Sportsmen & Women

It was a cold frosty morning the last day of Feb. 28, 2004.  The temperature was 28 degrees when we left the house to rabbit hunt on Big Skin Creek.  James, Kirby, Seth and Gertie loaded the beagles about 8 a.m. and drove to the grown-up area that was thick in saplings and saw tooth briars.  We let the dogs loose at the Treat gate.  Immediately James’s dog, “Fireball” struck a trail in some big fallen dead oaks that were covered with briars and honeysuckle vines.  The other dogs, Snowball and Miss Daisy joined and the race was on.  The swamp headed for the branch at the back of Blevins Hill.  We stood in our tracks and listened to the dogs as they were driving him.  After circling the hill and around the edge of the water a couple of times they were coming back our way.  We were all standing several yards from each other, but the big Swamp came by James and he shot him.  He was really a nice one!

 

The dogs came back to where James shot the rabbit, he showed it to them and they headed east toward the middle of the over-grown mass of saplings and briars that was about 100 yards from the creek (Big Skin).  The dogs chased the swamp to the Far East end, circled him around the edge of the creek and the swamp took to the water and swim across.  Fireball and his sister Ms. Daisy swam after him.  James, Kirby and Seth were waiting west of me.  I was standing on the creek bank looking across the water and heard the dogs coming back my way driving the rabbit.  After a few seconds the swamp showed up, slowly walked down the high bank of the creek and walked the water’s edge a ways, then made his way back to the top of the creek bank into the briars.  I could hear the dogs coming and watched them as they came down to the waters edge in the same path the rabbit did.  They got on the trail at the top of the high creek bank and the race was on again.  I couldn’t believe it, but after a few minutes the swamp made the same path again and came down the creek bank to the water’s edge and went back up the bank….The two beagles came in and did the same.

 

I yelled out to the hunters who were still down from me (the bushes and vines were so thick we couldn’t see each other), I told them what the swamp had done!  James hollered out and said, “I guess you are going to let your dogs run all day over there, why didn’t you shoot the rabbit?”  I said, if I had shot him, I couldn’t have waded the creek and for him….  By now I heard the beagles coming back towards the creek and thought to myself, “If the swamp travels that same path, I am going to shoot him anyway”!  Sure enough a few minutes later the swamp came the same way and when he walked down to the waters edge I shot him with the Remington 1100 12 gauge.  The swamp was lying with his back legs on just a little bit of dirt and the other part of the body, was in the swift cold water.  I was wondering how I was going to get him!  We always try our best to get anything we shoot….

 

The boys came up to where I was standing by the creek bank and asked if I got him and I pointed to where he was lying across the creek.  Without saying a word, James sat on the ground and started pulling off his shoes and socks!  I knew without asking what he was going to do and said, “Son, what are you going to do”?  He said, I am going over there and get your rabbit!  I said, “I am afraid you will get leg cramps because that water is ice cold and its 28 degrees!  I told him the rabbit wasn’t worth it, but he un-dressed down to his white Hanes underwear and walked into the cold water (see picture)   We stood and watched him and luckily I had my camera with me and shot pictures of him in the middle of the creek, climbing the bank and then coming back across.

 

The water came up under his armpits.  Just about the time he was in the middle of the creek the dogs came down the same trail as the swamp and both of them trailed the rabbit to where it was laying on the ground.  Ms. Daisy picked up the rabbit and we started trying to coax her to swim and bring it to us!  It didn’t work….She drag it back up the steep bank on the other side of the creek and both dogs disappeared.

 

James made it to the top of the bank and had to walk slowly in the briars…The dogs were no where around and he didn’t find the swamp after looking several minutes.  We figured Ms. Daisy had hid the rabbit.

 

Snowball, their Mother was running a swamp on our side of the creek and circling around the bottom of a hillside into the briar thicket.  It turned out to be a young swamp, because it ran the same path each time. (A wise rabbit won’t do this)!   

 

James slowly came down the steep creek bank and waded back across the water, dressed and pulled out a bottle of “Early Times” from his hunting jacket and I could see that the bottle was half empty.  He and Kirby took a sip, but Seth and I declined.  I said, “Well I know now why your blood was warm enough to hit that cold water”!  He said yeah; let’s go kill that swamp Snowball is running.  We walked back in the direction she was running and by now the two other dogs had swim back across and joined their mother in the chase.  The young swamp showed up and James shot it at the edge of the hillside as it was coming around the briar thicket.  Seth, his grandson sure was thrilled as I snapped a picture of them.

 

We shot 4 swamp rabbits that morning, caught the dogs, loaded them, came to our log cabin, skinned the rabbits, washed them and called it a day.

 

Story written by G. M. Barber

www.freewebs.com/gertiembarber/

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