Widow 4/26/08

April 26, 2008

I went over to Kuna, which is in Idaho, and flew out in the area where JH caught his first Oregon/Idaho jack rabbit, hoping for some slips. The whistle pigs are out in force. I did not know what a whistle pig was either until we moved up here. They look like miniature prairie dogs that are not much bigger than a roll of quarters but are actually a ground squirrel and they give an alarm whistle, hence the name. They are very fast and run with reckless abandon from one hole to another. It’s a funny, very faint whistle they have and as you walk along you constantly hear this far off sounding whistle. At first I kept stopping, thinking what is that sound. Each time I would stop, the sound would stop. Finally I saw one and solved the big mystery. Once you know what to look for, they are everywhere. Like I said, they run out of control, bouncing off things in their hysteria to get to the safety of their hole. Enough about the pigs

The plan was to walk the sage, driving the jacks down and out into the more flyable spots just like I had done with JH. After walking for a good while Widow flew up and landed on a small pile of rocks that nicely overlooked the area I was hunting. I concentrated my flushing in the areas with sage growing in clumps and open grass all around and it paid off. With Widow in a good spot I worked the sage and out flushed a jack, running across Widow’s line of sight, heading for cover. Widow was up and flying in a flash, bombing down the hill, coming in low and fast. The jack started to zig zag left and right, trying to shake off the B-52 that was coming in fast. The jack made a super move, darting to the left and bouncing off a sage bush, just as Widow came in with a cloud of dust. I thought she had it but, nope, the clever rascal got away. I spent the next few minutes watching a pair of prairie falcons mount up to 300-400 hundred feet and then take turns stooping in on the whistle pig colony that was out in the open grass. They would wing over, stoop straight down to the ground, level out at ground level and, in full after burn, snag a pig..that was cool to see.