Man it’s been so tough running without new snow. The snow we have has gotten very hard and turned to ice in a lot of places. Yesterday we were able to jump three different yotes with the dogs. It was slow tracking because of the hard snow surface, but the when the dogs would lose the track they were able to keep circling back to find it.
We lost one of the yotes but the dogs kept on the other two. The first yote we left in a culvert after about 3 sections and pulled the dogs to go and run another one. It took the better part of an hour of cold tracking with me on foot with the dogs to get the third one jumped in the middle of a section. The race was on with this one and it was 4 sections ahead of me by the time I go the truck. Again this ended up in a culvert and we pulled dogs and left it to run another day.
Over night the running got even tougher. We found a fresh track this morning and dropped a couple dogs. They had the yote jumped within 300 yards. Today proved to be an even harder day to track than yesterday. They got it ran into the next section and kept after it, but the tracking was slow going. Even with me on foot and a couple of the best track dogs in the area we would continually lose the track. The fields were about 20-60 percent hard pack ice in places. The dogs would lose the sent on the ice and kept having to backtrack. The yote stayed in the section and kept making circles. It ended up dang near a mile head of the dogs. Even though they were still on the track we opted to pull them. At the slow pace it was going to take hours for them to catch up. So again this one was left to run another day.
It wasn’t a total lose. It was great exercise for me and the dogs. We had two new dogs that needed some running time with experienced dogs and they got it this weekend. I had the camera with me all weekend, but wouldn’t you know it, I kept forgetting to get it out. Here are two picks I took of the hounds.
