Great weekend!

Had good weather for hawkin all three days, caught rabbit's # 7 and 8, Jonathan scored his first rabbit with his new bird, and boulder fest 2009 occured! (Day 38) Friday at 3:00 PM when I took my lunch break, Dee weighed in at 1039 grams. The work day finally drew to a close around five, and I headed out to the great expanse to meet up with Jonathan for a little bunny hawking. I beat him there by a little bit, so I started the session heading toward the front part, where there are a lot of briars for the bunnies to hide in. Didn't kick up any rabbits, but all it took was Jonathan showing up with his rabbit finding skills, and we started kicking them up in short order. We beat along a rose bush sorta near the road, and I guess we kicked a rabbit that quickly made cover, cause Dee Dee flew over, and landed on top of a tree just passed us. We walked over there, and started beating on that bush, and the rabbit shoots out the side, heading back toward the bush we had just been hitting. Dee Dee comes out of the tree really strong, and slams into the side of the briars. We hear a squeel, and run over, to find her holding the rabbit on top of it's hole. A split second later, and it would have made it to safty! She had a hind leg and it's head in one foot, making it twisted into a little ball, and the other foot has securly attached to the main body. We dispatched the rabbit in short order, and then had an alright trade off to her new lure. I fed her the head, and a front leg, and at 8:00 PM, she weighed in at 1114 grams. After the hunt, we went and checked out a different field, that we hadn't been to since last season. Managed to kick up a few bunnies, and I snapped off a few sunset pictures while I was at it. Field def has bunnies in it, so we will have to go fly it sometime soon. That night was the kick off to boulderfest, and we got the comp started off right! Lots of tasty beverages where consumed, and I met a gentleman named Sean Reed, who is falconer from Kansas. His daughter was competeing in the comp, and it was just crazy neat to meet a fellow hawker at a bouldering comp. Saturday (DAY 39) started off late for me. I was feeling pretty slow, due to the good times that where had the night before, so I didn't end up making it back out to the comp till around eleven o'clock or so. This was a big time bummer, b/c I missed out on an incredible hawking session at "the expanse." Jonathan's new bird scored her FIRST RABBIT!!!! Apparently, it was a pretty sweet flight along the side of the road, and she just drilled it into the ground! He got a lot of pictures, so I will post those as soon as he shares them with me. His bird has REALLY turned it on now, and flies with an intensity that I wish Dee Dee had. Even when she is flying from tree to tree, she does it at a speed that looks to me like she was flying on a rabbit. It's nuts how many times I say "here she goes!!" thinking she is after something, when she is just changing perchs. Anyways, spent the afternoon at the bouldering comp, and had a freaking GREAT time. Ryan C swung through on his way to Stillwater to drop a GH off, and we got to do a little bit of chillin there, and we exchanged some recent hawkin stories for a bit. 6:00 PM hit, and it was time to do some flyin. She weighed in at 1030 grams, and I had high hopes for a sweet session. Went to a new spot, that is located behind some industrail areas, and was able to kick up a few rabbits. There are a lot of trucks parked back there, old machinery, and a lot of parking lots, that are split up by grassy stretchs. Kicked around in there for a bit, but she just couldn't seem to connect on any of the slips that I put under her. Ended the session on the rabbit lure, and then she traded off well to the new lure. DAY 40. My phone died! I was pissed! I hadn't talked to Jonathan since he scored his first rabbit, but I new I had had a missed call from him early on Saturday morning, so I had a feeling that they had gotten one. I was thinkin that he would probably go out again to try and score a second in short order, so I weighed Dee Dee in at 11:30 AM (she weighed 1025 grams), and headed down to Jonathan's house, to see if he wanted to get a session going. Got to his house, but the Jimmy wasn't there. I was hoping he had maybe already headed to the field, so I drove on down to "The great expanse", but he wasn't there. I chilled around the car for a minute, hoping that he would show up pretty quickly, but after 10 or 15 minutes, I decided that I may as well fly. Got Dee Dee beeped up, and we started walking down the side road. I hit on the briar patch right by the parking lot, but didn't get a slip, so we continued down the road. The wind was coming out of the South, so I decided to walk the road all the way down, and then hit the field coming back North. I was getting toward the end, when I hear Jonathan's bird whistle, and am like "SWEET!" I do the typical Daniel, and toss my flushing stick in the excitement (come on...my hawkin buddy is here!!!! And it's not funny that I had JUST found it from when I lost it the other day either!) and call Dee Dee down before the chance of an altercation between the birds could occur. Stick her back in the car, and we head out into the field. This is the first time I have seen his bird fly since the rabbit, and it was so apparent how much more keyed in she was. We got six or seven slips for her, and she pumped those bunnies so hard it was rediculous! The last slip we got for her, she actually pulled some fur, so she was SOOOO close to doubling up those rabbits two days in a row it wasn't even funny. Had a lot of really nice flights out of her, and she def got a nice work out. After that, we headed to a different section of the field, and we pulled Dee Dee out. We started out kicking through a rose bush, that we had hit the time that Gary joined us for the session. Jonathan, with his Jedi rabbit tricks, kicked up a bunny within a minute or so of entering the field, and she flew over and landed right above him. A few seconds later, Jonathan got a reflush, and she dropped off the cedar, and hit the brush pretty hard. She came up empty footed, and took a new perch in a higher tree a little bit south of where she had been. I was beating on the other side of the rose bush, and managed to move one that took off toward the tree line. Dee Dee put a nice chase on this one, and just barely missed it, as it entered thick cover. We headed down the side of the hill, and I'm thinkin we kicked up another one while going through this section, but I don't really remember. Started heading in a more Southernly direction, when we decided to cut back North, through an open field that has a lot of dumped trash in it. We kicked around out there for a little bit, but didn't move any rabbits at first. As we where drawing to the end of a stretch of briars that run along the fence, Jonathan kicks up a rabbit that she comes at pretty hot, but it juked her with some moves, and she ended up on the ground footing the grass. We get her back up in a tree, and I start beating around the backside of the briar patch. Jonathan heads around the other side, and kicks up a very foolish bunny, that takes off across the open field. Dee Dee comes crashing in on it, and we hear the squeel of bunny number 8! Jonathan assists with the dispatch, and then we have an alright trade off (it was def better than the ones she has been doing...) to her new lure. I then hop her up to the fist for both back legs, and then I feed her some of the organs when we get back to the car. I hadn't given her a big feed up for a while, so I was pleased that she weighed in at 1141 grams when I stuck her on the scale at 7:30 that night (though had she been lower, I would have been able to do a feed up on the lure, to help strengthen her connection to it). Not thinking she will be at weight today, which is alright considering it's supposed to rain....but she hadn't cast yesterday, and that combined with all the stuff she got yesterday, may equal out to be a 30 or 40 grams casting....so who knows. She probably won't be though, and if the weather somehow pans out, maybe we can go score number two for Jonathan and his bird! That would be GOOD times!!!!