Today we were at Overstreets. The first hunt we've had on horseback since the snowstorm a week ago. It was a grey, overcast day with temps in the 30's and 40's. The footing actually wasn't too bad although it was very inconsistent. We had snow, ice, frozen ground and mud. I was glad I pulled brand new studs out of the box to put into Munchkin today.
Matthew started out by working along the woods behind the trailer parking. With nothing happening there he took a trail down towards Swift Run. The hounds opened pretty quickly and sounded very good. They went along Swift Run for a while but when they crossed the water, the run ended. So the first run (Yellow line above) was quick.
We then went along on the trail that is wedges between Swift Run and the cliffs above. Nothing much happening there and we crossed over the next field and turned up the hill into the woods. The hounds again opened very quickly, started to move but within a few minutes went quiet again (Orange line above).
It seemed like it was going to be one of those days with lots of starts but no real sustained run.
We headed out of the woods into the back pasture and then across that way towards the barns. The hounds had just gone into the woods when they opened again. They took off deeper into the woods and were working along pretty steadily in the woods. It was one of those runs that no matter what trail we were on, the hounds were always down the hill in the ravines from us. They sounded good and the run lasted for a bout 30 minutes.
Hounds were gathered and we exited out of the woods into the bottom fields, As we were coming along the fields we could hear a bunch of hounds (not the ones with Matthew) open up and sound like they were moving right along. It was about then that Carolyn spotted three foxes in the field ahead of her. Unfortunately the three foxes must understand geography and hunt territory boundaries because they crossed into a property where we could not hunt. So it was disappointing that we couldn't run there but good to know the foxes are around.
It took a while to gather the hounds and after that we headed back in. The second flight is the map above and we covered 7.2 miles. Not bad for the first mounted hunt in over a week.