Hawken School (4 couple hunted)
Hawken is a CVB favorite fixture, filled with rabbits and the quarry abounded today. At 10am, it was windy and chilly, but the hounds were able to scent a segment of a rabbit line in front of the old Huntsman's Cottage. The field (they were 6 today) got a view of the rabbit as she crossed the rear drive into the woods where the old interurban railway line is. I tried not to lift the hounds, but instead to traverse the area and allow them to cast themselves to find the scent. Pike and Kipling found the line, but struggled to follow it where the rabbit crossed. I did bring them over the drive eventually, but the scent was weaker on the other side. We let that rabbit go and put in again on the west end of the fixture, which is very dense covert (impenetrable for humans) that goes all the way to County Line Rd. The hounds hit here right away and ran north. I could not get through the briars and there was no parallel path to stay with them. The pack split and I had a couple and a half circling the dense thickets for close to an hour. My father was on the road car following and saw no riot, so the hounds in there were keen and correct. I could not get close enough to put the less-experienced young beagles in there with them, so I made the tough decision to blow for them. They kept working for a long time, but hard-working whips R. Mock, S. Kroschell, and J. Dickson helped get them all back again.
It was a tough, but musical(!!) day.
Hosts Glenn and Eleanor Anderson warmed us up again with hearty beef stew and savory garlic bread (the winds blew in a 10-degree temperature drop from mid-forties down into the thirties)
Thank you all for another lively day!