Today Munchkin and I were out with Thornton Hill Hounds at Chancelors Gate. I have not hunted on that fixture in fifteen years or so. That means I am not really familiar with the landmarks and trails, so today is a fair amount of guesswork and where the hounds were actually running. Also we were in the woods a lot, so it was hard to see any mountain landmarks or other things like that.
As in life, timing is everything. We started out with a warm humid morning but got two good runs in. The first (yellow line on map) we picked up about a half an hour into the meet. We were crossing a fallow field with really tall weeds. The hounds were speaking but it wasn't organized but given time it built and we were off and running. It was about a fifteen minute run where the hounds kind of twisted and turned while re ran a loop keeping the hounds to our right. Eventually the hounds lost and were gathered.
It was about five minutes later when the hounds hit again. This turned into about a 40 minute run. There was a lot of back and forth in the woods trying to stay with them. Eventually the hounds made a run up and over Chancelor Mountain. It was big push by the horses to finish with a fast climb up the mountain where we checked at the top. The hounds lost somewhere on the backside of the mountain.
At that point, horses were spent and the call was made to head in. Just as we were heading in the first couple of drops of rain were coming down. It was a steady rain by the time everyone was loaded up. so the timing was perfect.
Two very good runs. We covered about 5.7 miles. We hit a top speed of about 18 MPH which occurred on the first run. It was a pretty moving along hunt. Out of the 1:39 we were out we were on the move for 1:23. Our moving average was 4.7 miles per hour. That doesn't sound like a lot but that is a pretty good moving average for a hunt especially when moving along wooded trails as were doing today.
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