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| Al and Molly before a hunt |
Being Molly
Sunday, September 30, 2012
By Al Gray
Rabbits probably laughed at Molly. A gray-headed, bow-legged
old girl of a beagle just would not have filled their hearts with fear. Her
voice at full cry was a moderate bawl. She didn't have a fantastic cold trail
nose that would detect where they had exited the sorghum field and tipped to
their warrens hours before at dawn. Her legs were bowed, so speed wasn't a
threat. Molly purely looked and sounded
like what she was - a mostly worn out beagle bitch of about 7 years of age. She
certainly wasn't the ideal image of a dog around whom one would build a rabbit
hunting pack.
Molly would have to do, as it turned out. We managed to
aggregate a pack of dissimilar beagles into a rag-tag gang of hare-harassing
noise makers. Molly became the constant.
Jack and Dolly had superior noses, but
tended to get caught up in trying to slowly extract the last scent rising from
the trail. Queenie was a briar-busting runt of a jump dog, who had no nose at
all. Back-track sometimes ran the trail backwards. Mabel was an even more aged
relic, albeit a wise dog with experience. Of necessity, we rarely hunted pine
thickets or open terrain. When we did, there was Molly to keep the clan
functional.
Over time, Jack and Dolly discovered that their master was
full of praise when they lifted their noses from back down the trail and went
to Molly in the lead. Queenie found it was fun to stay with the gang and lend
her squeaky voice in pursuit of those cottontails. Mabel kept pace and often
straightened the pack out where Molly sometimes hesitated. Back Track got left home and became a
shot-deer tracking hound, as he confused the heck out of all the others, Molly
included. By the second season, the group was a functional pack, just one
devoid of speed.
Cottontails and swampers who survived a Molly chase were the
ones who didn't sit on their haunches laughing. Molly had grim determination.
Molly purely LOVED to hunt rabbits. Had Br-er Rabbit gotten close enough to
see, he would have trembled with fear. The old gal had ears tattered and
bleeding from dogged pursuit through blackberry briers. Sometimes one of those
steel-tough green briers would have torn an ear. Her tail ended in a hairless tip,
with only the peripheral hair left to offer when her tail was held high. The
pads of her feet were like iron. Those bow legs might have lacked speed but
made up with power to bulldoze through thickets.
In a hunt Molly was bold, audacious, relentless, and
cunning. Without being encouraged or trained to do so, she took the initiative
to find, defend, and retrieve a downed quarry. That the rabbit was a relatively
huge burden for a 29 pound beagle carry never deterred our Molly. She had a
heart seemingly as large as a whole rabbit.
Before the fourth season with Molly and company, life
changes and the wear of time struck. Mabel passed away around Independence Day.
Queenie had a severe back injury and had to be put to sleep by Dr. Garner. It
was time to find replacements and to expand the pack with young blood. Over in Grovetown, Mr. Stephenson found
himself with his own health issues in the form of congestive heart failure
which ended his beagling days just as his 8 month old litter of AKC-registered
gun dog pups was ready to begin training. His five pups found a buyer eager to
accommodate his wishes that the entire litter be kept intact to form a hunting
pack.
Those pups were significantly faster than Jack, Dolly, Molly
and Mr. Calvin Clem’s contributions to the pack, Lucy and Mack. Each sibling
had a different temperament and style. Molly would bend them all to meet hers.
She became their mentor. Sapphire, the only female, was the first to begin
running rabbits and quickly became the leader of the pack, always adroitly and
quickly handing the outs that the rabbits would throw at the pack. When she didn't, Jack and Dolly had learned to
release the scent trail and go to where the leaders were, so they were there to
work out the challenges Sapphire found more difficult. Brothers Louie, Andy,
and Pete were quick learners and became excellent rabbit beagles. Molly was there with them all.
The last hold-out amongst the Stephenson pups was Amos. The
poor boy seemed befuddled and perhaps even afraid at all of the racket that the
others made in pursuit. Amos stayed at Master’s feet. I could not shoot for
fear of causing gun-shyness in Amos. This finally ended in a planted pine grove
down below Girard, when a fleet cottontail that had far outdistanced the noisy
pack darted across the fire break in front of us. Amos took off after him,
barking in a high chop voice on the hot trail. From then on, Amos was a key
member of the team that we released in open terrain and pine plantations. Alas,
even a hot scent could not entice Amos into a brier patch. He would pace
outside, hoping that the rabbit would play HIS game, not the rabbit’s.
The constant in the pups’ education in the field was old
Molly. It was about the time that the naughty pups came into her hunts that she
‘learned’ to retrieve rabbits. Jack already had picked up on that as a way to
gain his master’s praise. Jack was a burly enforcer, broad chested and 17
inches at the shoulder, which is large for a beagle. Molly had a lot of trouble
because of her short legs. One can see the difficulty she had in this picture
of Molly retrieving a rabbit.
I don’t know about you, but our pets at times have taught
such powerful human lessons that it becomes humbling, poignant, and powerful
all at the same time. Molly rarely led the pack any more. Sapphire and Pete seemed
to have jumped to the fore. From the outset, they had more speed. It might have hurt the old girl’s feelings,
but Molly was all heart, with a smidgeon of cunning.
Most of the pups early training was in open terrain and
planted pine plantations, but by late in the season, the hunting party had to
resort to unconventional habitat. One of
the toughest venues for rabbit hunts were the brier choked drainage ditches for
fields with center pivot irrigation. Down by Highway 301, near Rubin Oliver’s
place, there was such a place. At the rear was a water filled canal that was
too wide for us to leap. The water was too deep to wade.
A rabbit jumped up along one of the center ditches,
exploited a gap in our containment to the sound of three desperate shots from
Cousin Hugh, and dashed to the rear of the field and into the dense blackberry
patch there. Pete and Sapphire led the pack in pursuit. When the beagles reached the ditch, all noise
stopped. The rabbit had swum the ditch. Five young beagle gun dogs were left
clueless and whining at the edge of that canal. Suddenly, there was a graying
blur as this bow legged doyenne of a wizened huntress barged through the youngsters
and leapt into the water with no hesitation. The five whiners quickly followed
her example and swam to the other side, where a furious pursuit of Mr. Rabbit resumed that lasted until dark.
The sight of Molly’s charge into the canal became more than
a fixed memory; It became an inspiration for her masters. Molly took charge and
plunged into what looked to her companions like a well of doom. Despite her
age, aching bow legs, and the coldness of the water, Molly knew her duty and
did not shrink from it. She inspired the youngsters around her and taught them with leadership in action.
We should all do the same in these times of encountering
vast moats of troubles.
Be Molly.
Molly in Action
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