Miller School, March 3, 2022

 

We were at Miller School today.  It was a gorgeous but warm day.  After a couple of weeks of dry weather the footing is getting really nice.

It's amazing how things can change at fixtures.  Miller School used to be a fairly quiet hunt.  Once they ramped up their Agriculture program to include farm animals the hunting at Miller has become consistently busy and we're not even chasing the farm animals.  One nice thing today is that the pigs were gone and are probably nicely stored in a freezer somewhere.

It wasn't a long day but it was busy.  The bell tower struck ten and within a few minutes the hounds were busy.  They got a fox up and running near the pig enclosure in what used to be called the equestrian woods.  I guess it is now the pig woods.  The fox was viewed crossing the driveway.  It then made a turn and made a long run down the pinewoods trail, through the swampy area at the end of Alumni Lake and then made a run for the water tower where it was lost.  Yellow line on map.

Matthew gathered the hounds and headed down the back driveway, going into the woods past the dumpsters.  We were only a few minutes in when the hounds hit again.  The fox looped out and was heading along behind the houses and towards the pond when the hounds lost him.  It was a good run as the hounds were working steadily even if not on a dead run.  Orange line.

Matthew gathered again and came back across the utility easement.  He was just a little past it when the hounds hit again.  They ran through the woods toward the clear cut and were heading back up the hill a bit east of the water tower.  They ran for a bit but lost somewhere in the woods just above the clear cut.  Red line on the map.

 After that we headed in as it had gotten quite warm and the hounds were lagging.

It's very interesting to look at the map and wonder if it was not the same fox all along because it would be easy to link those runs into one smooth track.

ETA:  I was talking with John Wells several days later and he told me he saw a fox running with some deer in the Miller Woods that day.