Today we were at the Miller School of Albemarle. It was a gorgeous, cool morning wit spectacular colors on the mountains around us. It was also howling wind which did not bode well for things. On the plus side we had found that the pigs were confined to the pen by the red barn. 👍👍 While the pigs are scary for the horses, it seems with the great expansion of MSA's agriculture program, the hunting has improved as we are seeing more foxes and coyotes on the campus. My thought is the feed being put out for the chickens and pigs is drawing in the small critters which in turn is drawing in the foxes and coyotes.
We started out by immediately going into the woods next to the meet. I'd say we weren't ten seconds in when the hounds opened up. We ran through the woods just past the old abandoned house and up the hill by one of the coops. We checked there and found that the hounds had reversed were heading back to where they had started. We reversed out just in time to find Matthew coming back and the hounds going back into the woods. They circled around again and the fox was lost. The run is on the map shaded in yellow. It was a nice warm-up run that went about 17 minutes and covered a little over a mile. That's pretty cool because that stand of woods is about 100 acres. It shows how much round and round we did.
From there Matthew picked up the hounds and hunted up the hill on the trail that is right after the lake. We got to the top and things headed east again the hounds started speaking and went down the hill to the south end of the lake. Unfortunately not much developed from there.
We then headed to the trail that starts by the coop at the top of the upper meadow and that goes through the pine woods down to Pounding Creek Rd. I've been hunting the MSA campus since 2015 and we have never had anything develop over there. Howling wind and all, we got what Matthews thinks was a coyote up and running. It took off towards Pounding Creek rd and then ran parallel to the road.
For the fields a decision had to be made. Do we follow along the road in a trail position, or do reverse and try to head off by going back through the campus. The decision was made to reverse and try to head off.
While we were reversing back the coyote came through the logged area that abuts the MSA campus and cut back in by the water tower. He kept running and came past the the faculty apartments before heading down hill and across the soccer pitch. He kept going and disappeared back into the woods and disappeared around the pig pen.
It was an excellent run that took about 35 minutes and covered about 2 miles.
Matthew was gathering hounds and with the wind still howling, the day was called. For the day, we covered about 6.6 miles in the second flight.
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