[oucorry]

By Ed Godfrey

CHAIN RANCH — Standing in the middle of a trampled maize field on a very breezy February morning, the sound of baying beagles could be heard beyond the clump of cedar trees.



"Listen,” said Max Watkins, who had unleashed his beagles on the trail of some cottontails. "Ole Red's done ‘er again.”

Red and her gang, Bocephus, Blue and Lemon, had the scent of another rabbit, hopefully one that the dogs would run into shotgun range of some wind-blown hunters.

"All good rabbit dogs are beagles, but all beagles ain't good rabbit dogs,” Watkins said.

Watkins' beagles are good rabbit dogs. They had these Dewey County cottontails panting like a lizard on a hot rock most of the day.

I was just a kid the last time I had gone rabbit hunting and had forgotten how fun it can be, especially with a pack of beagles.

Watkins' beagles were hunting new territory on this day. They had come to the Chain Ranch in Dewey County where the gun company, Smith and Wesson, was introducing some magazine writers to an old Oklahoma tradition: rabbit hunting.

Watkins, 66, of Meeker may be a dying breed. He's one of few die-hard rabbit hunters left in the state.

There are still some beagle clubs in the state that keep this hunting tradition alive, but not as may hunters pursue rabbits anymore.

"There are very few of us anymore,” said Watkins, who has been running beagles for 30 years. "The hard gunners that really gun over beagles are a few years older than me, and they've gotten too old. But I'm going to go a few more years. I'm not going to give it up.”

It's a shame that rabbit hunting is overlooked by most of the state's sportsmen.

Rabbit hunting can be exciting and downright comical at times, like the cottontail who ran circles around us for two hours. No one ever got a shot at that rabbit.

Generally, when beagles start chasing a rabbit, the cottontail will run them in a circle, coming right back where it started, often to waiting hunters.

"You jump the rabbit, and if it's anything near normal, them dogs are going to bring the rabbit back to you,” Watkins said. "They are going to circle him once. If you don't want him or don't want to shoot him, he will make a figure eight and come back a second time.

"But all rabbits will circle because when you jump them out of their house, the first place he wants to go is back home. That's basically what the circling rabbit is about.

"People used to ask me, ‘how do you train your dogs to bring the rabbit back.' I tell 'em it takes a lot of training, but it's not true. All they got to do is follow the rabbit.”

It's not as simple as it sounds. Rabbits are a wily quarry. When the chase is on, rabbits will backtrack, jump ahead or switch direction. They will do anything they can to give a howling pack of beagles the slip.

Rabbits will stay on the ground and run more early in the season, but late in the season they are quick to head to the den because they have been pursued so hard by other varmints, Watkins said.

"These rabbits are tricky,” Watkins said. "They will run from brush pile to brush pile.”

Several rabbits escaped Red and her gang by burying themselves in a brush pile or finding a hole to dive into.

If we could have kept the rabbits out of the brush piles, we could have killed more on this hunt. But our hunting party bagged three cottontails with the 20-gauge Smith & Wesson Elite Gold shotguns that made a tasty meal of fried rabbit and gravy that evening.

Both Red and I can't wait for our next rabbit hunt.

By Ed Godfrey
newsok.com