Well, it was back somewhere around 1969. I had a real nice little female beagle that was thegreatest jump dog I've ever seen andwould run a swamp rabbit until someone shot it or she dropped from exhaustion. My brother-in-law Mike had two nice males that were pretty good on the trail once a bunny had been jumped, but weren't nearly as good at finding hiding rabbitsas my little Jenny. You could be walking down a "ridge" in the swamp with Jenny and point to a big brier patch onan island thirty yards off to the side of the ridge and say "check it Jenny", and that little gal would go straight to where you pointed and get to work.

Now not too far from where Mike and I lived was an industrial park, and in that park wasan abandoned sawmill/lumber yard of about five acres. The yard had a road grid - kind of like a checker board - where they used to stack rough cut lumber with forklifts. The roads were gravel andabout ten yards apart and thearea between each road where they stacked the woodhadgrown up in weeds and briers. It was rabbit heaven. Even though shootingwas not allowed in the areait was a great place to train dogs and keep them sharpduring the off season. It was also a great place toWHIRLY HUNT.

What??? You've never been on a whirly hunt. A whirly hunt is where you throw a heavy stickat the game. The stick- something like30" long - is held at one end and it thrown with a side-arm motion so that it whirls along just above the ground, kinda` like the blade of a helicopter. If you were fast enough and accurate enough you could knock down a rabbit trying to cross one of those roads as far out as twenty-five yards.

Well on this particular whirly hunt all threedogs were in one of those weed patches.I was on the road on one side of the patch and Mike was on the road on the other side. The dogs were going nuts and rabbits werecomingoutlike popcorn out of an uncovered kettle - heading across the roadsto the next patch of weeds. I was using a short length of 1/2" electrical conduit pipe as a whirly and had missed two rabbits. After each throw I would run and pick up my pipe and get ready for another throw. By this time one of the dogs had crossed the road to the adjoining patch and rabbits in that patch were crossing back to the original patch. The dogs were a-howling and the rabbits were a-popping. What a HOOT!

I got lucky on my third throw and knocked down a pretty good sized bunny, but only crippled it. I ran to it as it was jumping around crippled and squealing, and so did Jenny. I got there first. Grabbed the rabbit by its back legs, picked up my piece of pipe, and prepared to whack the bunny on the back of its head to finish it off. Well, just as I swung the pipe at that rabbit Jenny jumped at it and I hit her square on top of the head. That poor dog dropped like a rock. I thought I'd killed her - had tears in my eyes. After a few seconds she pushed herself up on her front legs and looked at me as if I was the craziest person in the world. Thank God dogs can't talk. I could not have stood the comments she would have made.

I felt so bad I immediately gutted the rabbit and gave her the heart and liver. Dogs being the wonderful creatures they are, she accepted my offering with grace, ate it, and got right back to work.