No tricks today, just a treat. For the first time in three weeks, the weather was decent and Arthur had four shoes. It’s been a problem getting both of those to occur at the same time. So today, nothing was going to keep me out of the saddle, not even a request from the Champagne Run gang to help with Octoberfest. (Actually, with the proper incentive, they might have been able to talk me out of hunting, but there’s not much chance of that). So I knocked some of the mud off of Arthur and headed out, sadly once again skipping the slight detour to pick up Bro and his horse.
The hunt really wasn’t much to write about, but that never stopped me before. We started out fairly slowly, hanging around the edges of a couple of cornfields while the hounds worked them. We did get one spectacular view of a coyote leading a couple of hounds across an open field until he hit the cornfield and lost them.
After dawdling around a little more, we headed off in a different direction, and managed to scare up a little more action. At one point, the hounds were reportedly chasing 4 coyotes, but the field had gotten kind of disorganized by then, and most of us didn’t view. I’d gotten somewhat distracted chasing a couple of foxes.
Overall, it was a great day to be out. The pace was a good one for a couple of old farts like me and Arthur to ease back in after some time off. It would have been nice to have taken a few more jumps than the one we did, but at least Arthur and I got over that one gracefully enough to convince me that we still know what we’re doing, or at least can still fake it reasonably well.