Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Day One.

As we pulled into the field north of Deming, I looked North and spied a couple of eagles. Young Goldens.. possibly the same two I posted pictures of on this blog a little over a year ago.


There were also dozens of Northern Harriers in the air.

We parked, got the dogs out and set off to find us a few jacks... Margaret walking student, Sandia, with Fanny and Buffy free coursing. We spotted 3 jacks during the course of our first mile. The girls saw none, as they were out of position.
About that time I saw something moving about 200 yards ahead of us. I thought it was a coyote, so we got the girls leashed up, because then I spotted a second... then a third... and suddenly I realized there was a whold herd, and they weren't 'yotes; they were wild pigs, and it was really a fortuitous that we had everybody leashed.


Except, as luck would have it, that's when we jumped the jack that everybody saw! Sandia is getting pretty excited about this stuff, and wants to be let go. Well, we were still pretty close to the pigs, so nobody got let go.

I decided the only way the girls were going to get something to chase was if we kept them on slips. Good thing, too, as Buffy almost dived headlong into this...
Judging from the way it's opened up it was either the eagles or a harrier that got him. We may have interrupted somebody's lunch. It gets worse. We'll be revisiting this unfortunate critter, but...

It was starting to get a little warm, and we decided to work our way toward the car, keeping the girls in the slips. We jumped one just to Margaret's left.. she slipped Fanny, I slipped Buffy, and poor Sandia could only stand and watch what turned out to be a short exercize run, as the jack lost them in some dense brush. We headed towards the car, and Fanny did, too. Buffy, however, remembered where she saw a jackrabbit that wouldn't elude her. Yeah... off she went, and it didn't matter that it was almost a thousand yards back the way we came.. she went right to it. I was yelling my head off, telling her, "NO!", and "Stop!", and other totally useless commands. As I approached her and her lunch, she did what she's done for years: Picked it up and trotted away from me. We repeated this exercize in frustration twice more, and I just decided, screw it! (or words to that effect), told her we were leaving, and headed back to the car. She looked up at me, and at least she didn't say "Goodbye", she just looked mildly perplexed.

I got to the car, we got the other dogs loaded, and we saw Buffy wandering around, not exactly coming, and not exactly going away. Basically, she was milking the moment for all the drama she could. But I had a secret: The magic green cow tripe treats.

Everyone in the car, we started to exit the field, but we had one more photo opportunity to go, as we watched a Harrier hunting. That yielded this dramatic shot of a descent to the ground in an attempt to nab a small, furry, creature. We thought she was successful, but no dice.
Here's looking at you kid.

2 comments:

  1. VERY nice pictures! Wish I was there.

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  2. Thanks. I decided to feature the Harrier in the new slide show.. did you check it out? Remember, you can click on the slide show on the sidebar, and you'll be taken to the Google albums website to see larger images.

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