It's rare to find a weekend where a few guys don't have to work and are able to go on a 3 day trip to Indiana for some good old fashioned rabbit hunting. We were able to wrangle up Dan, Ethan, Vern, Clint, and Ron. All 5 of us packed into Vern's 'grocery-getter' (red Ford truck) New Year's morning and headed on down the interstate.

The dogs we had in the back were Ron's Ghost, Chile and Buddy; Dan's Tigo, Scanner, Trouble, and Misty; and Ethan's Bo. The ride down was farily uneventful, and beacuse the Badgers were playing for half of it, went pretty well! It was about an eight hour drive. During the ride and by the time we got down to Indiana, Dan started remembering a few things he'd forgotten: A game vest, a gallon of water for the dogs, a stake out, dog bowls and a spoon. At the Cabela's in Terra Heute, he picked up a fashionable camo Under Armour backpack like the one seen there. It received a considerable amount of criticism.

We, of course, stayed at the Diplomat, and that's always an adventure. The night we arrived, we tried to make the traditional stop at Taylor's 2 for steak, but they were closed on New Year's Day apparently. Instead we substituded Denny's - which worked.

We met up with a friend of the Stayton's: a game warden named Trent. He led us to three places throughout the day. Ethan tracked himself with my gps the whole time we were hunting. At the end of the day, I had put on 7.9 miles. They only shot 5 rabbits, however. It seemed that the rabbit population was low or something since they hardly kicked any up after walking so many miles.

That night they all went on down to Taylor's Two and had steak. The next day, it was raining the whole day and they decided to just leave instead hunting in it epecially given the poor day yesterday. The weather on the ride home wasn't the greatest, and traffic was pretty tight, but other than starting out with a nail in the tire which needed repair it went pretty smoothly.

by Ethan