Another hunt season draws to a close. Actually, my last hunt of the season was last Sunday, although I didn’t realize it at the time. With hunts scheduled for Wednesday and Friday, which I had every intention of enjoying, I almost skipped Sunday due to the unseasonable 78-degree heat. But the best-laid plans often go awry, and with a combination of weather and work complications, Wednesday and Friday didn’t happen. So I’m glad I caved in to some gentle arm-twisting and went out for an enjoyable but easy ride for my final hunt of the season last Sunday. With a shaggy horse and hot weather, an afternoon of hard running was out of the question. But it was a great day to hilltop with friends, and look forward to the cooler, possibly damper, weather promised for the next two hunts.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Tuesday afternoon, I got invited to a meeting Wednesday that I didn’t think I should skip. With the weather forecast at that point looking very dismal, I sighed and said “Oh well .. at least the weather looks better for Friday”. Wednesday afternoon, as I walked out of a 6-hour meeting that had been even more disastrous than I anticipated, and realized that the rain had quit well before the scheduled 1 PM hunt, I was royally pissed. I later learned I was pissed for no reason; the hunt had actually been cancelled due to lightning. Due to the late notice, if I had skipped the worthless meeting, I would have ended up hauling Arthur around in the trailer for a couple of hours for nothing (although it wouldn’t be the first time that had happened).<\/p>\n
\nWell, at least there’s Friday. And the closer Friday got, the less promising the weather forecast got. I woke up that morning to a light rain. A quick look at weather.com<\/a> gave a faint hope that it might clear before the 11 AM start time. I decided to start preparing to hunt, and wimp out if it was still raining when it was time to load up and haul out at 10:00. But it was a damn cold<\/b> rain, and around 8:00 I decided it was not going to quit, and I’m not hard-core enough to ride in that kind of chilling soaking rain. As I drove to work and noticed snow mixing with the rain hitting my windshield, I was confident I’d made the right decision. Pure snow actually wouldn’t have been bad; I’ve hunted in falling snow before, and it’s very pleasant (as long as it’s not being driven by a chilling wind). But rain that’s just on the verge of freezing is just plain nasty. As Lexington was still getting a cold drizzle at noon, I kept telling myself that for once, I was glad I was working instead of playing. And I kept telling myself that.<\/p>\n \nSome people who were more foolish and\/or less wimpy than I was claimed they actually had a very nice time, although the ground started to get slick towards the end. But maybe they were just saying that; nobody would actually confess to having a miserable time (well .. okay .. I might, if I had been out, but I wasn’t).<\/p>\n \nBut right or wrong, I skipped the Friday hunt, and now it’s all over; nothing left to do except reflect on the season. Overall, I’d rate it a good season. According to my calendar, I managed to get out almost 30 times, which is not too shabby. Dec, Jan, and Feb were a little dismal, a lot of missed days due to weather or other complications, but the other months made up for it.<\/p>\n \nArthur and I clicked fairly well all season. We had a few refusals, but I think I can count them on one hand, and we always got over on the second try. I had a few spills, but only a few. Ironically, none of them were the result of any kind of spectacular mishap at a jump. Every time I hit the ground, it was the result of Arthur taking sudden unexpected evasive action to avoid some horrible horse-killing hazard, like a rock, or a piece of cardboard, or a patch of bare dirt. A couple of them happened at just a walk; walking along chatting with somebody and boom<\/b>, I’m talking to their horse’s hooves instead.<\/p>\n \nThe only major downers to the season were a couple of losses of companionship. As I mentioned earlier, my brother and most loyal hunting buddy missed the last 2 months due to the death of his mare. But he has a new horse to get started over the summer, and I’m confident that he’ll be back in the fall.<\/p>\n \nAnd, as I forgot to mention earlier, one of the most hardcore members of the Bitch Pack<\/a> missed even more of the season due to a freak injury that resulted from not being selective enough about who gave her a leg up. But she’s already made her triumphant return to the hunt field last Sunday; in fact, it was her promise of 2 flasks of Rock’n’Rye that had been aging since her injury in December that helped convince me to brave the heat and hunt (or hilltop) that day. And, since she became a regular reader of this site during her convalescence (am I less boring than daytime TV?), I guess I need to suck up to keep the flasks flowing (Hi Julie!). Also, with a local reader to keep me honest, I suppose I might have to be more careful with the literary license … no more stories about the orgies in the hunt field, or all the women swooning as Arthur and I sail over 5-foot fences. Hmm … maybe it’s really time for the season to end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Another hunt season draws to a close. Actually, my last hunt of the season was last Sunday, although I didn’t realize it at the time. With hunts scheduled for Wednesday and Friday, which I had every intention of enjoying, I almost skipped Sunday due to the unseasonable 78-degree heat. But the best-laid plans often go… Continue reading Sigh … It’s Over<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horseplay","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9mOtr-3O","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}