to the Lake Bay Horse Bridge and we hustled down the southern path towards the road. The road whips were successful but allowed that he had “crossed the road,” meaning only to them that he had crossed Danila’s driveway. Misinterpreting, I started trying to pick up hounds before effective communication was restored, laid them back on, and the orchestra struck up their symphony with hardly a pause, running Into some trappy paths below Denny’s.
I viewed the coyote come out with his brush held not as proudly as before. Emma, the smallest hound in the kennel came out behind him, had the same thought, and roared after him in full sight pulling the rest of the pack forward. Laying on the horn (mostly for my benefit), I whooped up the rest of the pack as they came by and hustled after them.
Slipping through Denny’s, then the Logan’s, we neared Barack’s Crossing and I suddenly realized the music had slowed, stopped, and changed to a quarrel as the coyote was sorted out. Following a brief, but what I found meaningful ceremony honoring the coyote, the hounds, and the day, I pulled out my hound list and did a count…twenty-five couple present. Seattle (just out of season) was the only one missing.
And that, my friends, is why I love to hunt my Penn-Marydels!
Posted June 8, 2018