2-25-13 Sun

2-25-2013 Sun 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Weather:
NW 3, sunny, 30 ˚, 30.09 steady, 18” snow (Fairchild) 8” snow (Blair)
Location:
Fairchild and Blair, WI
Bagged:
nothing
Partners:
Dick at Blair, Roxy and Lacey
Comments:

I have not been up to Fairchild yet this year rabbit hunting, so I was on a mission to seek out and destroy some snow shoe hares. This area use to be my all-time favorite rabbit hunting area. I never got many cottontails here, but I always was able to chase some hares, and even shoot a good number. I have rabbit hunted this area about once or twice every year for the past five years and every year the hares get sparser and sparser. But, this year was by far the least amount of hare sign I have seen. In fact I probably only found about three different sets of tracks.
Since I found nothing that indicated any amount of hares being present, I quit scouting after about two hours and decided to call Fairchild a bust, and I headed to Blair. I had hunted here a few weeks back, and did not find much then, but I figured the dogs could at least get one chase in. I met up with Dick and we sent the dogs into the brush. Actually only one really thoroughly searched the brush and that was Lacey.
The rabbit population was very thin. Luckily Lacey did get one up and running and her and Roxy ran that poor little bunny very hard for about forty minutes. They both did a great job! I did see the rabbit once during the chase, but it was really too far out to shoot. Even if it was closer I did not want to shoot it and stop the girl’s fun.

Observations:

Both Fairchild and Blair were pretty desolate in terms of rabbit or hare numbers. Lacey did a very good job in searching, running and minding, I was impressed with her!