Posts Tagged ‘coyote hunters’
Excited Morning
It was not a quiet week in Wintervale this morning. It is cold out there, but not below zero yet. I took Asher for a walk, and Cyndie headed straight for the barn to minimize her time out in the cold. Just as Asher and I popped out of the woods, a noisy truck could be heard up by the house. The dog was only mildly intrigued, and I was able to quickly deduce the neighborhood coyote hunters were busy at it.
Cyndie had a chance to check in with them near the barn, telling them we had seen the coyotes on our night camera a day or two ago. She told him she would keep our dog in the barn while they were in the vicinity.
Much to my glee, we returned to the ordinary orientation for feeding the horses this morning. Mix and Mia on the same side together, and Swings and Light on the other.
Mia is doing well and consuming much closer to her regular amounts of grain again. We are back to watering down her servings, which is a hassle in the extreme cold. If it prevents Mia from having further problems, it’s a hassle we will endure.
The high winds in our forecast had not started yet, but when a breeze hit me and made the air biting cold, I suggested we blanket the other horses sooner rather than later. Light was not interested in accepting a blanket and danced a few circles while we made several attempts. About that same time, the hunting dogs started howling in our vicinity. That put Asher in a tizzy of barking in the barn.
Soon, we heard shots being fired in the field next door, and the horses went on high alert. About the time things should have calmed down, one of the hunters could be heard calling his dog pleasantly. That quickly changed from pleasant when it became obvious the hound wasn’t obeying. Cyndie saw the pup slip through the growth on the edge of our property and sniff around one of her gardens. Asher kicked up his barking to a new level.
One of the hunters drove up our driveway to retrieve two of their straying dogs, and we all lived happily ever after.
We left Light blanketless and headed up to the house for our breakfast, tolerating Asher’s unrelenting urge to continue barking throughout our meal. I’ll be interested to see if Light will be a little more accepting of her blanket as the temperature drops throughout the afternoon.
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Just Me
Starting today and lasting for a little over a week, it’s going to be just me managing the ranch as Cyndie is flying today to visit her mother in Florida. I’ve been through this solo routine many times but instead of that making it easier, I think the last few times have increasingly revealed how connected Cyndie and I have become at this point of our lives.
Throughout the last week, we have been watching the athletic Olympic performances available on NBC together. It won’t be the same all by myself. I have been frustrated over the number of events, especially hockey, we haven’t had access to that have been broadcast on USA network.
I will particularly miss her editing service for these blog posts. She continually provides helpful feedback on my writing that always makes my posts read better.
Tending to the animals is always half as much work when we share the duties. Now I only have Delilah to help me with the horses until Cyndie returns and what Delilah does down at the barn is never really all that helpful. Mostly, she starts barking a lot if she thinks the horses are misbehaving.
Delilah did a great job of alerting us about someone showing up at our front door yesterday. It was one of the local coyote hunters asking if they could cross our land during a hunt. I made sure to get his contact information this time, in case we have future evidence of the pests lurking on our land.
Surprisingly, Delilah didn’t get riled up over the sound of the hunting dogs cutting through our woods. Later, when I took her for an afternoon walk, she was very interested in all the new foot and paw prints in the snow. I heard a couple of gunshots while the hunt was active, but did not receive any word about whether they were successful or not.
It just eventually gets quiet, the pickup trucks disappear from the road, and the horses stop looking all spooked. At that point, I feel safe to take Delilah outside again.
Now it’s going to be quiet around the house for the next nine days.
Not that I’m counting.
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Hunting Hounds
On a thickly gray Saturday morning, we stepped out of the house behind Delilah and quickly noticed a sharp sound in the distance. Swallowed by the crunch of our boots on the snowy path, the muffle of hats over ears, and the sound of our own voices as we chatted about some minutia, we had to stop in our tracks to identify what we were hearing.
There was a helicopter far in the distance, but that sound just faded. After a moment of no sounds, there was the bark of a dog. Then, several more. The hunting hounds were out early.
We resumed our trek down the trail, but not for long. The echoing bellows were only getting louder, so we reversed direction and headed back toward the house, through the back yard, and on to the barn. Delilah was delighted with the added excitement and romped her way along with us, reversing direction only several times to see if we couldn’t just check on the vocal hounds in the woods.
I wondered if we might suddenly see coyotes sprinting past us in a run for their lives.
With Delilah secured in the barn, Cyndie and I tended to the tasks of setting out food for the chickens and opening the coop. I could see the trucks of hunters slowing moving by on the road while we mingled with the chickens and I cleaned off the poop board. Rocky made a failed attempt to mount one of the Domestiques. We took solace in his acceptance of her objections.
Cyndie continues to offer feed from her bare hand in effort to condition the flock to always accept humans as safe and valuable companions. With respect to the New Hampshire pullet, Cyndie got nipped as the overzealous girl went after a mole on her thumb.
Can’t fault that as malicious, but geez. That hurt.
Returning to the barn, Delilah bursts forth with excitement at this moment because she knows the next phase of this daily routine is to take her up to the house where she will receive her morning meal. We exit the barn door and while I am closing the door behind us I notice Cyndie struggling with everything she’s got to hold the leash.
Delilah is trying to drag Cyndie up to the driveway to where a cute looking hunting beagle is standing all alone.
We decide to let Cyndie take Delilah back into the barn for a bit while I see if I can coax the beagle to get back on the job and find the rest of his pack or the scent of a coyote.
Knowing the hunters were driving nearby, I walked with the happy radio-collared beagle toward the road. A truck pulled up just as we arrived. The hunter said she was one of two that had gone astray.
Meanwhile, Cyndie took the opportunity to pop out of the barn and head up to the house with Delilah on a short leash. They quickly were surprised by the other stray. This time, Delilah was in reach to make contact, and luckily, with wagging tails the dogs met gently, nose to nose.
Cyndie said she offered Delilah the deal of continuing up to the house for her breakfast, and the two dogs trotted together for a bit and then parted without incident as they reached the door.
The hunter I spoke with at the road said our neighbor had alerted them to a sighting of coyotes early this morning, so they were hopefully tracking a fresh scent. By the time we were having our breakfast, nothing but quiet had settled in around us. I’m guessing the trail was lost.
Subsequent calm and quiet was a welcome outcome after the adventurous start to our Saturday.
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Reclaiming Peace
The days following a disruptive weather event can be a confusing mix, emotionally. The threat has lifted and calm ensues, but the anxiety adrenaline hangover lingers. We are lucky to have dodged any significant damage or loss of power, but the multiple inches of dirty snow/slush, speckled with innumerable broken branches, delay the feeling of relief we seek.
Thank goodness for our hills and valleys that break up the wind around here.
The open terrain to the west didn’t protect the overexposed, iced up power poles lining roadways.
We don’t have anything near that level of clean up facing us. That must have been a real shocker to come upon.
Some of the local hunters stopped by for permission to cross our property with their dogs in search of coyotes. A short time later, gunshots rang out.
I had watched as the group of hounds calmly traveled out of the neighboring corn field and into the woods, with a single hunter walking behind them. After they disappeared into the ravine beyond our property, we never saw another glimpse of them.
One of these days, I’m going to ask if I can tag along. It occurred to me yesterday, that in all our years here, I have never actually seen a coyote. I’m curious about the logistics of how they finally get proximity to shoot, and then how they find their way out of the woods while carrying their kill.
In less than three weeks, our annual participation in the World Labyrinth Day peace walk will be upon us. We are finding it difficult to envision how we might be ready.
It’s not just the peace pole that can’t stand up in the soft earth. The stones balanced at each turn spend more time toppled that upright with all the freezing and thawing going on.
Our exercise may just be to claim our peace with accepting things just as they are.
Windy, calm; wet, or dry.
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Relative Something 