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Speaker 1: Welcome to this country Life. I’m your host, Brent Reeves from coon hunting to trotlining and just in general country living. I want you to stay a while as I share my experiences in life lessons. This Country Life is presented by Case Knives from the store More Studio on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast that airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I’ve got some stores to share. Rabbits, beagles, and a creature named blade. Rabbit hunting with beagles is a time honored tradition, not only in the South, but all over this great nation of ours, and where it lands on my list of favorites might surprise you. That’s what I’m talking about today, and I can’t wait to get to it. So well, that said, let’s get to it. From September the first through the end of February, rabbits in Arkansas are looking over their shoulders and living on the edge. That’s when it’s legal for hunters to get after them. Now, in reality, they’re already looking over their shoulders because just about everything else eats on them year round. Cows, bobcats, foxes, bears, and birds of prey, snakes, alligators, and even coons will make a meal out of Silvilligas floriadnnis and Selviligas aquaticus. The two types of wild rabbits found here in Arkansas, commonly referred to as cottontail rabbits and swamp rabbits, both are good to eat and fun to hunt. Gave an overview of rabbit hunting back in episode two ninety three Rabbits, Dogs and car Hoods. I talked about watching out for botfly larvae and whether the rabbit that had one was good to eat or not. They are, but I still ain’t been hungry enough to have to do it. Mentioned that you should check their livers and spleen for white spots and lesions that could indicate tularemia, but I didn’t tell you how to avoid it, other than saying you should clean them properly. Well, let me cover that right now. You all ready for the big secret? You ready wear rubber gloves. That’s it. You are to be doing that anyway now. I don’t always, but I’m trying to get in the habit. It only takes one time to make you wish you had. And I know some folks who’ve gotten sick from improperly cooked or handle game meeting. It’s no bueno. Tularemia’s common name is literally rabbit fever. It’s as if the rabbits last actual defiance before being given a one way ticket through your colon is to make you think you’ve got the flu, pneumonia, leprosy, and raybes all at the same time. It’s like the old saying goes hunting ain’t no fun when the rabbit gets the gun. Now wear gloves when you’re skinning rabbits, and cook them till they reach an internal temperature of one hundred and sixty degrees fahrenheit and you’re good to go. Simple. Just the other day, Michael Roseman and his nephew R. J. Nelson Howell, whom we affectionately refer to as Meldon, Brad Clark, Randa Whitmore, and yours truly, set out on a rabbit hunt on public ground here at Arkansas, using Michael’s beagles. The hunting rabbits with beagles is my favorite way to hunt them. And y’all know that I like to hunt, and I’ve said before that adding the dog to a lot of things I chase just makes it that much better. Well, I’ll go one step further and say this, Of everything I hunt using a dog, rabbit hunting may be my absolute favorite. And I know some of you may be looking at the radio right now like they just smelled something terrible. But I’d hate to be held at Gunport and made to choose a favorite two that didn’t include rabbits with beagles, coon hunting, squirreled hog, deer ducks, all of it. A rabbit being chased by a pack of beagles is as exciting to me as anything it may be. Because of everything I just named, rabbits with beagles is the least of which I’ve done. My wife, Alexis’s grandfather, Buddy Deckleman, or Booed as she called him, was a rabbit man from way back. Episode two forty eight had me giving y’all the lowdown on him. I never had the opportunity to meet him, as he passed away long before Alexis and I met, but everyone always said that we would have gotten along really well, and I’m confident that we would have. I saw the same shared experience the other day when the group of narraw do wells I just mentioned and I assembled at the coon camp. It was well before breakfast when we started to work on the contents of the coffee pot and get everyone headed out the door for a rabbit hunt. Cookie, Chessie, and Mandy would be doing all the work this morning, and the rest of us were just along for the ride. These three female purebred beagle hounds were being asked to do something that their ancestors had been doing well over four hundred years. Find a rabbit, make that rabbit hit the road, and that’s all they had to do. We and the rabbit were going to handle everything else. Now, for those that don’t know, rabbits normally run in a circle when pursued, and depending on what kind of rabbits being chased, can determine how big of a circle they’ll run. Now, before anyone starts yelling at me saying anything to the contrary, I’m speaking in generalities here, but generally speaking, cotton tail rabbits running a small circle, and swamp rabbits will move out at a bigger one. If the dogs you’re hunting behind are deer proof, meaning they won’t run a deer like most of Clay’s coon dogs won’t run a coon just kidding, not really. Then, when those beagles head out anywhere on the plus side of one hundred yards, you could bet you’re probably chasing a swamp rabbit. Now, you might lose, but I’ll make that bet every time and come out ahead more times than not. We drove the twenty minutes or so from camp in deep conversation about dogs for Michael’s past that he longed to have now so I could hunt and see how they work. He mentioned several, but one in particular was a beagle named Blade. Blade stood seventeen inches at his withers that’s the top of his shoulder blades, which is two full inches above the bigger of the standard sized beagles. Beagles fall into two main categories, thirteen and fifteen inch dogs. Blade wouldn’t have been allowed to compete in some registered events because of his size, being passed the maximum allowed features for the height of a dog in certain competitions. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t a beagle. This means that he was an outlier and exceeded the parameters and standards that had been set in stone for breeze specific events back in the old days. Or as my daughter Bailey would say, back then, But back then really isn’t an accurate description of long ago. She thinks back then was anything before the sixth grade. She’s in the seventh. Anyway. Blade came to Michaels Kennel thirteen years ago by way of a dog trade, and Blade was the one thrown in to sweepen the deal enough for Michael to agree. He was more of an afterthought, like here, you can have this one too. Blade wasn’t a picture of health when he was offering, and it could have been a deal breaker going in the other direction, but Michael took a chance, and there was something that spoke to him. This little big hound deserved a chance, and Michael was going to see that he got one. The actress of nursing and nurturing, Blade filled out and he perked up the dog that he’d traded before. The target dog a female, which made Blade the player to be named later. That dog didn’t turn out at all. She found a new home, and Blade, the dog that almost wasn’t, slid into the number one spot. Now that’s how Cinderella’s stories are written, and you can’t have a Cinderella story without an ugly stepsister unfortunately playing the part of Cinderella and all three ugly stepsisters was the one and only blade. His biology made him cast better as the handsome Prince Charman. However, according to Michael, he wasn’t handsome in any form. Michael described him this way. He had a big blaze up the middle of his forehead. He was black headed with a red face. He had a lot of black on his back, but he wasn’t blanket back. It was all broken up with a lot of white. He looked like what a kindergartener would draw if they had drawn him in the dark and charming, he didn’t know the meaning of it. He made up for his lack of looks by being rude and inappropriate in every sense of those words. He would take the most inopportunity time to be crash and indecent, regardless of who was around. His kindel habit for less than ideal, and according to my friend Michael, his food and water bowls became targets of opportunity. Now, if you’re number one in in your eating and drinking bowls, that’s one thing. But the number two in them, now that’s just plain nasty. Like I said, his hair was long and greasy, and he was the nastiest dog I’ve ever had in a kennel, And I said, well, why did you keep that freak? But he turned and looked at me, and he said, because a rabbit didn’t stand a chance with that clown. Like I said that, not only was he an absolute savage in his lack of morality and kennel manners, but also in rabbit jumping ability. He’d get in the thickest, nastiest places a rabbit would have told the hatchet to get in and out of, and before catulickage behind, he was on him. He was all so fast, how fast Michael, fast enough that he caught several rabbits on his own. He literally ran them down and caught and killed them all by hisself, and the ones he couldn’t catch, he’d keep moving until they circled around for one of us to get a shot. Blade was a rabbit running machine. He was fearless. He would crawl in any hole, any tree top, any patch of briars that would make the devil think twice. And he had no regard for his health and safety, characteristics that would ultimately lead to his demise. But on the street, he challenged the nineteen eighty nine Ford Fiesta for the right of way after breaking out his kennel to take his one man acting debauchery on the road around the neighborhood. He spent the last four years of his life at Michael’s and lived to be six a ripe old age. For anything with this little regard for cleanliness or safety as Blade, we weren’t wasn’t behind anything on the same level as Blade in any category. And I can’t say that I was completely disappointed. I’m not sure I’d like to have witnessed or experienced anything along the lines of what he was famous for. We were gonna have to make do with Mandy Chessi and Cookie. Now. Mandy I’d hunted with last year, and she’s a rabbit dogs. She’s solid when she strikes, and you can believe her when she says she’s on a rabbit. She barks good on a track, but she hits a different level when they jumping. For those unfamiliar with rabbit hunt with dogs, here’s how a typical hunt plays out. Ideally, you release your dogs in the area with thick cover that’s broken up with openings or areas where hunters can space themselves out in the line with one another and see twenty or so yards away. Now, as the dogs work together in a pack or separately, one will strike the center of a rabbit start barking. The others either hunting with that dog that strikes, or or are working close in that area in a different location. Now they’ll join up and pick up the scent once they gather. Now from there, the dogs bark as they determine the direction of travel. They can figure that out usually within three to five feet, according to a bunch of science nerds over in England reported on that very subject on an earlier episode from last year. And it still amazes me how they can do that. Anyway, the dogs are smelling the rabbit, and their barking, they’re telling us that they’re on his track. Now, what that rabbit’s doing is merely conjecture at this point, but it makes sense that he starts paying attention to the dogs once they get to a certain distance from where he stopped, and listening to the dog race just like we are. And once they crossed that magic threshold that the rabbit has determined to be close enough, he’ll a light of shuck and hit the rope. Everything the dogs are smelling up to now is where the rabbit was minutes ago, maybe even longer. Once they get to the spot where he’s been hiding and recently sitting, sin it stronger and the dogs automatically grab another gear in both momentum and how they bark. It doesn’t take a veteran ear to discern the differences either. Once you’ve hunted rabbits with dogs once or twice, you’ll have it down pat That’s my favorite part of the whole experience. That dogs get excited, and so do I. Now that the rabbit knows he’s the reason for all the commotion, he’ll put some distance between himself and the dogs. A cotton tell. Michael’s dogs ran right out of the gate the other day, ran about fifty yards in front of the beagles, and I would use the word ran very loosely. Brad shot him, and he said he was moving pretty good when he took the shot. But he likes to make everyone think he can shoot, so only him, the rabbit and Jesus know for sure. The rabbit ain’t talking, And when I see Jesus, I’m gonna be so relieved I made it. I’ll probably forget to ask I’ve seen them hauling the mail with the hounds way behind them, and others just soundering along, maybe even a mosy or a sash shat if you will, when they were close. They know they can outrun the racket, especially since Blade met his fate way back then. Now, what they aren’t counting on is the dude with the shotgun. Rabbits will run in a circle or a figure eight type pattern, if it might be a long oval. It might be any shape you can imagine, but they feel safest in familiar territory. In the home range of a cottontail rabbit. According to the rabbit nerds, it’s typically one to eight acres. That’s that’s why they stay in, and that’s one spot they will dodge and duck and circle back, hiding the brambles the bushes are just off the trail and let the dogs run past them and then double back. They’ll cover the same ground multiple times in different directions to confuse and throw the pursuers off. That’s how they get away from everything else that’s trying to have them over for supper. Again, it’s the creature with the opposing thumbs and a shotgun that has the advantage small rabbits are bigger rabbits, sometimes twice as big as four to six pounds versus two to three of the cottontail. Their home range is significantly bigger as well, averaging anywhere from two acres to twenty which explains the next part of the hunt that we had the other day. After we got the first rabbit that bradshot, we walked the dogs a little further away from the truck and cut them loose again. They immediately put their sniffers to the ground and went to work, their tails wagging with anticipation in the sounds of their noses clearly audible above the crunching of the leaves as they worked their way into a small thicket that looked like a rabbit had designed it themselves. You can tell a lot of by the dog’s demeanor, and they’re driving and enjoyment by the way they hunt. And I firmly believe that they enjoy what they do, and it’s not all just instinct and pray drive that has their tails stirring the wind like a helicopter once they strike a rabbit. To me, they’re literally expressing themselves on both ends. I know what joy looks like. And if I had a tail, I’d be kicking up gusts out enough to blow the leaves off the trees right there with them. I’m glad I don’t have one, though, because I spoke to every turkey before they got close enough to shoot. So back to the hunt. The dogs have now worked their way out about seventy five yards and we’re just easing up a pipeline right away that’s been mowed. Having a good visit walking along. The gals crossed out in front of us, and we’re working their way through the woods on our right side when they strunk a track and headed out away from us, watching and listening in their directions. They’re moving when one says, here comes a rabbit. Man, you wasn’t kidding. He wasn’t close enough to shoot and was running, I assumed, as fast as a swamp rabbit could run, heading in the opposite direction of the hounds. Seeing what kind of rabbit they jumped, let us know this probably wasn’t going to end quick. We were right. I’m not sure we could have caught him with a motorcycle. But the dog’s barking grew even more faint before it got louder. When they made the turn coming back. I looked at my watch when the rabbit shot through, leaving a jet stream. A minute and a half later, the beagle stepped in his tracks. Moving along the path he took in a tenth of the speed. The reality of the chases that nine times out of ten, it ain’t really a chase. It’s more like a like a loud following. But to hear the hounds, you’d think they were looking at the rabbit the whole time. They passed by where we were standing and evasually completed a big loop, and at one time they were over five hundred yards away. It was more like a code or a deer race than a rabbit hunt. We never saw that rabbit again. Michael and the rest went in the thicket to try to cut the rabbit off. That wound up eventually just collecting the dogs and walking back out to where Randall and I were drinking coffee on the tailgate of Michael’s truck. Two rabbit racers ran, one rabbit collected, and seven miles logged by three beagles that were earning their keep that morning. As we sat there listening to our friends a quarter of a mile away calling the dogs to them, I told Randall, and I’m leaning up against this dog crate and all I can smell is wet dogs. He looked over rabb me and I asked him you ever smelled anything better? He kind of laughed, smiled and just said nope. Connect between dogs a man strong, and it’s been built every day for the last fifteen thousand years. My connection with that smell on it goes back a little over fifty but in that short span of time, I associate that sin with a lot of good people, a lot of good dogs, a lot of good times. Dogs have developed from being a competitor in the beginning to being a companion and have gone on to indirectly bridge the gap between humans. All my friends that I talked about today have become like family to me because of dogs. We all can hunt together and do other things because we enjoy each other’s company. Very creature that some would say was sticking up that dog box was also triggering an unfinished novel of stories and adventures that I see in this rolodex of memories that play in my head. Whenever I catch the faintest will of that sin, it’s good times and hopefully more to come. I appreciate all of you listening to us here at Backwoods University, Bear Greece and this show, this country life. It’s a privilege for me to be associated with these boys, and I truly count my blessings every day until next week. This is Brent Reeves, sign it off. Y’all be careful.
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