East Meets West For a Day in the Field

Mike and a happy Knotty with a nice pot-bellied groundhog.


Mike B. came East from Colorado for a meeting, and brought a small dog with him by the name of Knotty, and we met up for a day in the field.

It was going to be hot, so we started early in the hope of catching a little break, which we more-or-less did, as it stayed overcast until noon.

The first hole was far and away the deepest at about five feet, and it was an amusing hole too. When we go to the end of it, I tailed out Knotty, and she was attached to a very young groundhog. Mike pronounced it a gopher, and in truth it was not much bigger than a Richardson's Ground Squirrel, the gophers of the American west.

We got Knotty separated from this very young groundhog, and I walked away a short distance and then tossed it into some soft weeds so that it could scurry away without the dogs following the scent trail. I was hoping the next few holes would not be that deep, or the critters that small.

The next hole was located in the woods (we were looking for a little shade) and on a steep bank down to a creek. Steep banks can be a problem, but the ground here was very soft, indicating it was wash-down dirt and not settled rock and clay. After I got a general impression of the sette, I decided it was not very deep despite the muffled acoustics (Sailor was in the ground and Mountain was guarding a bolt hole). For once I was right, and we broke through in short order, less than two feet down. At the very end of the dig, we swapped out Sailor and put in Mountain to do a little pulling.

After repairing the sette, we headed back to the vehicles for water. Because the sun was getting hot, I decided we should try some deep shade in some looser forest near by. As we pulled up to where we were going to park, a large groundhog ran over the grass. This one was going to be easy to locate!

Knotty found the sette, went to ground and bayed up a storm while I grabbed the tools and hauled them less than 100 feet to where we would be digging. Knotty stayed on this groundhog with a nice strong bay, and we were fortunate that the sette was less than two feet deep. We accounted for the third groundhog of the day pretty quickly, rebuilt the sette, and headed off on our way.

The dogs checked a number of holes on the path through the woods, but no one was home. As we got to a dry dreek bed, however, I noticed that Mountain had disappeared in the last few minutes. We called and waited, but it was soon clear she had found something nearby and had gone to ground.

Mike and I circled around through the woods looking for Mountain, and I showed Mike a terrific fortress of a fox sette that I had located last winter. Mountain had bolted a fox out of another sette nearby, and the fox had fled into this beatiful sette which I was reluctant to dig on.

Mike and Knotty found Mountain underground, up the creek bed and on a high bank. I grabbed both packs and all the tools and met up with them. Mountain was out of the ground now, and clearly confused. My guess was that the groundhog had bolted, and sure enough Sailor found it on the opposite bank in a parallel hole.
Mike and I crossed the stream bed, climbed the bank, located Sailor underground, and began to dig. This too was a shallow sette, but it was a little more complicated than it looked. In the end we sank three holes before we got it bottled.

Mountain missed her grab as it exited, however, and a fairly large groundhog zipped out and down across the creek bed back to the first sette where it had been located earlier. Good job, Mr. Groundhog!

We gave this one best, repaired the sette, and headed back to the vehicles to call it a day.

It was a nice day, with no dogs injured, four groundhogs dug to, with one bolted and one released.

Mike left me his Deben Mark III to play with, and since Chris just got a Deben Long-Range Terrier finder in the mail this week (ordered on Monday, arrived from the UK on Friday -- great service!), I should be able to report out on all the locator systems soon.

In the Fall, when Mike comes back this way again, that little fellow we let go at the very first hole of the day is likely to be a bit bigger. It's amazing how fast the kids grow up!