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No squirrels.

Boxelder Canyon

We took a trip to Converse County Park, which is really just Box Elder Canyon and the surrounding land, to do a little squirrel hunting. We made our way down the canyon, the dogs merrily traveling along while I was weighted down with my .22 rifle, our water, snacks, first aid kit, knife, bag for carcasses, the .40 in case we ran into a mountain lion, cell phone, GPS, etc. Being a lone hiker with lots of dogs I figure that it is better to be prepared for anything rather than being sorry. (My husband asked me if I was going squirrel hunting or marching on Russia!!!) Going down into the canyon was amazingly enough harder than coming back out!

I had never explored the canyon before, and I was slightly disappointed that there were no squirrels to be found. The Rat Dogs, however, had a fantastic time digging up voles and ground squirrels! The babies of the group, Rooster and Baylo, were so excited when the dogs found a whole nest of voles but they didn't really know what they were excited about - just that everyone else was excited so they might as well be. As I was trying to lead Baylo away from the excitement of the pack so that he could get a vole that was trying to escape I felt a squish, heard a squeak, and then crunch. Yeah, I stepped on the same vole that I was trying to get Baylo to nab! UGH!

However, I still called him over and had him get it and "kill" it, and he was so very proud of himself. You could see the light bulb go off in his head right after he gave a good kill shake. He got another vole on his own later that afternoon, and helped Heidi try and convince a ground squirrel to come out of a rock pile.

Rooster, poor thing, was too scatterbrained and excited the whole trip to figure out really what to do. I might have to take him out with just Tracker so that he can learn without all the hype of the other dogs addling his brain.

Having no squirrels to shoot at I wondered merrily along taking pictures and keeping track of the dogs. Every once in a while I would catch myself looking for Lola amongst the other dogs - that was the hardest part of the hike.

After about 4 hours we had all had enough, and headed back to the car. My favorite part of the trip was getting home and having all of my dogs around me passed out and breathing deeply with only the slightest twitch here and there from them. If a tired dog is a happy dog, then I believe that they were blissed out.

Click here to see the rest of the pictures.
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