Rat hunting... my outside dog...

[magnumwheelman]

I'm going to hate to see this current outside doggie get old & lose him... he's one of the best we've had on the farm over the years... it's funny he made a good farm dog in the 1st place... we got him somewhere between a year & two years old... he belonged to a family of girls, lived in town, in a house with no fenced yard, had his own bedroom, with a full sized bed... he is a Husky / Shepard cross, & I think he must have gotten bigger & shed more than they were expecting... plus he was full of energy...

when he 1st came to the farm, he wanted to chase everything, was making "down field tackles" on rabbits, & was pretty ignorant of bodily injury ( we had cut wood stacked between the trees, 6 ft high, on the north & west sides, & he would leap over those, with no regard to what was on the other side ) several times I'd come outside to find him up on the chicken house roof, which had the lowest edge over 5ft high... he got pretty good at treeing coons, I think it was 37 of them the 2nd or 3rd year he was with us, & around that time, he actually had 5 adult coons treed into the same tree...

well... he's getting older, & all the cut feet from digging in junk piles trying to ferret out a critter, jumping over the wood piles & bouncing off of trees, is starting to catch up with him... the other day I came home & he has apparently slowed down enough, that the rabbits were taunting him... I saw one in the drive way, with doggie laying in the grass 50ft away... when I told him to "get the mouse" he jumped up after it, knowing full well he doesn't have the endurance any more... kind of made me sad...

yesterday he showed up with a new prize... the biggest rat I've seen in a long time... we never used to have them on our place... but a couple years ago, they tore down the small town elevator a few miles from where we live, & it was reported that literally 1000's of rats ran out of it, off into the countryside... last year one of our neighbors tore up an old concrete hog pen, & he said when he pulled up the old concrete slab, 100's of rats ran off into the country side... well, doggie has been doing his best to keep those critters off our place... not sure where he pulled this rat from, but it was huge ( big as a large possum ) wasn't a musk rat, as it's tail was round, not flat...

sorry, I didn't get a picture of it... but he's been carrying it around & shaking it to pieces over the weekend, while I was at a muzzle loader shoot... good dog!

[bula]

Good dog, yes. It is sad to see them pass their peak and knowing what we know. We do one dog at a time, a short gap to shop in between. We have a 7 yr old Lab now, our 4th. Muzzle is starting to go white. Yup, sad. We had a friend that raised 5-10 hogs per year in a patch of very wet woods. He put a raised platform, kinda a raft out there for them. After rounding up and sending them off to the butchers, we'd have a rat killing party. He'd pass out shotguns to 3-4 of us and use his tractor to lift up that platform. Rats would scatter, shotguns would roar. Redneck fun. Ya never get them all, never. 

[magnumwheelman]

FIL used to "free range" raise St Bernard's on this farm, & there was at most, 47 of them loose on the farm, back in the 70's... 10-15 years later, when we moved here, there wasn't so much as a garter snake around... slowly the varmints have moved back in over the years... I'm pretty aggressively removing old scrap piles, & other harbor-age areas, & trimming out the old, dead, dying & horizontal growing trees from the wind break trees, & adding new trees & a paddock system around the yard... we've been putting more pressure on the critters as grazing animals are keeping all the grass & weeds short, & I'm thinning & removing dead trees... also I have a deal with the local scrap yard, that I take all the chain-link fence that is decent, & I'm hanging that on the cattle panel fence on the outsides of the pastures... making it difficult for critters to come & go... got a 10 year plan, that I'm a couple years into, that should greatly reduce the varmints on the farm... trying to make the outside doggies job easier...

[bula]

Luck..

[dougphillips]

" we'd have a rat killing party. He'd pass out shotguns to 3-4 of us and use his tractor to lift up that platform. Rats would scatter, shotguns would roar. Redneck fun. Ya never get them all, never. "

Sounds like ya needed some Terriers....

www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2Pyu-Cj0gg

[bula]

I've seen JRT's in action. Dad, Sis and niece had them over the years. Ferocious little beasts. They have no fear of the hounds that are several times their size. Nor the fox either. 

[magnumwheelman]

helped my doggie out the last 2 nights... shot another red pine squirrel on Sunday night, & went out the back door at dusk last night... 4 rabbits right outside the garage... had to yell at them, before they would even move... then they only went 20 ft away... doggy was in another part of the yard... went back in & got the 17 Mach 2... doggy looked happy carrying the rabbit around after that... I can see I need to shoot more of them, they apparently no longer fear me either... but that is something I can easily fix, without having to be able to run fast enough to catch them

[crazycarl]

Our female Dachshund ensures that we have no mice. No blue-tailed skinks or slow/unwary birds, either. The pup seems to have the same prey drive, but not sure if he's got the killer instinct that ol' Doodlebug has.

[magnumwheelman]

2 more pine squirrels, & 2 more rabbits since my last post... hey "bunny boy"... best be fearing that 17 mach 2... & my old doggie

[magnumwheelman]

Outside doggie started "that" bark, at 10:00 tonight... out I went with a flashlight and the 17... shot a big male coon out of the top of one of the walnut trees... pretty challenging... it was windy enough, that the small branch it was on, was swinging in and out of my view in the scope... pictures next Monday, when I get to my laptop at work... doggie is so happy when I can do my part

[magnumwheelman]

that picture as promised... it was a dark night... cloudy & windy... tough shot... but happy doggie...