Hop to It: Hunting Season Opens in Maryland and Virginia

Canada goose season opened yesterday across Maryland while goose and deer seasons started in Virginia, sending thousands of optimistic, camo-clad folks into the woods, fields and marshes from Old Rag Mountain to Ocean City. Few things get the heart pounding like the rustle of dry leaves as a buck sidles into a clearing or the eerie silence of a gaggle of geese oak-leafing down into your decoys.

Deer and geese come honestly by their status as the premier sporting species of our region, and many hunters await November opening days with keen anticipation. But they are not the only critters out there.

I took a refreshing trip back in time last week to hunt humble cottontail rabbits over a pack of beagles at an Amish farm in St. Mary's County. Our host was Chris Hostetler, who works his fields the old-fashioned way with his wife and eight offspring. He'd love to have joined us, he said, but one of his many jobs is shoeing horses and he had a full plate of farrier work scheduled, horses being crucial elements to an Amish farm.

Hostetler sent his 16-year-old son Rudy instead to run the pack of beagles the family keeps to roust bunnies from their lairs. "This one here is Jackie," said Rudy, pointing to a female all but bursting with mother's milk. "She just had a litter two weeks ago. This is her first time out since then."

The youngest was Junior, still a pup learning the trade, then came Jiggers and Jackson, a pair of mature males. They were easy enough to tell apart as Jackson had only three and a half legs, one front paw having been lost to a run-in with a harvesting combine.

"He runs along fine," Rudy said with a laugh. "We call him the arithmetic dog, because he puts down three and carries one." (Legs, that is.)

Rudy was the postcard picture of an amiable Amish lad. His plain, straw boater hat shrouded a bowl-cut mop of shaggy blond hair and his homemade, grey-blue jacket and britches bore no zippers or other modern gadgetry. He smiled a lot and laughed uproariously at any feeble joke we told. I'd have loved to take his photo but it's not permitted. It's not the Amish way.

Rudy strapped on some store-bought chaps to keep the greenbriers from ripping his trousers and we set off into the thickets to look for Brer Rabbit. We were four: Pat Kemp from Howard County, an old family friend of the Hostetlers who has hunted there for years; Larry Coburn, my frequent hunting and fishing partner from Laurel; Rudy; and me.

A good rabbit hunt is a rarity nowadays. Rabbits used to be plentiful on farms everywhere but clean-farming practices have sharply reduced their habitat. Modern agribusiness focuses on corn or soybeans and little else, plowing every available inch to maximize yield and leaving nowhere for rabbits (or wild quail, for that matter) to hide and little for them to eat.

Amish farms, which are not uncommon in St. Mary's County, are unique anachronisms, with wood lots interspersed with vegetable fields, horse pastures, ponds and plenty of overgrown thickets in between. The thickets are where the rabbits live, the thicker the better.

With that in mind, Rudy led us to an overgrown field bordering a small creek and turned the beagles loose. They scattered in four directions and we did the same, forging into tangled underbrush that tugged at our clothes and snagged our cheeks and hands (somewhere in the briers, sadly, lie my prescription glasses, no doubt gathering moss).

It was every man for himself. "When you hear the dogs start chasing, just try to find a place somewhere out in front of them and wait for the rabbit to come by," Kemp said. Soon the sweet music of beagles on the scent trail echoed through the woods. The hardest thing then was to find a clearing open enough to swing a gun.

When rabbits pop out, they may be running full bore or just lazily hopping along. They are generally farther ahead of the dogs than you'd ever expect, and sometimes moving a lot slower and more cautiously than you'd think.

"My dad thinks they leave less scent when they just hop along, so it makes it harder for the dogs to track them," Rudy said. He added that he has an uncle nicknamed "Hoppity-Hop," in honor of the descriptive way in which he once characterized rabbits running through the woods.

Well, hoppity-hop it was when the first rabbit came by. It hoppity-hopped into my little clearing and hoppity-hopped right back out before I could even draw a bead. Along came the beagles a few moments later, snuffling around in the leaf duff and bawling urgently every time they picked up a whiff. A few minutes later a shot rang 100 yards down the line. "Got him!" Kemp sang out.

So it went through a long, lazy morning. By noontime, we all were scratched and bloody but had eight rabbits to show for it. What to do with those rabbits? Skin them, clean them and prepare a feast, of course.

I like to quarter wild rabbits and cook them slowly, dusted in flour, browned in garlic and olive oil, then covered in white wine and broth and allowed to simmer to tender perfection with onions, carrots and anything else that looks good in the fridge.

Serve that pungent stew over rice with a fresh salad on the side and you'll forget all about goose and deer seasons, at least for a little while.