Hunting Saturday February 16th, 2008 10:00AM
Valley Green Farm

Huntsman: Eleanor Hartwell (Wakeyan)

Whips: Jill Wagenknecht (Camo), Gene Deutsch (Belle), Tess Fleishli (PT)

First Field: Mary Hensel (fieldmaster)(on Lark), Leslie Ayers (Gabe), Leslie Granger (Floyd), Margaret Engel (professional on Maurice)

Jr. Field: Lei Ruckle (Fieldmaster)(on Ronny), Ron Ausman (Toby), Cissy Calvird (Mescal), Joy Yates (Smokey), Mary Smithing (Topsy),

15 ½ couple hounds

GPS readings 7.99 miles 1 hour 53 minutes moving 1 hr 16 minutes stopped. Total time 3 hrs 9 minutes. Max speed 15.0 mph
Moving average 4.2 mph

Lunch/Brunch – At the Double Diamond truck stop.

It was a cold morning although the weatherman had promised that the weather would warm up today we never reached the promised temperature. The only sunshine we saw was when driving up to the fixture. The temperature was 30 degrees when we started and warmed up to 35 degrees. The wind was mainly from the East. The Masters allowed parkas for those that wanted them. Barometric pressure was falling. The ground was frozen and wet.

We started out westward past the kennels and down the driveway. We headed North and went around the little pond and through the horse pasture. All the little ditches were full of water and there was ice along the edges of the streams. We turned east past the north side of the clubhouse and continued down the hill toward the pipeline. We crossed the pipeline and went through the woods and across the creek. We then came back up on the pipeline and followed it southeast to the dark house. Eleanor gathered the hounds there.

She then drew the valley in the woods while we followed the trail that bordered the property line into Welch’s. Jill was whipping from the hog farm and viewed a coyote. Shortly afterwards, we heard the hounds speaking. We headed down the road to nowhere and stopped on top of the hill where Eleanor saw the coyote cross in front of us headed east. A small pack crossed on the coyote line in front of us. We headed into the woods to Welch’s corner along the river trail and we were finally out of the cool breeze which had prevailed all day. We doubled back southeast and found some hounds in the woods. Eleanor gathered here and we called it a day. We were all pretty cold and the scenting conditions were not good. The footing was getting slick as things warmed up slightly too.