I was surprised to awaken at 5am to a dusting of the white stuff. But the weatherman promised there would be a quick warm up to the mid 50s by afternoon, with winds to swing around from the present almost calm North to a blowing S/W. An unfavorable scenario for scent!
On Wednesday,I took Rap back up to Doc Riddle for the third time. The horse is still sore and I want to kmow WHY and WHERE. It is definitely just a case of sore heels, caused by the farrier not keeping the toes short enough. Doc's farrier reset the front shoes, taking almost a HALF INCH of toe off feet that were just trimmed by my farrier only 2 weeks ago!
We put a 2 degree rim pad on his fronts until Rap can grow some heel on his own. Now the problem is finding a farrier who will keep trimming the toe to get Raps angles back to a natural 52-54 degrees. I don't think my farrier is aggressive enough to do what needs to be done. :-(
So, Thursday I took Mel. to the hunt. I also took the helmet cam. I've found new software that will make uploading and merging video segments easy, and I was eager to get some raw footage with which to experiment.
Because of the weather conditions,we decided to go right back to the Pistol Ramge Woods where we had gotten that nice -running red fox on New Years Day. The first cast resulted in Part-Time making the find at 9:48 . We had put the hounds into the covert at around 9:25 amd it was obvious from the get -go that they would be hard pressed to find a fox. But our 9 couple got this red on the move out of the pistol range, through the Latham woods, and on out the "middle strip" woods almost to Parker Rd. A car follower viewed a fox coming across a field bordered by Parker Road, headed BACK into the pistol range. I was with the hounds, while Bobby and Tommy were still walking back to their trucks. Wes, the car follower, wasn't being clear about where he saw this fox cross the field. When the hounds hit the open, they couldn't smell and made a check. A frustrating few minutes ensued as we tried to recover the line. When the pack hit it heel over a wheat field, we broke them back at Parker Rd and loaded. Only my white bitch ,Marney, kept on the fox's line towards the woods. This is all on the video!
And then the damn camera quit. You will hear the deafening beeps it began to make.
Too bad, because by the time we got the pack turned back out, the sun came out, the snow melted, we did get a chase in. I grabbed the Nikon and got our hunted fox crossing the ditch, and added that to the tail end of the helmet cam vid.( thanks to that new software!).
Hounds ran this fox until almost 11 am. But Charles always had a pretty good lead on the pack, and it was never a burning hot chase. When Bobby viewed the fox running the edge of Sullivan's field, we decided itwas a good place to break them.
What started being a dark and gloomy-looking morning turned quickly into a warm, and blustery sunny afternoon.
Now, if I can just get the battery life of this helmet camera figured out, I think I may begin to get something worth watching!
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