Digging on the Dogs

This groundhog was released with nothing harmed but its dignity.

I met up with Connie and Jeff at Larry and Linda's, had a breakfast that could not be beat, and headed out into the wet for a day of digging.

To be clear, it had rained cats and dogs all day long the day before, rained all night long, and it was still coming down in a light drizzle. I had packed dry clothes to change into, but there was no getting around that it was going to be a very wet day.

Connie and Jeff had a Patterdale and a Russell with them -- both dogs a little scraped up from working possums, raccoon and groundhog in Ohio and Indiana earlier in the week, but otherwise fit as a fiddle.

We drove out to a farm north of Baltimore that I have permission on, but have not been on for a year. The old farm road I normally enter on was planted over with corn this year, so we headed up on the other side, drove up the power lines, and found a sette right next to where we parked. Excellent!

This was Joe the Patterdale's day in the field, and I had brought Mountain as she is a pretty good finder. Both dogs pinged hard at this first sette right next to the truck. We postholed the entrance a bit, but soon it was pretty clear what the dogs were after -- mice! The dogs nailed two or three, we all laughed, and moved off down to the creek, crossing through a wet field of waist-high soy beans.

I was hoping for raccoon, as there was soy in the field above, and corn just a hundred yards away, and no trees for raccoons to den in, but the dogs found nothing, even though there were a lot of holes. We did bust a pretty big doe out of the hedge -- a bit of a start for dogs and humans alike as it held tight until we were almost on top of it.

We headed up to the ridge next to the corn, and walked that, and again we found a lot of holes, but nothing at home. I have no doubt something was underground here, but with all this rain and the recent cold snap on top of that, nothing was moving, and the scent had washed away.

We trundled back to the truck, soaked from the waist down due to the wet soy beans. Jeff and I both had water standing in our boots, but Connie was smart enough to have on waterproof chaps, and she seemed to be a bit better off.

We headed off to another part of the farm, found a nice parking area, and were soon in a likely enough hedge with corn on one side and soy on the other. Lots and lots of holes, but no one home.

At last Mountain bayed it up, and we located her in the ground. I hacked away at a little bit of vegetation, and Jeff and I dropped a shallow hole and then another hole when she moved around a hard corner, and before too long we had a groundhog in the snare.

We released it (no animals were harmed in the making of this movie), and in short order Joe was in the ground on another sette only a little ways up. Joe bayed it up, but the dog and the groundhog were clearly moving around quite a bit underground. We located her at three different locations, and when she seemed to stop moving we began to dig. The ground was a bit harder here, however, and as we sawed through a couple of thick roots, she came out and it appeared she had lost it. We swapped in Mountain to make sure, and she confirmed -- the groundhog had either bolted out of a side pipe unseen, or else it had buried itself to the point that neither dog could find it.

Now pretty well soaked to the bone, and cold on top, we decided to call it a day and headed back to warm clothes, good food, and fine conversation at Larry and Linda's.