When I was leaving for the hunt today I was thinking we had good conditions for a hunt. We had gotten some rain in the area over the last few days and it was a cloudy, foggy morning. The temperatures were in the high 30's when we started out. Much better than the hot weather of a week ago.
We started by looping around the fields by the meet. A little speaking but nothing developed. We ultimately crossed the South Rivanna and headed up the hill along Buck Mountain Creek. The hounds hit and got us on a short run for about twelve minutes. They seemed to follow the creek and the fox was lost in the sharp v the creek makes.
From there we kept following the creek north before turning back south. We had just come into the field where a lot of new trees had been planted when the hounds hit. They headed to and crossed the creek getting onto the west bank. They then proceeded to follow the river west. Meanwhile both the first and second flight were walking there way up the river. Surprisingly no one ended up in the river despite several of the horses splashing about and some with previous experience of putting riders in the river (Moe/Lou).
As the fields got feet dry, the hounds continued up river after the coyote. At some point the coyote turned and came back around. It circled the fields at Hob Knob in the woods continuing its run up and over the ridge trail. It eventually came back around and ran through Hob Knob where it was viewed by first and third flights. It was big black coyote.
The coyote continued through the woods and ended up along the previous run Buck Mountain Creek and started following that down to the Rivanna. The coyote was then lost by the river. All told it was about an hour and twenty minute.
The day was called, hounds gathered and we headed back in. For the day, second flight covered about 8.6 miles. The surprising thing we also did about 2800 feet of vertical up and down. There are lots of trails in that area that are up or down. So there should be some tired horses tonight.
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