For a while this weekend, it was beginning to look like I’d really made the wrong decision on the weather. Thursday’s hunt was cancelled because of all the rain earlier in the week. I opted to skip Saturday because of the threat of more rain, and keep my fingers crossed for Sunday. When the rain held off until way past hunting time on Saturday, and then came down hard that night, it began to look like I’d pissed away my only chance. But Sunday morning, things weren’t as wet as expected, and the chase was on, and what a chase it was.
After a slow start to the North, things got a little more interesting when we swung back around to the South. At one point, after our field master led part of the first field over a coop, the rest of us hung back as we saw part of the pack circling back towards us. Our hesitation was rewarded as we were treated to an awesome view of the coyote running across an open field towards a creek, with the pack just yards behind him.
The only problem with a run like that is that it’s usually over pretty quickly, and this one was. But then we had a nice hack back to the trailers, with ample time to make sure all flasks were empty. I had a bottle of Port in my truck, just in case of emergency, and we decided that being back at the trailers before 4:00 was definitely an emergency. Some other libations and edibles also appeared, and our coyote was toasted in fine fashion (not literally!).
I played with the Fuji some more, and I still need to get the hang of shooting pictures on horseback. Most of the pictures I took
in the field are still a little blurry. As it’s basically a PHD camera (push here, dummy), there are not many adjustments to play with. It does have a choice of “shooting modes”, and I assumed “sport mode” would be most likely to give me a fast shutter speed to compensate for any motion. I think some of the blurriness may just be focus problems; when I’m bouncing around on a horse, it’s hard to tell if I’m even aiming at what I think I am, let alone what the auto-focus is telling me. The pictures taken on the ground afterwards were clearer, even though my own vision probably was not very clear at that point. Maybe that’s because somebody else took a lot of them.
Fantastic to see your photos of the start of another season of winter fox hunting.In Australia we are moving into what will be a long hot dry summer and have to wait six months before the season begins but I did see two Reynard this AM.in the horse paddock ,will leave them for cub hunting next autumn. Fascinating to read about coyote hunting and I wonder if they behave in the same way as fox and what sort of sport they provide?