Hunting Sunday March 8th, 2009 – 10:00AM
Valley Green Farm (Bridlespur Kennels)

Huntsman: Eleanor Hartwell (Max)

Whips: Gene Deutsch (Gus), Lee Deutsch (Belle), John Korenak (Rocky), Jill Wagenknect (Modesty), Mary Hensel (road whip)

First Field: Tess Fleishli (Waffles) Jean Mutrux (Hoppy), Ron Ausman (Lark), Leslie Ayers (PT), Guest Seth Singer

Junior Field: Lei Ruckle (Floyd), Leslie Granger (Babu), Sarah Zenisek (Sebastian), McKenzie Bussard (Bert), Joy Yates (Seamus)

15 couple hounds

GPS readings 6.04 miles – 1 hr 24 minutes moving, 26 minutes stopped. Moving average 4.3 mph. Max speed 12.8 mph. Total time 1 hrs 50 minutes.

Lunch/Brunch – Tacos made my Mary Hensel

I woke up again expecting the hunt to be cancelled. They were rain and severe weather. It was not raining, I called the hotline and it sounded like things were still on. I grabbed the horses (brought a horse for Lei) and headed north. It rained a little on the windshield when I got near the Hwy Z turn but nothing much. Got there and started getting the horses ready. Lei pulled in just as it started raining. It was very cloudy and looking bad. The temperature went from 50 degrees when we started and warmed up to 63 degrees. The wind was from the South East when we started out and shifted to the Southwest and then finally to the west. Winds were at about 18-35 mph with gusts to almost 50mph. I don’t think I had ever ridden in winds this strong.

The Master’s told everyone to put on their rain gear and decided to delay the start a little to see what the weather was doing. There had been a little bit of lightening so we were waiting for things to settle down. The lightening seemed to stop so we went out. Eleanor headed straight for the creek so that we would be in a low area. We followed and just when we got down near the creek it started pouring and you could hardly see. We heard the call over the radio to go in so we started in. We got back near the top of the hill and by this time the rain had stopped and there were blue skies to the west. We turned around and headed out again. We headed back to the north and the winds picked up. We continued north and then looped around and started south. We heard some hounds speaking and Ron viewed a coyote on the pipeline going north. By this time the wind had picked up even more and we couldn’t hear the hounds or the horn or anything. We continued working south toward the hog farm. It was near impossible to work as the winds were so strong and the horses were wild. We headed in from the hog farm.

Note: Photos not too good this day, I was getting rain drops on the lens