Munchkin and I had a great morning with THH today. It was a cold start but as the sun came up things got comfortable. It made for tricky scenting as in the shade was still very cold, frosty and frozen whereas in the sun was warm and thawed.
The hunt started slow. In fact it seemed the first flight horses were getting irritable with all the walking. We were about 40 minutes in when the hounds starting speaking. However, not much developed with that.
Then a call came it that a fox was spotted and the hounds were taken over in that direction. It took a bit for the hounds to grab hold of the line but eventually they did. In the mean time the fox was spotted by the fields crossing along the crest of the hill back behind the kennels. That fox must have really run a zig zag pattern because it took a while for the hounds to get to where the fox was last viewed.
As we looped around and were coming a hill to the paddocks where the evil mini lives, the fox was viewed again. He continued his run very similar to what we ran last week. All the horses got past eveil mini and we headed a long. We were just down the road when the hounds ran across the road and were heading to high top turkey.
That is where we broke off from the run and came in.
This is where I am glad not to be hunt staff as the hounds crested over the mountain and got down the back side. Over an hour after we came in they were still not back.
As we were coming back in we saw several bald eagles flying about. Initially the count was two but it may have been as many as four. It's pretty cool to be out and about getting to view the fox multiple times and to thrown in some bald eagles as well.
I will say munchkin earned his keep. We had two mountain climbs going up that were steep, loose and scattered with broken tree limbs. Munch got pissy on the second climb of that trail because I wouldn't let him run. My saddle had slipped and when we got to get a gate, I got off to adjust the saddle and get the gate. As we moved off he picked up a lovely canter/gallop and never offered to blast past everyone. Later in the hunt when we were on the run, we came down another mountain trail that was steep and loose on a trot. He's done this so long that I just make sure I stay out of his way and let him handle it.
For the day we covered 7.3 miles and Munchkin topped out around 21 MPH.
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