Monday, February 23, 2009
The Gayest Lurchers EVAR !!!1!
They don't look it in the picture, so let me explain. (And clicking on the pictures makes them larger, so you can see more detail.)
As I resolved last season, I'm being all bi this spring. And since one of my very favorite huntsmen to follow is wintering down at the New Flat Hunt, I expected fun. I was so not disappointed.
The fixture was the same one I wrote up last spring, flat Indian corn, cotton, and winter wheat fields interspersed with forest coverts.
And Industry.
Hounds were the visitors, from the Up North Hunt.
A feature of the day would be a trio of lurchers. These speed demons rode with P., who owned two of them. The idea was that once hounds had run the coyote for a while, she'd launch the sight hounds to course and roll him.
So off we went. Almost immediately, a coyote came out of the drawn covert and was away. So off with the lurchers!
(You can't see him in the picture, but he's about half way between the lurchers and the far treeline across the field.)
Of course a minute later, hounds came out on the coyote's track, and there was... confusion. With language. I hate radios in the hunting field, but at time they do provide insight and education. Think of the words a man learns in two generations of hunt service!
So the lurchers, rendered suddenly deaf, ran off with their new friends. Who continued to rattle the coyote through the woods, but once he got into the open, couldn't hold him.
That became the pattern for the day. For example, one covert produced FIVE critters- this one was first out:
He's at the far edge of the plough, three rows left of the furrow I'm standing in.While everyone was holloaing this chicken bandit, another came out behind him. Hounds opened in covert, and it looked like the business.
Of course, my usual whipper-in habits exerted themselves, and I immediately began looking away from the action to see a pair just disappearing from view out of the opposite end of the covert, toward a house in the distance.
Then another took the same route! You can see him just below the center of the barn doors, about to exit the plough:
This direction was a problem, since it led toward a dangerous road. So which one of the five were hounds opening on?
Riiiiiight. But he swung away from the road, and again the hounds couldn't hold on. It was a pretty day to be out though, hounds never quit trying and they at least smelled plenty of game.
When he blew for home, we stood around in the field and they piled up with one another- earned their biscuits.
The next day was mainly the NFH hounds, with a few UNH visitors. It had rained the night before, and the wind was a bit raw. Passengers aboard this time- a visitor from the UNH and local hunters B and T.
So fairly early on, we were following P from one place to another. Wait, what's that in the road ahead of her? A coyote, just sitting there watching her approach! She got within 30 or 40 yards, and s he stood up and trotted off, unleashed the lurchers. She'd clearly been having difficulty getting them to lock on with all the confusion. But now they had no distractions, we'd see them go now!
Lock on they did, and Mr. Coyote stepped up the pace toward a treeline maybe seventy yards away. P. backed up her truck and sped away to the other side of the treeline.
And as he reached the treeline, the canine bullets...
quit. It was like, "Oh, he's in the shade. That's the safe zone. Where's our truck? I miss my heated seats."
At which point I said, "I'm sorry, but these lurchers are gay."
And back they came to the road. Since their ride was gone, they headed for us, as though we were the ext taxi in the rank.
That's when B. said, "Gayest lurchers ever."
We lost all decorum. The poor visitor must have thought he had fallen among lunatics as we planned their MySpace and Facebook pages, and wondered aloud if gaylurchers.com was registered already.
That remained the pattern of the day in the truck. The FNH huntsman was four wheeling, and he was a disruptive influence as well.
A little later, we were in just the right place when a coyote went away right in front of us.
Here's a close up, note the dusty red, almost fox colour and healthy, bushy coat.
So off we went. As did hounds:
At the edge of the country was a Church in session, so we slowed it down to a moderate barrel past them. Then across a field to, oddly enough, exactly
the right spot!
Even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then.Hounds curled around this covert, then into it while we waited. We figured they had gone on, and so pulled up into that forest track you see there- and bang! There the bushy red coyote was, blasting out across the track, a yard in front of us, and running!
We thought hounds might come back, but no, they receded into the distance. We came out and found ourselves back in the same spot where we'd seen the red coyote go away- and sure enough, out came a new one, a black mottled one this time!
P. was there with the furred torpedoes again. Upon launch they lived up to their previous truck hound standards.
He ran the same track as his pack mate had done. Church had let out, so through the parking lot this time! Once again, it petered out in another wood.
He blew for home, but three or four couple wouldn't knock off. I had to take a picture of Largo,
who kept trying to get back into covert. She did NOT want to give that varmint best!
This is a coyote rich environment, and it's a real challenge to get and keep hounds settled on one.
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