Hunting, hunting, hunting

Hunting

Been a while since I posted but all I have been doing horse wise is hunting really. The link above takes you to a picture of me riding the big horse Blue in the King Country Hunt Hunter Trials. I travelled down to Taumaranui a couple of weeks ago to visit my childhood friend whom also rides and hunts with King Country. It was a lovely hunt and they were very friendly. It was on a 5000 acre station farm and unfortunately the hare kept running back to one new grass paddock and we only saw about 100 acres of the country.

The next day they had their hunter trials. I was in the ladies wire jump, the ladies hunter and the champion hunter. For those that have the time you can find those classez in the above links, I rode second, second and first. The wire jump was the first class and you jumped a lowered wire and then turned and jumped a full wire. Now King Country full wires are bloody tall. The tops of the fence battens was about 1.20m. Thats a tall wire. Of course I have never jumped a full wire on the big horse and was pretty scared but he jumped so nicely over the first fence I had to try. Of course I got chicken and hooked him on the approach and got him deep to it, so he hit the fence but we stll made it over no worries so that was cool.

The ladies hunter involved jumping some cross country type gate fences and then going up and down a steep hill, jumping over a tape and finishing over the two lowered wire fences. I made a few mistakes here when I overestimated his stride and caused him to chip n, and I'm not brave enough to canter down a steep hill but I a went down at a fair clip- cantering halfway down. It's the first time really I have jumped him out of his own. He was really dull to warm-up but as soon as he was on course and he knew he was being watched he was full of beans and ego. Loves the limelight.

The Champion hunter was my best run, good distances to all the fences and only just touched the full wire and it was a really nice smooth round. It's all done at a hunting pace as well which is a pretty fast clip- faster than most leels of cross country. Still it was an awesome experience that I thoroughly enjoyed even if I didn't get any placings.

This weekend was bay of plentys ladies hunt and I was allowed out the front to learn how to whip. It was awesome fun, though pretty intense. It was so awesome to be part of the actual hunting process as opposed to just following the hunt. Blue was the bomb, though a little hot and I wore him out pretty good. I got lots of lovely compliments about how we looked up front and I definitely want to do more whipping. Need to learn how to crack the whip now.