Hunting Mishaps

Yesterday I went out rabbit hunting with some friends. I know that when you read that sentence, combined with the title of this post, you thought to yourself “That dummy, Jeremiah shot himself in the leg.” If that was your first thought, you are wrong. I did hurt my leg but that’s a different story for another time. Maybe later in the post.

Anyways, we took my friend John’s red tailed hawk out to try and catch a few rabbits. It was snowing with a very cold wind so we wondered if we’d even see any rabbits. There were lots of tracks in the snow and after about an hour of walking around a huge field, our friend Adam saw one. He pointed it out to John but the bird saw it, and before anybody else knew what was happening, she was chasing down the bunny. She swooped down and missed. That, my friends, is where the fun began.

After missing the rabbit, I think that the hawk must have been deeply devastated. She had failed her master and decided to exile herself back to the wilderness as punishment. We chased her for about a mile until John was able to get close enough to bring out the lure and some dead rats for her. Her shame at missing the rabbit was so deep that she wouldn’t pleasure herself with a meal and flew to a high perch on the top of a power line.

With the bird refusing to come to John, our only hope was to get a trap with some live bait in it. John and Adam both called their wives and about an hour later, we had a trap with two small birds in it doing an excellent impersonation of dinner. We set the trap down and after a few minutes, the hawk was on it. We freed her from the trap and John had her securely on his fist as we started walking back to the vehicles. She started baiting (trying to fly off) and managed to loosen John’s grip on her. Yeah, she got away again.

We tried to trap her again but it was dark and we really had no hopes of catching her. The whole us not being able to fly thing really made things difficult. We were all tired and know that monsters come out at nights so we left for home.

John went back up early this morning and saw her but failed to lure her onto the trap. I know that he went back up this afternoon in hopes of getting his beloved bird back. I’m not sure how it turned out. We’ll be heading over to his house tonight for dinner so I’ll be sure to get an update.

Oh, as for my leg… While we were running after the bird, I stepped in a large mammal-made hole of some sort and jammed my femur into my hip. The muscle is really sore and my leg feels dead but it’s nothing serious. I’ll be OK. You can still send get well gifts if you want to though.

UPDATE: The bird is gone. John has decided that she is gone for good. I told him that he should check back in the area that he trapped her in originally in a few weeks to see if she returned home. I guess that’s the downside of taking a wild bird back into the wild; they may exile themselves due to extreme shame at missing a rabbit.