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2014-2015 rabbit hunting thread

bluedog

Junior Member
I didn't want to start adding on to J's thread so that he can better keep track of his hunts without the confusion of other hunts. So I thought I'd open a general rabbit hunting thread for those hunting rabbits with or without dogs. Feel free to add on with your own hunts if you want.

As J said, I was thinking of driving down his way for the opener but the weather was not cooperating so I decided on a shorter hunt closer to home. Actually I wasn't sure I wanted to go out at all in the rotating waves of rain, ice pellets and snow. I took a vacation today though for the opener and decided I should go out for a bit. I finally started getting dressed a little after 1pm and of course putting on my hunting clothes caused the two beagles in the house to alternately run around me or longingly wiggle their tails and look up at me.



I have a tradition of heading to public land for opening day. It's a long season and I never want to shoot rabbits on the farm early on. Plus it's just nice to go somewhere else once in awhile. Usually I head to Mosquito or Shenango but since the weather was bad I decided on a short hunt at Dorset, a lot closer to home. When I got to the parking area I went to lift the dogs out of the truck and missed. They were very excited and both jumped. My 9 year old female has luxating patellas and one rear leg always gives her more trouble. When she hit the ground she yelped and would not put the bum leg on the ground. Oh great. I massaged the leg and waited a few minutes and she started walking on it again. I knew she would be sore later, but I also knew she really needed some exercise. Running her would make her sore (which I can help with anti-inflammatories) but would not make her condition worse. So off we went.

I drove the block and did not see anyone in any of the parking areas. I started in my usual spot that is near the road. The grass and weeds seemed to be really really thick this year. This is a hard place to hunt to begin with because it is so thick but it just seemed extra bad. We walked the border between a spit of woods and a field that parallels the road. Over by some mulitflora rose, the dogs got on a track. I positioned myself in the most open spot I could find which wasn't very open. The dogs circled the rabbit and when it came through it was so thick that I did not see it until it was running right at my feet. The point of this exercise was to come home with dinner not blow a rabbit to pieces. LOL! It turned 3 feet from me and ran directly away from me and I won't shoot a rabbit with a straight on read quarters shot.

As the dogs pushed the rabbit onward I decided to move up to the edge of the woods/field. There was a narrow swath of shorter weeds that I thought would be my best spot to get a shot. Unfortunately I could never get myself quite in position for a shot. The dogs circled the rabbit at least 3 or 4 times past me and I tried different tactics but could not get it right. Most of the time it would cross too far out of range. The couple times it was close it went running past at warp speed in to the thick high weeds. This a view of the edge I was talking about.



After circle after circle after circle, the rabbit took the dogs way up toward the road. In fact I thought they had crossed the road. This has happened to me before in past years and there are houses across the road. So I jogged up a mowed path to the road and found they were just chasing through the tall grass near the roadside ditch but had not crossed. The rabbit took the dogs back to the field away from the road. I decided to position myself in the original not very open opening where this whole thing started. This spot had much easier access to watch for road crossings if needed. Each circle that the dogs made took more and more time. I'm sure it was getting confusing for them with all the layers upon layers of scent in the same area. I just let them keep working it out on their own. I was however getting quite cold standing there and it was off and on pouring down ice pellets. My fingers were freezing! The low clouds and approaching sunset was making the light very flat and I was having trouble watching for a small grey-brown mammal in the grey-brown weeds. The rabbit passed by me again but I just could not get on it quick enough. Another couple circles and once again I heard the dogs drifting toward the road. I stepped out of my spot to see the dogs starting to sniff their way across the road ditch. I shouted "no no no" to them and they immediately stopped and then came over to where I was. I was quite proud of them listening because well, we all know how well beagles listen at times.

I checked my watch and it was 4:40pm We had been out nearly 3 hours on that one rabbit. Whew! My old gal was using her bum leg when we left to go home but by the time I got them back to the house, the leg was already starting to stiffen up and now she is hopping along on three legs. :( Hopefully a little carprofen with her dinner will ease up her discomfort by morning. I think I'll let them rest up tomorrow for sure. Might hit the woods for some squirrel hunting depending on the weather.
 

"J"

Git Off My Lawn
Supporting Member
56,743
274
North Carolina
Sounds like you had a better day than I did Bluedog.... The girls had a good workout from the sounds of it..... It amazes me what some of these older gals do like leaping off of a 3' high tailgate lol.... I've caught a few of mine mid leap in the past and have missed a couple as well lol.... They lived for another hunt but we're a little slower after the fact lol..... Glad you had some good runs with the girls.....
 

bluedog

Junior Member
Took the day off from doing anything on Saturday. Yesterday I spent nearly the entire day in the woods squirrel hunting. Very poor day for seeing squirrels but had some great encounters with two different groups of wild turkeys and one 8 point buck. The story is kind of long and if you feel inclined it's over on this year's squirrel hunting thread on OS.

Today I decided to get the dogs out for at least the morning. I headed over to Mosquito Creek. There are a couple small areas that hold a few rabbits. I started at my usual spot and the dogs were having great difficulty. After firing on all cylinders on opening day, today was a disaster. I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt since the ground had dried out a lot plus there was just a lot of thick grass. The best run they had here was only about 10 minutes and it ended with the rabbit in a hole. I never even saw the dang thing. I've had some really good runs in this spot so I was kind of disappointed. We spent a full hour crisscrossing the area and the dogs would open up on a track and then not go anywhere.

So I loaded them up to find one of my alternate spots. I couple years back I stopped at the headquarters and one of the DOW guys circled some areas on a map of where I could find a few rabbits. The next stop was a place I had not tried at all yet because in past years there was always someone else parked there. Today there was no one. The dogs opened up on a track within less than a minute. They had a little trouble getting going again and I thought this was going to be like the first stop. But then things started to click and off they went round and round. The rabbit took the dogs right up to the road and I remembered the DOW guy telling me that if I hunted here I needed to be able to stop my dogs from crossing the road because the opposite side was part of the No Hunting refuge area. So I walked up the road carrying my unloaded gun and watched. After the rabbit turned away from the road I took a little walk around the area to check out the lay of the land. Then as the rabbit circled back to the road I found myself watching the road once again. At one point the rabbit hopped right toward the road but saw me and turned back into the brush. Round they went again. I decided to walk around a bit more and the rabbit ran toward the road one more time. This time the rabbit made it to the road before me and it actually crossed over (or at least hid) in a corrugated metal drain pipe that ran under the road. I almost thought I was going to have a beagle stuck in the drain pipe. Oh boy. This is the view I had of the area. Rabbit hunting to the right. Refuge to the left.



This run lasted at least a half hour. We went onward after that first run and the dogs found another rabbit but it ran them in to some really really thick grass and they just don't seem to be able to track through that stuff worth a darn.

We were out for about 2 hours total. I'm not sure why I carried a gun with me because I never even loaded it. LOL!
This is the aftermath now that we are home.

 

"J"

Git Off My Lawn
Supporting Member
56,743
274
North Carolina
Sounds like a good day.... I always bring some kind of gun with me when I run the dogs.... During season the O/U .410 usually and a handgun in he off season ope carried just because you never know what you might encounter.... I'm always on a watchful eye for coyotes.... Heard of coon hunters having problems with the after dark so just in case insurance so too speak.....

Looks like the hounds got a good workout Bluedog.... Basking in the sun..... lol....
 

blackhandbeagles

Junior Member
28
31
Sounds like some great runs. I went out Saturday for a bit and my old beagle hit a track and ran it for about a hundred yards then laid up on the tree barking his fool head off. Sure enough, that squirrel was looking right down at him. That is what I get for not running my dogs in the off season. Now if I could just get my squirrel dog to do it that good.

I moved over to some private property and had a rabbit up right behind the house. While the beagles were running the rabbit a huge buck came out just below us. Now my beagles KNOW better than to touch that. I let them do a couple of circles to finish on a good note and got out of there so I wouldn't mess up the deer hunters in the swamp.

I live on the Licking/Muskingum county line, so when I say a huge buck that means something. We live in big buck country.
 

"J"

Git Off My Lawn
Supporting Member
56,743
274
North Carolina
I've had some extremely long runs over the years and at times I have doubted my beagles..... But almost every time it's been a rabbit....
 

bluedog

Junior Member
Sounds like some great runs. I went out Saturday for a bit and my old beagle hit a track and ran it for about a hundred yards then laid up on the tree barking his fool head off. Sure enough, that squirrel was looking right down at him. That is what I get for not running my dogs in the off season. Now if I could just get my squirrel dog to do it that good.

I moved over to some private property and had a rabbit up right behind the house. While the beagles were running the rabbit a huge buck came out just below us. Now my beagles KNOW better than to touch that. I let them do a couple of circles to finish on a good note and got out of there so I wouldn't mess up the deer hunters in the swamp.

I live on the Licking/Muskingum county line, so when I say a huge buck that means something. We live in big buck country.

LOL!!!! My old beagle that died in 2013 would tree a squirrel. This is what rabbit hunting looked like when I had her. :)



My current oldest beagle I got from the dog pound. She'll bark at squirrel scent too. This is her hot on the trail barking the whole way until she could go no further. That tree trunk broke over about 8-10 feet above the ground. LOL



Sure is cool to see those big bucks. Sounds like you had a good day too. :) :)
 

aholdren

Senior Member
Supporting Member
5,178
151
South East Ohio
Great thread, I hope to be able to contribute a little now and then. A buddy of mine has a handful of beagles and we get together a few times a season. My hopes are to pick up a couple of his pups next year so my boy can have the same opportunity I had growing up hunting with beagles.
Great pics Bluedog and thanks for sharing.
 

bluedog

Junior Member
No pictures today and no rabbits in the game pouch. I did however have a first. I was running the dogs over in an area with a ton of holes. If you want to shoot a rabbit here, you had better get it on the first circle. The dogs were on their second rabbit when an auxiliary rabbit came shooting out of the brush, crossed the path I was standing on about 50 yards away and started to hop slowly through some thicker brush toward me. It got to a clear spot, I aimed and pulled the trigger. Click. There was a shell in the chamber and by the time I ejected it and got the next one in of course the rabbit was gone and in a hole. The shell that didn't fire had a small indentation in the primer, but it didn't push the primer all the way in. When we were done, I put the shell back in the chamber and it fired just fine. Things that make you go hmmmmm?

Weather going to H E double hockey sticks tomorrow. Don't know if I'll be able to get the dogs out or not.
 

bluedog

Junior Member
Today was possibly the most challenging NOVEMBER conditions I have ever hunted. Temperature was right at freezing when the dogs and I went out. We spent about 2 hours crisscrossing the pasture and creek bottom behind the house. We have about 6 inches of heavy wet snow on the ground. You know, the kind that could be used to build a snow fort or build a wet heavy snowball good for flinging at your enemies. Ouch! LOL! We have a lot of wild swamp rose thickets along the creek and when these thickets get covered by snow, it becomes a rabbit fortress. The dogs spent a lot of time below the snow today but there are nooks and crannies they cannot penetrate. A couple times my male would frantically dig and bite at the thicket trying to get through but to no avail. I tried to help by kicking the heavy wet snow off the top but it was exhausting work to be sure. They did have one really good sight chase when a very large rabbit popped out of one of the swamp rose thickets. That rabbit hauled a$$, jumped the creek and into a groundhog hole. The dogs had one pretty decent run, about a half hour, through the pasture. I never saw the rabbit and again, the dogs spent a good deal of time underneath the snow until they lost the trail somehow. Crazy weather for this time of year.

A view of the creek bottom that runs behind our house. The only difference between today and January is that there is a lot of open water still today.

 

"J"

Git Off My Lawn
Supporting Member
56,743
274
North Carolina
Nice recap, I thought about it earlier today but decided against it helped a buddy with his buck getting it too the taxi and shoveled snow and did some laundry.... Then said the heck with it and went deer hunting lol.... Bottoms dropping out here temps wise so I'll ride it out till the weekend and see what happens....
 

GoetsTalon

Senior Member
Supporting Member
4,294
128
Walbridge oh
With my deer tag filled and my daughter losing hope in filling hers its about time to get the brush pants and 20ga. out. Last year started out good and with the snow in febuary it was over pretty quick. Love reading the stories and seeing the tree climbing beagles!!!
 

bluedog

Junior Member
Doing some catching up around here today. Been deer hunting off and on all week. We had two deer in the freezer prior to gun season and that is all we need. But I have a friend who said she would like a deer so I thought I would go hunting for a buck (since I didn't want to shoot another doe off the farm). Well mr. bluedog was also looking for a deer as 1.) he hadn't shot one in a few years and 2.) was very excited about using his .357 magnum rifle this year. He ended up shooting a young buck on Thursday so that is the one we gave to our friends. I hunted a little more on Saturday but really I just wanted to be in the woods. Decided to take today off from deer hunting, do some things around the house and squirrel hunt tomorrow.

But I digress. This thread is about rabbit hunting. This Thanksgiving we traveled down to Marietta to my in-laws. We took the beagles as we always do some rabbit hunting down there with family and friends. Kind of a low keyed event this year compared to past years as we only had 6 dogs and 4 people. It was still fun. I made sure of embarrassing myself thoroughly and the worst part was I didn't even realize what I had done until halfway through our Thanksgiving Day rabbit hunt. I normally rabbit hunt with my semi-automatic Beretta. My first gun however was a youth model Remington 870. I still use that gun for turkey and once in awhile for deer but haven't rabbit hunted with it in quite a few years. But my niece has borrowed the 870 in the past for deer season (she shot her first deer with it :) ), and asked that I bring it down with me so she could use it this year. So instead of packing an extra gun, I just figured I would rabbit hunt with the 870 and then just leave it down there for my niece to use. When I packed the guns for the trip south, I grabbed my 870 that had the regular barrel on it and also the slug barrel and put it in the gun case. It wasn't until 2 hours and 2 misses at rabbits later, that I realized the last time I used the 870 was turkey season and the extra full turkey choke was still in the gun. DOH!!!! Not like the choke sticking out from the end of the barrel was obvious or anything. I felt really stupid at that point. Plus I was having trouble getting the gun to cock properly. It was definitely not a shining moment for me in the field.

In spite of all that, we had a great trip. Hunted for 4 hours on Thanksgiving morning and my husband shot 2 rabbits. Then on Black Friday my niece and I just took her 2 dogs and my 2 dogs for a long 3 hour "walk" around the farm just letting the dogs run rabbits. No guns carried. Then my husband and I went out for 2 hours on Saturday morning before the football game and he shot one more rabbit. I cooked all 3 rabbits up for Saturday dinner for the entire family.

The full write up is in my hunting blog

The Great 2014 Holiday Rabbit Hunt

And I'll just put up a couple pictures from Thanksgiving Day. My hands were frozen so I didn't take as many pictures as usual. The first is my husband standing next to the second rabbit he shot. The second is just some of the wiggly tailed hounds. (Hard to get 6 hounds together in one picture)



 

Rastus

Junior Member
Came across this site while I should be working. Really enjoying the posts. Hopefully I will have a few hunts worth recounting myself this season. I have a new pup that was born last March that is running pretty well. She ran her first rabbit back to me at 3 months and got a good bit of work over the summer. I also have an 11 year old female that has been a great dog but she looks to be feeling her age a little this fall (just like me). She seems to be content to go and run for an hour or so and spend the rest of the day on the couch. I never have a problem calling her off a track. On the other hand, if it were not for Tritonics, I'm not sure the pup would ever quit. I didn't let them run during deer gun season and the pup is about to drive the wife and I crazy. I spend 2-3 hours a night being drug around by her leash. Have to get out and do it for real soon.
 

bluedog

Junior Member
Welcome Rastus!!!!! Looking forward to more rabbit hunting tales around here. :) :) :)

After being house-bound for the one week deer gun season, I was SO happy to get the dogs out yesterday for a run. I took a gun with the intent of at least attempting to shoot a rabbit or two, but that didn't happen.

From the get go the dogs were having trouble getting started on a track. There always seems to be way more cold trailing going on when they are exercise deficient. It's like they are all amped up and kind of out of control like a hot horse. So the first part of the outing was just getting their energy level to come down a bit. And right off the bat while I was letting work things out, I found one of last winter/spring's antler sheds right in the middle of one of my favorite rabbit thickets to start the dogs. I had to fight with some red brush and multiflora rose to get the picture. Although it was chewed on, I was surprised at how much was still left. By the time I made it out of the thicket, the dogs had traveled down a narrow strip of trees and to the next woodlot.



The next woodlot was not much better as far as rabbit activity. We checked all the usual haunts, but nothing was out and about. Lots of bulldozed piles in this area so the rabbits were hiding within I'm sure. So off we went to our next spot with the same amount of luck. I decided to just make a loop around our side bean field. The dogs did not find a rabbit until we were almost 3/4ths of the way around the field, but this turned out to be an awesome running rabbit. Circle number one the rabbit cut the corner and surprised me when it was only a few yards away. When it passed by me, I raised my gun hoping it would turn sideways but it just ran straightaway and I'm not a fan of shooting a rabbit in the end where all the good meat is located. Onward to circle number two. I thought I was in a good position and I even was paying good attention to where I thought the rabbit would go. So when the dogs skirted the edge of my neighbor's miscanthus grass field and then crossed back over to my property not 10 yards directly behind me, I was not amused. Onward to circle number three. Somewhere in a brushy fence row the dogs lost the trail. Still, this run had to be close 45 minutes. I walked up the fence row as we started to continue our circle around the side field and some white caught my attention. There nestled in the thick nasty brush was an upside down snapper skeleton. All the bones of the legs were within the upside down shell and the skull was lying next to the shell too. It was like it just died upside down in that fence row. Not sure how it got there. I pulled the shell and the skull out of the weeds to take the picture. The shell was about one foot long.



We continued on to a small wood lot that ALWAYS holds rabbits but they dogs couldn't find a one. So I let them run over to the pasture on the opposite side of the creek from the barns. Here they finally found another good running rabbit. By this time I had lost all interest in shooting. I sat for a bit just listening. Then I decided to go up to the barn and do poultry chores and a few other things around the house. I went back and got the dogs about 45 minutes later. We had left the house at 10am and I got the dogs back to the house at 2pm. How nice and quiet it was in the house last night. :) :)