Run to catch

[likeemfast]

Dana
There is a spot I run my hounds that the game commission stocks put n take pheasants (as I call them). When the hounds are running a cottontail and get close to one of the pheasants it flushes and immediately out of the trees 1-3 hawks take off after that pheasant and when he starts to fold up for landing those hawks are in dive mode. Goes on for weeks till we don’t flush anymore pheasants. Ridiculous waste of money by the PA game commission.

[Shady Grove Beagles]

Likeemfast
I grew up in central Massachusetts and the Fish and Game Dept. stocked pen raised pheasants on W.M.A.'s. We always referred to them as the "chicken farms". Strictly put-n-take game management. Pretty much the same thing they did with trout. Dump buckets of them off the bridges and at the boat landings while folks watch them and as soon as the hatchery truck pulls off they throw a line in and catch an easy limit.
Those pen raised pheasants half the time wouldn't even fly and guys would shoot em on the run. I was fortunate in that I had two real good Retrievers back in those days. One a Golden and the female a Lab. I wouldn't go early in the morning as it was crowded and the woods sounded like Viet Nam. I'd take the dogs and go after lunch and get birds all those guys stomping around trying to flush a bird would miss. Several times the dogs would catch a live bird that refused to fly and bring them to me so I could wring their neck. Not too sporting but I was a kid and didn't much care.
Like you mentioned - big waste of Fish & Game money. They're catering to folks that just want to harvest something easy.
Were those hawks picking off the pheasants in the air or on the ground?

[Mike McPherson]

Well a first for me today my beagle/hound cross caught a hare in the wild today, we only have a couple inches of snow. Ran it for a little under an hour. Not sure if it ran into a tree or what. He was coming at me pretty hard shut up for a second and I thought I heard a squeal. I checked the gps and he was standing still. Trying to guess what was going on and I notice he is headed towards me not barking just coming. He gets close enough to see and I call him, he comes over with the body language that told me that run was done. Well I was curious enough I had to go see what had happened, got over near the area and he's 25 yards away nosing at something I walk over and there it is the dead hare laying right where he left it. Seen it happen in a pen with a few dogs this was in the wild solo. Pretty cool experience.

Hunt-Em-Up

[likeemfast]

Were those hawks picking off the pheasants in the air or on the ground?

They always waited till the pheasant hit the ground, and then hit em hard.

[Newt]

Typical government bureaucracy. They create a problem, then spend millions dollars pretending to fix it.
In this area they are destroying, or refusing to keep rabbit habitat. They have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on duck ponds, and greenways for nature lovers. They graded and made a half mile road across the WMA and built a parking lot for Duck Hunters. If a rabbit hunter drives or parks on the WMA he gets a fine. They won't even bush hog a path across the WMA for rabbit hunters.

[Shady Grove Beagles]

Hi Mike
How's the beagle / hound crosses working for you? What breed of hound are you crossing the beagles with? What size dogs are you getting or striving for? Have you figured out the most efficient size for what you are wanting?
Years ago I had a litter of Bluetick coon hound pups and a guy came to buy one. Said he was going to run it on hare. He said "once you run a big hound on hare you'll never go back to a beagle" Especially in the snow.
Back in the mid 70's I was just getting in to the tree hounds and was hunting coon and some bear and cat hunting with the Ware brothers across the river in Vermont. I acquired a Treeing Walker pup out of some of their bear pack stock. I already had a pretty good coon dog so decided I'd start the Walker on hare. She was small, probably only 17-18 inches and weighed about 40 pounds.
She was probably the fastest dog on a hare that I've ever seen. On bare ground you wanted to have your shotgun full when she put a hare by you cause they were flat out flying. In winter in deep snow was where she could shine.
Sad part was she was very man-shy. She wouldn't hunt with any one but me, wouldn't pack with other dogs, timid. I don't enjoy working with dogs like that..............
One more question.LOL. What are you seeing as far as nose in the crosses? You feeling like beagle or hound has more nose? Cold trailing tendencies ?

[likeemfast]

Typical government bureaucracy. They create a problem, then spend millions dollars pretending to fix it.
In this area they are destroying, or refusing to keep rabbit habitat. They have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on duck ponds, and greenways for nature lovers. They graded and made a half mile road across the WMA and built a parking lot for Duck Hunters. If a rabbit hunter drives or parks on the WMA he gets a fine. They won't even bush hog a path across the WMA for rabbit hunters.

Newt,
We have the same problem here but it’s not the ducks, it’s these darn pheasants. They spend so much money stocking these flying chickens that they now started charging for a pheasant stamp. It’s $25, I wouldn’t shoot them when it was free, let alone pay to shoot a supposed game bird that you can walk up to and it doesn’t flush. As far as rabbit habitat, they do nothing to provide cover for probably the most prolific reproducer in small game. Our PA game commission is a joke.

[warddog]

It sounds like this issue of rabbitat is probably about the same in most states. My state puts plenty of money into the der, turkey and even quail in places but nothing in the way of anything for rabbit numbers or rabbit hunting at all. We used to have quite a few pheasants back in my younger years but they died off for some reason and now we do have a put and take pheasant program in the northern part of the state. I think some of it is so the guys that have and train bird dogs can still charge big money for them. I have mentioned this habitat situation many times and the lack of places to run rabbit dogs much less hunt them in this state which has about come down to doing so on state public property that is hunted to death mainly because it's about all that's available any more. I'm down to one last beagle and she is 11 or 12 years old and will probably be my last as she has been hunted very, very little because of the above. It probably won't be long until another one bits the dust. It's starting to look a lot like my coon hunting days when turning the dogs loose turned into a drama nearly every night after the dogs left land we had permission to hunt and onto posted property. We have been to state property where you nearly had to draw a number to even be able to turn loose in an area that held a few rabbits. The places one could go after that were those that were left to do so for a reason.

[Shady Grove Beagles]

My son and I just got back last night from five days in the Mississippi Delta hunting swamp rabbits. It was pretty frustrating as the rabbit population in the Delta is terrible this year.
This was my third trip to the Delta and in the past we've enjoyed some really good hunting. This year we hunted spots where we found plenty of rabbits in the past plus some new spots and really struggled to get a rabbit up.
We hunted all day on Thursday [7 hours ], on three different W.M.A.'s that total about 80,000 acres and made 8-9 drops and NEVER got a bark ! The dogs were hunting hard and covering ground and Zack and I walked miles. A sure sign of swamp rabbit activity is the evidence of rabbit pellets on top of fallen logs, stumps, or on big ant hills and we didn't see much of that like we have in the past.
Over the next two days and a lot of walking on our part and hard hunting on the dog's part we were able to have some really good hard races and take six big swamp rabbits so it wasn't a total bust.
Interesting thing -- in five days and probably driving over a 100 miles on the W.M.A.'s we never saw a single hunter, never saw any hulls on the ground and never saw a single deer. This was strange because in the past the deer were everywhere and not unusual to see 30-40 deer every day out in the woods and fields while rabbit hunting.
Zack and I had been out there two years ago to hunt and found almost the entire Delta region flooded and most of the W.M.A.'s under water and closed. We talked to some of the locals and they said that the flooding had lasted for weeks then and that they were experiencing a coyote population explosion and their comments were "there ain't no rabbits in the bottoms now". Obviously there are some but given the excellent cover and thousands of huntable acres there aren't many.
I've included a picture of my son holding the only swamper we could take a picture of. The reason? My dogs ate the other five !!
In the past I've always used low brass 6's on cottontails and high brass 6's when I hunt hare or swampers and my son was shooting a 12 ga. and 6's. Well, I learned something this trip - they aren't enough !
Five of the swampers we shot never even faltered when hit and the dogs had to run them down and catch them - usually within 100 yards.
You shoot a rabbit dead and my girls don't care much about them. But, if they run one down and catch it you aren't getting any of it. Time to get some tape worm pills.
Cost of our cabin rental $350., gas on the trip $150., non-resident licenses and W.M.A. permits $150., groceries $75.and a 1,000 mile trip.
Getting to hear the girls driving hard on the swampers and spending time with my son -- PRICELESS !!

[Beagle Huntsman]

Sounds like great fun, if you could find rabbits like in past. I can’t imagine coyotes have wiped them out since we all have tons of coyotes and still have rabbits where there is good cover. But maybe the flooding?

How long does it take your hounds to get used to scenting through the pools of water?

[ericwaddle3]

Don’t know as much about swampers but I know of some state ground that floods every year about 20 miles from me. Most of the time it doesn’t affect the population too much but whenever we get a big flood and the water gets higher than normal and stays flooded for a couple weeks seems like it wiped them all out. Takes 3-4 years to recover before it happens all over again.

[Shady Grove Beagles]

Beagle Huntsman and ericwaddle3
I don't go along with the idea that there are no rabbits due to the coyotes. Like you mentioned, we all have coyotes where ever you live and we still have rabbits.
Now the flooding , that may be another thing completely. Two years ago when we went out there to hunt all of the W.M.A.'s in the Delta that were within 10 miles of the Big Muddy were flooded and closed to all hunting. From what I gathered it took more than a month for the water to recede in those areas. At that time the only place we could hunt was a management area away from the big bottoms that wasn't flooded and we did pretty good there on the swampers. Interesting thing is that, that area is the only place we were able to jump any rabbits on this trip.
Quite a few years back my friend Bob Ferranti had come down from New Hampshire to hunt with me. We traveled out to Savannah on the Tn. River where we had hunted before and done well. When we got there we found the entire area was flooded and you couldn't get anywhere near the bottoms as the entire place looked like a giant lake.
I've gone out there three times over the past 10 years to hunt swampers and the hunting was terrible ! Guy told me the same thing "ain't no rabbits here anymore". So guess there is probably something to it.
I wouldn't have thought so as I've heard folks tell of swamp rabbits climbing up in trees to get out of the water and / or that they just swim out when the area floods.
One fellow told us that the flooded areas were still under water when the rabbits usually start breeding so maybe that really hurt them. ?????????????
Beagle Huntsman. My dogs seldom have to hunt in or around much water here in east Tn. Most of the land I hunt swampers in is wet but the standing water is usually only a couple inches deep and intermittent in the cover and doesn't seem to give the dogs any problems at all. I try and stay away from the deep sloughs, canals and creeks cause I don't want to have to deal with crossing them. LOL. As far as the beagles -- I think we had two races that blew up as the rabbits took to deep swimming water that was pretty extensive and although they tried for quite a while they never could pick him back up.
On another race that lasted over an hour the rabbit and the dogs crossed a big canal half a dozen times where they had to swim and it didn't slow them down much.

[Randy Osborne]

Do you guys have trouble with gators in Mississippi or LA. running in the water for swampers? Here in FL. even the small lakes and ponds have many gators! Dogs crossing a creek or running in water here might not come back! Just curious. I don't have places to run swampers anymore.

[Shady Grove Beagles]

I know they have gators in Mississippi as it is posted in there laws brochure and they also have a hunting season for them. The cabin we rent is located in a state park and the cabins line up on the shore of a lake. There is a sign stuck in the water right behind our cabin that says DON'T FEED THE GATORS.
When I've been down there hunting it has always been in January and morning temps. have been high 20's or low 30's with daytime temp high 40's-low 50's. I believe all the gators are holed up in their holes in that weather. Don't have any idea what the gator threat is in the warm weather months.
Years ago I was further south in Natchez, Ms. coon hunting with some local guys. It was my first time hunting in the deep south. The dogs had treed deep in the bottoms in swimming water. As we waded through the water to the tree my light caught a pair of red eyes out in the water in front of us. I mentioned it to one of the local guys. He put his light on them and then turned to me and said " lets get out of the water,that's a gator".

[Shady Grove Beagles]

Took a couple of teenage boys and their dad for a rabbit hunt recently. They've hunted with me before and really love it and keep telling their dad they want to get some beagles.
I think their dad figures it's a lot easier to just let me keep the hounds. LOL.
I've always enjoyed taking some young people and introducing them to rabbit hunting and explaining what the beagles are doing. Got to get them interested as they ARE the future of our sport.