Saturday was a very nice day, so Mountain and I hit the farms for a few hours. It was a bit cool and breezy starting out, which means it was going to be perfect T-shirt-and-tools weather.
Mountain located this groundhog in short order in a sette located on the edge of a just-coming-up corn field. The groundhog had found himself a nice location under a large flat rock about four feet down. The rock was too big to pull or smash, necessitating another hole to come in on the side. That done, things were wrapped up in short order.
The next sette was just inside the forest line and was packed with cobble. Mountain was underground for about an hour, but only barked twice, and though I could hear her growl twice, I was pretty sure she never got up on it. I decided not to dig until she opened up to a real bay, but that bay never came. No reason to dig on a sette with nothing in it, especially when you know the dog is fine (I could hear her moving stone underground).
Mountain came out at last and tried another entrace. I pulled a lot of cobbles out of that entrance, but Mountain could only get in as far as I had cleared the stone. More rock farther on stopped her progress. No worries -- we'll visit this sette again when the groundhog is a little larger and perhaps has cleared it out a little more pipe.
We called it a short day and headed home, stopping at a few blank holes in the fields on the way home. All in all a small and relaxing day in the field.
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