Some of my greatest hunts have been on New Year's Eve, but Wednesday's rabbit hunt in Grant County wasn't one of them.
My partners in this endeavor asked to remain anonymous because they were afraid it would reflect poorly on their dogs, which were supposed to be the stars of this story.
The dogs were fine. Some days you get them. Some days you don't.
The morning started with a bit of a miscue. The temperature at dawn was 30 degrees , but I left my hunting coat at home in a different vehicle. It wasn't a terrible inconvenience because I was well-layered. I had Under Armor against the skin, as well as a T-shirt and a fleece pullover up top and blue jeans.
I was comfortable as long as I kept moving, but I had no place to carry my shotgun shells except in my pants pockets. I've lost weight, so my jeans fit a little loose. When you add shotgun shells, about 3 pounds of keys, a wallet and a knife, my lack of a belt was a significant encumbrance to graceful mobility.
The dogs actually struck a swamp rabbit fairly quickly after our trail boss released them. He set out two dogs, and one dog started a race almost immediately.
"Ol' Red ain't said nothin' about it yet," the trail boss said skeptically.
The race proceeded toward the river and then looped back toward us. The barking intensified, but the taciturn Red ended up back at our sides.
The noise of the race made the other dogs in the box exceedingly jealous. They whined and pleaded. When that didn't work, they snarled at each other. This earned a sharp rebuke from the trail boss, but it calmed them only momentarily.
"Think we oughtta turn out some of these other'ns?" the trail boss asked.
"Wouldn't hurt," I said. "This is a rabbity-looking place. The more noses the better."
Soon, three more dogs were on the ground.
"This little puppy is the one that was doing all that fussin'," the trail boss said. "He acts like he wants to hunt so bad, but he don't know nothin'. If he ever figures it out, I reckon he might be a pretty good dog."
By "rabbity," I mean downright hostile to anything bigger than a rabbit. It was the thickest, most snarled-up looking mess of brambles and briars imaginable. The trail boss waded into it a short distance to try to help the dogs strike a scent.
When he came back, he looked like he'd tried to give a bobcat a bath. His face and hands bled from more than a dozen cuts.
Our companion recalled a coon hunt in these same bottoms years before. It had snowed hard, and everything was frozen. His dog treed a coon on the other side of a frozen slough.
"The dog got across the ice, so I thought I could, too," he said. "Well, I couldn't. I was halfway across when I broke through and went down to my waist."
When he got out, he pulled off his LaCrosse hip boots to drain them, but he said he couldn't get them back on.
"I walked all the way back to the house in my socks," he said. "My feet were bruised up so bad."
While the trail boss followed a couple of dogs down a road, another dog started a race in the thicket to my left. It turned my way, so I got ready. A big swamp rabbit dashed across the road, but the trail boss was in my line of fire. I waited to shoot as the rabbit entered the brush on the other side of the road. I missed, and the race continued for a long time until the rabbit finally eluded the dogs.
We got one more chance as the dogs struck another rabbit in a different part of the bottom. The companion and I raced along a hilltop and held each other's shotguns while we slithered under a fence to get to the edge of another slough. We made it just in time, but the rabbit turned back into the thicket at the last minute and we never saw it. The race continued over a ridge until the barks grew faint. Later, we heard a four-wheeler puttering faintly through the woods.
It was the trail boss rounding up his wayward hounds.
He returned with the dogs inside a big metal box on the back rack. We all sensed that the hunt was over, so we wished each other well for the New Year and resolved to do it again soon.
Sports on 01/01/2015