September fox goes to school

The September foxhunt occurred on Sunday the 15^th of September, which turned out to be a beautiful early fall day in Indiana, temperatures in the mid 80’s and a overcast sky with a pleasant breeze to make things comfortable following early morning showers.

There were three hunter teams for this one. The first consisted of Jim & Annie Pliett, K9OMA and KA9YYI, plus Carole and Al Burke, WB9’s RUS & SSE.  The second team included Steve and Linda Nardin, W9’s SAN & LAN plus their grandson Alex.   And the third team included Don Glick, K9LI and his wife Julie.

Charles Ward, KC9MUT and Fred Gengnagel, KC9EZP served as the fox. They very effectively hid out at the Leo Junior/Senior High School complex where the school buses park, on the south side of the property.  They hid the microfox in a piece of grey plastic tubing plastered up against a chain-link fence and surrounded by a bunch of vegetation. It was in plain sight yet very difficult to see.

The fox went on the air right on time at 13:30 hours and produced a very weak signal at the Cobin Memorial Park fox hunter starting point.  But it was strong enough for the three teams to get an initial bearing and peel rubber as they took off to the north-east.

For our part we quickly lost sight of the other two hunter teams, and based on bearings we proceeded up Coliseum then wound our way to Maplecrest and headed due north to Flutter Rd. and then north again on Schwartz Rd. until we were skirting the east side of the Leo-Cedarville Reservoir at which point we started picking up the microfox. After concluding (thank God) that the fox was most likely on the west side of the reservoir, we proceeded west on Grabill Rd. and then headed south on Amstutz Rd. and spied the high school complex. Knowing Charles was quite familiar with sneaky places around school buses that would be great foxhunt hide spots, we proceeded to a group of parked school buses and then found Charles and Fred.  We were first on the scene followed soon by Don Glick and his wife.  There was only one way to get at the microfox hiding place and soon Jim and Don were standing side by side next to a chain link fence that defined the school bus parking area.  It was obvious that the microfox had to be RIGHT THERE, but as I said, it was hard to see in that grey plastic tube.  Eventually Jim spotted it and said “Hey” followed immediately thereafter by Don who said (Censored). About ten minutes or so later the Nardin team arrived on scene and they located the microfox too after bellowing (censored too).

 All and all it was a very pleasant foxhunt. No rain, no blazing sun, no poison ivy or bees or mosquitoes to speak of. And the DF equipment seemed to work great.

Following the hunt we buzzed over to Culver’s on Dupont for a well earned repast.

The October foxhunt is presently scheduled to occur on Sunday, 6 October with the Pliett/Burke team serving as the fox. There are only two hunts remaining this year, October’s and November’s.  Why not plan to join in on the fun?

The scores for this month’s hunt and year-to-date numbers are as follows: