Hunting 2.0

Oh Man hunting is awesome. It's been a bit slow running wise but last Wednesday I came across what I had been waiting for. A small fullwire! It's funny how when you are on a run and in hot blood you just go. So yes the first fullwire of my life has been jumped. Excellent. I never thought it would be on Rascal but in Rascals favour she has never stopped hunting and she loves it. She is getting a bit strong though. She is actually really quite fast and is really starting to love having a good gallop.

The only downside is her mad love for my friends horse which means I need to follow her or her horse goes nuts, but that means that Rascal is running me to the fences and we get some deep distances. It's hard too because quite often you only get a few canter strides in front of the fence and you just have to make the best of it. I had a real life this Sunday when I made the cardinal sin of jumping ahead! Yikes! I was just like yup thats it I'm dead, but she was quick enough to chip in and sort herself out (Thanks Jeebers) and despite not having much of me in contact with the horse we both landed on the other side at the same time and in the same location.

We had the most phenomenal run on Sunday. The hounds picked up a hare and we must have chased it for like 8 kilometres or something crazy. Hare are kind enough to run in huge circles. It was a super sunny day with heaps of warmth still in the sun. It was over rolling country too so it was fun though fairly nerve wracking country to gallop over as the hills would drop away quite steeply. Must have jumped 8 or 9 fences and because I was at the front- only 6-7 horses behind the master- I didn't have to pull up and queue to every fence, I just got to keep going and jump more out of stride. I haven't ever hunted at the front but after that run I get why people love hunting. You can feel the blood rushing in your ears and you really want to get that bunny haha!

Jumped my first alkathene, which is just a thin plastic pipe that covers high tensile electric wire. There we jumped out of a flat paddock onto the side of a steep hill. Good stuff and then up the hill and a left hand sweep to a steep hill with a lowered wire at the top. My friend whose heels I was on, pulled out of the fence at the top, but I hit the top, saw the one stride to the fence, put my spurs in and went. Weee! Also fun was jumping through some smaller paddocks and jumping 6 tape gates in a row. Unfortunately, by the end of the hunt only one tape gate was left standing, one of which I had broken when Rascal ran us really deep and caught a back leg. After this huge run, the hunt just kept running all afternoon. We stopped once they set of for another lap and let our horses recover. Rascal was absolutely poked. Her whole body was heaving.

We stood around yarning and drinking for about 30mins and joined in for a few more runs. By now Rascal was so tired she was stumbling a bit at the walk it was such a hard hunt. She hit her fifth wind though, and we had two really nice jumps to finish the day over fences where we couldn't find a gate to get home through. Man I can see why people are such militant hunters, that was insanely fun. Everyone on the field was just ear to ear grins. i really want some photos of some of the stuff we are jumping because it would blow your mind. I'll probably put Rascal on the market after this weekend coming. There is a visitors hunt in the Manawatu next next week and I want to hunt her with a for sale on her butt and hopefully get down to three horses. Bliss!