Digging on the Dogs

As I drove out to Maryland for a day of digging on the dogs, I was rather amazed at how many dead deer were on the side of the road, including one splattered carcass with its back legs in one lane, and most of its chest wall in another.

Yikes! The highways sure are hard on wildlife.

I met Sara B. at the local general store, and we drove down to some Pittman-Robertson land a few miles away.

As I turned into the parking spot, I noticed a dead red fox in the middle of the road. It was a very recent hit -- earlier that morning, I guessed. Maybe only an hour or two before, as only two or three cars seemed to have passed over the body.

I reflected a little on the fox. Red fox have territories of about a square mile in this area, and so this fox was probably one I actually knew, or the progeny of the same.

It's no surprise to see a lot of dead animals on the road this time of year. This is an active time in forest and field. Everything is moving around.

The deer are in rut, their necks swollen, their eyes beginning to glaze over as the hormones pump up inside them.

Young male fox and raccoon are beginning to strike out on their own to find their own territories and mates.

Sara and I hit a hedge and found lots of holes, but nothing to ground. We trundled through a small patch of woods, and across a field to another very wide hedgerow with lots of Ailanthus trees.

We got to talking about Sara's very interesting job when ... Hello. Where's Mountain?

Mountain had disappeared. Ah good! She had found something in the ground. Now all we had to do was find her!

I downed tools, and Sara and I looked for an hour, circling back the way we had come, up into the woods a bit, whistling and calling.

Nothing.

An hour went by, and frustrated, we shouldered up the tools again and moved down the hedge a bit farther. Then, less than 100 feet from where we had first noticed that Mountain was gone, I tucked into a small thinning area of the hedge for a look-see, and there she was, just coming out of a hole.

She looked up at me with a grin on her face, "Where the hell have YOU been?"'




Pleased to see her, and also pleased to see she had found a nice groundhog, we downed tools again, and I staked Pearl at an exit hole.

This was a simple two-eye sette. The dirt looked excellent.

I boxed for location, took off about a foot of soil, and barred into the den pipe about a foot deeper.

When I barred into the sette, Mountain came out of the hole, and I took that opportunity to swap in Pearl who entered the den pipe and soon began baying up a storm. Excellent.



With the posthole digger we were soon into the den pipe, but Pearl was a bit further down from the the location where I had boxed Mountain.

I widened the hole a bit in order to provide better access, and Pearl dragged a small possum into view before releasing it back up the pipe.



Mountain was staked at the other exit hole, and now she dove in and grabbed the possum by the butt and pulled it out with Pearl following close on the other end.

With Sara's help I busted the dogs off of the small possum, and swung it up into a tree, unhurt.

Somewhere along the way, a 10-year old kid had shown up out of the hedgerow. Where the hell had he come from? He said he was "scouting for deer." We gently suggested he move on, but he did not seem to get the hint, and 5 minutes later his father was there at the edge of the woods, glowering as us and clearly pissed off that whatever we were doing in the woods was far more interesting than whatever it was he hoped to be out showing his son.

I noticed that both father and son were in brand new camo outfits fresh from Dick's Sporting Goods. The kid also had a set of binoculars around his neck, no doubt new as well. Hunting as sporting goods purchase, I thought, but saying nothing.

I started to break up dead sticks to stick up the hole, while Sara took a few pictures of the possum up the tree with her I-Phone. She then started to shovel dirt into one hole, while I boot-scraped a small mound of dirt into the other.

I'm not sure what happened next, but when I looked up the possum was on the ground again, and both the dogs were on it. I busted the dogs off the possum, but now it was injured. I do not released injured wildlife -- it's unethical. With a quick blow, I dispatched the possum, noting to Sara that "I really try to let possum go, but sometimes you cannot help the very slow and the very stupid."

Somewhere along here, the father called his kid (about time!), and Sara and I continued to fill in the holes and gather up the tools.




As Sara and I walked down the hedge, I noticed that Mountain had a cut on her left front leg. I checked her over quickly, and it appeared it was just a small hide cut. It was clearly not a bite. I am not quite sure what did it. It might have been a bit of old barbed wire fencing, or more likely she had run into the sharp edge of the machete when I had it stuck in the ground while I was filling in the holes. Either way she would need a bit of veterinary work when we got back to the truck. No worries now -- she was not bleeding much, and she was not lame.

We headed down another hedge and across a field, without locating anything to ground, and we decided to call it a day. We were on the farm road headed back to the truck when a local official from the Department of Natural Resources rolled up.

After exchanging pleasantries, he asked us what we were hunting, and I said groundhog and offered that I was fully licensed in the State of Maryland. He wanted to see my license, and after a bit of fumbling, I produced hunting and trapping licenses for 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. Then he asked about the possum.

The possum? Ah! The 10-year old kid and his father had decided to call Fish and Game. That was what this was about. Got it. For the record, the father had been too much of a chicken-shit to come down and collect his son from a place where he was not clearly wanted, and his kid was too tone-deaf and stupid to stay out of harms way even when it was rather pointedly suggested he run on. But they thought nothing of grassing someone did they? Nice.

I explained to the Fish and Game guy that we were digging on groundhogs, that the possum was by-catch and had been released unharmed into the tree, but that it had fallen out of the tree and been subsequently injured by the dogs, and that I had dispatched it.

How had I dispatched it he wanted to know? A solid blow to the head with the back of a machete. If there was a ticket to pay for doing that, I would pay it, but I was making no apologies for dispatching wounded wildlife. I would make my peace with the Lord on that one, and be more than OK with the way my folks and grandparents had raised me. I said it just like that -- a solid ethics-based push back.

He admitted I had done the right thing, and said he had to dispatch wounded wildlife on the road all the time. He was warming up a very little.

He swung around to the possum again. I had killed it 10 days before the start of "the season." Right. But we weren't hunting possum, were we? We were hunting groundhog. The possum was by-catch, and we had tried to release it. It had gotten wounded after we released it, when it fell out of the tree. The Fish and Game guy seemed skeptical, and no wonder; I doubt he had ever met anyone who dug on terriers, who did not hunt with a gun, who released by-catch unharmed, and who happened to carry five years worth of hunting and trapping licenses on his person.

Then Sara stepped in and mentioned that she had pictures. She did? Oh right -- she had taken pictures of the possum up the tree. Excellent!

Sara showed the Fish and Game guy the pictures of the possum up the tree (posted above) which confirmed our story.

Then, perhaps a bit frustrated that he had rolled all the way out here and we seemed to have done nothing wrong, the Department of Natural Resources guy decided to do a little catechism with us. Did we know the season for groundhog? Sure: 24-7-365. He seemed a little confused by this answer and so I said it another way: There's no season or limit for groundhog. It a vermin species not covered by the law. What about hunter orange, he wanted to know? We don't need it if we don't have guns, and I hunt on Sunday because no one else is supposed to have guns out here either. What about the unarmed chasing of wildlife such as fox? Perfectly legal on Sunday.

He did not ask me when the unarmed "chase" season for possums started (a month earlier), nor did I ask him how anyone could "chase" possum with dogs and not harm one. Our wildlife laws are clearly written by ninnies, and neither one of us are to be blamed for that!

The bottom line is that I was breaking no laws, was fully licensed, and in the end we both knew it.

As he prepared to leave, I asked if he knew his analog in the next County over, less than two miles away. I mentioned his name and described him. Sure he knew him. Had he run into me too, he wondered?

"He's been out digging with me a couple of times," I said. He seemed shocked. "A small world," he said.

Yes, I agreed, "but Steve's dogs are a little too big." And with that we both laughed in a friendly way, and called it day.

For her part, Mountain Girl got excellent attention from Sara as soon as the Department of Natural Resources guy left, as Sara happens to be an honest-to-God veterinarian.
I produced a couple of squeeze bottles of water, some provIodone, and a veterinary staple gun, and as quick as you can say "Bob's your uncle" we had Mountain's wound cleaned up, medicated, and three staples rammed into place. A quick check to make sure I still had my staple remover in my kit (I did) and we were good to go.

On the way home, I counted three more dead deer on the highway, along with a small dead raccoon in the middle of road.

In this area, there are so many deer that there is no bag limit in many locations, and a "limit" of 12 (10 does and 2 antlered deer) everywhere else.

The raccoon and possum population are perhaps five or 10 times denser than they should be, and this is reflected in the falling song bird populations.

This is the way it always is with wildlife -- the law is far behind the curve.

Between 1850 and 1900, we wiped out a lot of the game in this country because advances in gun technology and transportation far outpaced the speed of law and regulation.

Now, we are behind the curve again, with declining numbers of hunters, and rising levels of suburban sprawl resulting in more and more gun restrictions.

All of this creates a perfect recipe for burgeoning populations of deer and meso-predators like fox, raccoon and possum.

The deer get plinked off by cars, resulting in billions of dollars worth of auto damage every year, along with a few human deaths and even more people crippled.

The fox, raccoon and possum prowl through suburban trash, and they too are plinked off by cars in astounding numbers.

Meanwhile, the Department of Natural Resources operates about like it did 50 years ago, charging out-of-state hunters ten times more for a license, enforcing Sunday hunting bans, and generally acting as if poaching a few deer was a capital crime, and never mind the carnage the officers pass on the road as they drive from one location to another.

Of course I do not blame good God-fearing Department of Natural Resources officers for any of this. They are just doing their job as detailed by the state. But it's still a pretty silly state of affairs in my neck of the woods, that's for certain.
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