Out on the Moors of Maryland

The moors of Maryland. All pictures by Chris J.

Chris J. and I went out on the Moors of Maryland yesterday -- large plowed-under corn fields with 30 mile-per-hour winds blowing cold in your lungs and heat off your body.

I had two coats in the car, but went out with a double shirt and a fleece vest and was -- for the most part -- OK as we were either moving or digging. That said, cold wind pulls the energy out of you fast!

At the first sette of the day Sailor managed to get the groundhog to crown out of the hole. The groundhog took one look at Chris, however, and decided he would try his luck underground again. That strategy worked, as he managed to dig himself in to the point that two dogs could not find him. Smart hog!

We headed down the field and checked a fox sette that was unused three weeks ago, but still open. Now it was filling in, and it was clear Mr. and Mrs. Fox had found a more likely spot to await the arrival of their kits. No worries -- too late for fox anyway.

Listening to Mountain in the hole. Sailor is staked out at left.

The dogs found again in a hedgerow next to a creek, and they were hard on the quarry when we arrived. Sailor got into the hole first, and Mountain was forced to patrol outside, checking bolt holes in the thick multifora rose brake.

Chris and I cleared out a small area, boxed for location, and began clearing soil when something bolted from a hole unseen under the multiflora. Mountain had been trying to get in at another side pipe, but at the sound of the bolt, she rushed down the creek bed in hot pursuit. She crossed the creek and began casting about for scent, and then entered a large mound of multiflora rose on the opposite creek bank.

Chris stayed with Sailor while I crossed the creek to see if Mountain had the critter bottled up. She did, and she was baying up a storm, so I called over Chris, telling him to leave Sailor -- she would come out in a minute. While Chris was crossing the creek, Sailor came out and they both crossed the creek to the opposite high bank.

Mountain had definitely found, and she was baying up a storm. The sette split off in a couple of directions, and whatever was inside was moving around pretty fast. We sunk a hole into the den pipe, and dropped a load of dirt between Mountain and the groundhog. Mountain exited, and we cleared the hole of loose dirt and put Sailor into the tight pipe. Sailor slid back up the pipe and began baying the critter again. Chris blocked off the far end of the pipe with dirt, and we began to box for location. I was barring for the den pipe when the groundhog broke though the loose backfill at the very end of the pipe. Mr. Groundhog got no more than three feet before Chris, fast as a boxer, dispatched it with a powerful shovel blow to the head.

"Hotel California -- you can check out, but you can never leave." This was an average Spring groundhog -- maybe 8 or 9 pounds and a bit skinny from losing so much weight during hibernation. We backfilled the holes, pulled the multiflora rose hedge back over the scarred dirt of the dig, and headed back to the truck.

A small Spring groundhog. The dogs like them in all sizes!

The other side of the farm was across the road. We parked past the first hedgerow and headed down the creek. The wind was fierce, and though there were holes, most of the groundhogs were still hibernating.

During this part of the year, a groundhog will clean out its hole by pushing urine-soaked dirt to the exit. This dirt, in time, will be mounded over by the action of the groundhog's body moving across it.

Along with winter den cleaning, a groundhog will also be looking to find a mate at this time of year. Once this is accomplished, a groundhog will generally retreat underground, dam itself off from wind, rain and predators, and go back to sleep for a few more weeks until the grass is greener and the temperature is a little warmer.

During the next few weeks, a groundhog may exit from the hole only once every five or six days. As a consequence, an occupied hole may appear blank to a dog. It is during this period that the semi-somnolent female will go through her pregnancy, with an average of five to seven young born in mid-April or so, just as the goldenrod blooms.

In short, the beginning of the season can be a locating challenge -- a challenge never made easier by the fact that the dirt is generally quite soft with the winter melt, making it very easy for the groundhog to dig away.

The long hedge down the creek bank had been blank. I pointed out a little copse of woods in the middle of a corn field, and suggested to Chris we give it a try. I had walked this small woods once before and remembered there were some holes.

Man were there holes! One small area looked like a Prairie Dog town. Sailor found in a very tight hole and bayed it up, but she lost this groundhog a few minutes later when it dug away.

The dogs expressed little interest in the other holes, so we headed down the slope and across a field and to another hedge.

"Hey, where are the dogs?" They had been with us a second earlier, but now they were gone. We waited in the wind for a few minutes, and I whistled, but neither one of the dogs showed up. Clearly they had found.

Chris hiked back up the slope to the copse of woods, and quickly hello'd down to me that the dogs had found just inside the forest edge. I hiked back up the hill with the tools to find both dogs deep in a sette under an intertwined mass of thick tree roots

Mountain eventually came out, blacks with soil, but entered again. In the meantime Sailor lost the groundhog in the turns of root, rock and dirt. Sizing up the thickness of the deep roots, we decided to give this sette a pass for today. When Sailor came out of the pipe, we grabbed her before she could enter another section of the sette, and we quickly walked down the hill out of the woods. Mountain came out before we had gotten too far, and I whistled her back down the hill after us.

We crossed the creek to more holes on the other side, and hunted up the hedgerow past an old cache of cow skulls. This was an old dump for diseased dairy animals and horses. There had been an old fox sette on this high field last year, but it was not there now. We crossed the creek at the bottom of the hill, but on the other side we realized Mountain had not crossed with us.

We crossed back over the creek, and sure enough Mountain had found and was hard on her game. We cleared away the multiflora rose and dug down to her.

This was a shallow dig and we found Mountain latched on to the side of the groundhog and pulling hard. Mountain was not letting go, and there was no chance to dispatch as long as the dog was latched on.

We sunk a hole behind the groundhog, hoping to be able to tail it out. We got through on the backside of the groundhog, but could not quite see what part of the animal we were looking at. At about the same time as we broke through the pipe, Mountain shifted a bit and that was enough to allow the groundhog to bolt out of the side of the pipe where we had carved it away for a photo. Damn! The groundhog raced back to ground in another small part of the sette, but Mountain was hard on her heels. After a bit more digging, Mountain located again, and we soon dropped a shallow hole and dispatched it in short order.

Two down.

Mountain gets a good cheek grip.

We crossed back over the creek again, and found an enormous push-pile of broken farm machinery and wood that had, at some point, been a large shed and its contents of rusting equipment. Mountain and Sailor were inside this push-pile in a flash, and quickly bayed up a storm.

Huge trash-strewn dump piles are a problem; it is hard to locate a dog in one, and often impossible to move material to find the quarry.

I moved around on top of the pile and located both dogs baying very strongly under a palette covered with dirt, metal, plywood and old roofing. They were not deep, and the dogs were clearly on it.

Chris and I shoved some of the roofing material and twisted metal out of the way when we both caught the stench of skunk. It was pretty strong, but not overpowering. If this was a skunk, it was not a direct hit and deep . . . but the dogs were very close to the surface and seemed to have plenty of air. What was it? Of course it had to be a vixen ... and yet, it was pretty late for such a strong scent. Was this misery or opportunity? I waffled.

Chris peered into the back of the slotted hole and said he saw red fur. Excellent -- fox. No real worries with fox. Chris said he thought he might just be able to get hold of Sailor's tail -- maybe. I told him to grab her if he could, and he did. Sailor was now tied up and Mountain was mixing it up a bit deeper than we could quite reach.

The battle was on! There was a lot of movement inside the junk pile. I wanted Mountain out if we could get to her -- no reason to risk the fox going deep into this mess of metal, boards, I-beams and roofing.

Chris peered down the slot and managed to grab Mountain by the tail and drew her out. Mountain had taken a bite in the muzzle, and it was clearly a fox. No damage done, and we decided to call it a day. If this fox had very young kits in there, she could now raise them in peace.

We called it a day -- the dogs were beat and so were we. We had accounted for two groundhogs, and dug twice that many holes. The dogs had worked a fox, and neither side of that equation were too much worse for the sport.

That night the dogs slept like rocks and I got a little sleep too. As usual, the dogs bounded out of their crates the next morning, 'raring to go.

Easy dogs. Next Sunday will come soon enough.

Ready for a bath and a little rest -- and whatever they can find next Sunday.