A few weeks ago I decided to head to the family property in East Texas to spend the weekend. I left on a Thursday after work, and instead of driving straight there, I stopped in the nearest town to pick up a couple of groceries for the weekend. Arriving after dark, I pulled up to the gate, clicked the gate opener and drove through. When I stopped to make sure the gate was closed, I thought I saw some movement on the side of the road out of the corner of my eye. Turns out I was right; when I started rolling again, a cottontail rabbit on the side of the gravel drive darted off into the treeline. I made a mental note and decided that since there's no closed season on rabbits, I might have to see if I could find him again later.

I spent the next day taking it easy - meandering about, kicking rocks, writing, and just enjoying being on the property. It had been two and a half months since I had been there, and I simply enjoyed being back. At one point I wandered through the woods down to the pond on the far side of the property. I could tell deer had been using the field next to the pond. There were tracks everywhere and the grass was matted where they had been bedding. Walking down to the water's edge, I could see tracks from all sorts of animals including raccoons, birds, and even canines. I had anticipated coyotes - with it being so dry, I figured all kinds of animals would be looking for water. But one track seemed abnormally large and I suspected a large dog - perhaps wandering over from a neighboring property. As I was getting ready to head back to the house, I heard what could have been a dove, but given the distance and how sound carried, I wrote it off as probably being an owl instead. At any rate, I eventually made my way back to the house.

After spending the rest of the day in a similarly lackadaisical manner, I decided that when evening came, I would try to go find the rabbit I had seen the previous night. I pulled out the Stevens 940E, slid a .410 shell in the action, and stuffed a half dozen or so more into the coin pouch of my jeans pocket. I carried the shotgun in my left hand at the balance point so I could shoulder it relatively quickly, and since it was only a single shot, I carried an extra shell between my index finger and middle finger for a quick reload if I needed it.

I decided to try the field down by the pond to see if any rabbits had come out in the cool of the evening. I didn't see any, but I did spot a doe and fawn on the other side of the fence at the neighbor's deer feeder. Instead of taking the trail back to the house lest I spook the deer, I took the alternate route along the opposite fence line through the woods. With it being so dry, the underbrush was scarce, which made it slightly easier going. I eventually picked up the drainage that runs down to and subsequently under the gravel drive at the front of the property. Following and skirting the property line, I popped out on the gravel drive and began making my way back towards the house. Since I still hadn't seen anything, I decided to take the longer side of the circle drive and walk past the garden.

As I approached my late grandmother's overgrown asparagus patch, there was a blur of motion and a cottontail exploded from underneath the asparagus. Before I could react, the rabbit darted around the garden perimeter and I watched it disappear near an old hog trap that a bunch of brush had fallen on. I circled around the garden the opposite way from the rabbit, eventually putting myself between the fence and where I had last seen it. Hopefully, if it ran again, it would head deeper into the property and away from the property line. I approached the hog trap slowly, shotgun in my shoulder. Even as I got right up on the brush pile, there was still nothing, so I figured the cottontail must not have holed up there. Resigned, I let the muzzle of the shotgun drop towards the ground with the buttstock still in my shoulder. Just as I did, though, the little cottontail exploded from the brush pile. It swung around to the right and into the dense treeline. Having dropped my guard at precisely the wrong moment, my quick little opponent managed to hop away. Bested by my quarry, I called off the pursuit and headed back to the house.

The next day I decided to get in some trigger time, and I found a good spot that would allow me to shoot from an elevated position down into a small draw. I set up a target about 50 yards away at the base of a tree and erected my tripod so I could get practice shooting off of sticks. I went back inside and got out the Ruger 77/357, chambered in .357 Magnum. I had loaded 50 rounds the previous week, which was enough to get in some decent shooting. As I was walking back to my makeshift shooting range, I heard the same bird sound from the previous day, and I could definitely tell that it was a dove this time and not an owl.

I decided to try to track it down and began following its call to zero in on it. I was able to narrow it down to a group of 3 or 4 trees, but was unable to tell exactly which tree it was in. I decided some magnification would be helpful, and since I didn't have any binoculars, I went and got one of my unloaded rifles with a 3-9x scope on it to see if I could locate the dove. I spent several more minutes looking for the dove and finally got eyes on it, loafing on a branch about 25 ft up one of the trees I had identified. I held up the scope to get a better view, but from that angle, I couldn't tell what type of dove it was. Before going and getting the .410, I wanted to get a view of its back and see if it had the indicative black spots of a mourning dove. Unfortunately, though, as I was circling around, I took my eyes off of it and lost sight of it in the canopy. I began trying to locate it again with the rifle scope, but before I could start looking in earnest, it exploded out of the tree tops. I had to watch it fly away towards a new treeline over 100 yards away and right on the property line. In my second attempt at hunting that weekend, I had yet again been bested.

While neither of these impromptu pursuits had the successful outcome I had hoped for, I was just glad to be back on the property and hunting again. And I think that's the crux of it. It's often worthwhile to keep getting out there, keep tracking, keep trying, and keep enjoying the woods - even if it means getting skunked in the back 40.