We had perfect weather for our Blessing day at Bridlespur. I had not hunted in a month since my trip to China.

Whips were Gene, Lee, John and Lil. There were 44 riders in both fields. Werner was the Jumping field fieldmaster and Gerda was the Hilltopper Fieldmaster.
There was frost in the fields when I went out early morning to braid. I let the beagle hound out while I braided and unfortunately I she didn’t come back when I was ready to load. So I spent time searching for her until I found her making me late for the meet.

The temperature was 45 degrees with 74% humidity and calm NE winds at the 9AM start. At 12:30 PM when we called it quits, it was 60 degrees with 49% humidity and 6 mph NE winds. The fall colors were magnificent.


We started the hunt heading West into the woods toward Wilson’s property. The woods were blank and we worked across Wilson’s, crossed Wilson Road into Granger’s and we heard the hounds speak as we jumped the coop into Brommelsiek Park. We had a great run and the hounds were right on. I didn’t have my radio and with so many in the field it was hard to tell what was happening being in the back. I know that John viewed a coyote twice and Gene viewed once. The Hilltopper field also viewed. We crossed over to Patterson’s and the hounds struck again in the creek. It was getting late and Eleanor was trying to gather the hounds. Every time she’d have them about gathered, a hound would speak and off they’d go again. We were all worried we would have to go to the ball in our hunt clothes. Werner's horse lost a shoe and took most of the field in after 2 1/2 hrs. Robert took over as field master and we joined the two fields and stayed out a while longer.

We finally headed back to the Clubhouse for a wonderful Blessing Brunch organized by Marilyn. After the brunch my horse decided to head home without waiting for the trailer. Fortunately Eleanor spied him while out looking for hounds and tied him to a tree so that I could retrieve him. RacerX hound was impounded by one of the less friendly neighbors too so I’m lucky Maurice didn’t decide to visit him. I wonder if they have “horse pounds”. Other than losing a shoe, Maurice was none the worse for his little adventure.

According to my GPS we covered 20.97 miles. We had 2:15 moving and 43 minutes stopped. Max speed was 24 mph with a 6.4 mph moving average. Maurice was not carrying the GPS when he did his solo tour. That might have been very interesting.

Here's Eleanor's description of the day's events:

"We did have a really NICE day from start to finish.
We met at 8:30, blessed and did all that stuff and moved off at nine sharp.
I had 16 1/2 couples out, and was expecting a bluebird day, bright, clear,
sunny, south and a tiny bit west wind....I thought, Ugh.BUT, we bumped up a
coyote next door, and ran him WELL for over an hour, and he was very
obliging by staying within our little patch of country. When I got tired of
doing circles over there, we hopped across the road and ran another, slowly,
halting, bumping along for another hour. Three coyotes were viewed during
the day, and the second field got to see one, and the hounds pushing for his
brush....your buddy Tanker screwed that up when they had a brief check and
he took the whole lot backwards.

Marilyn wanted to spank me for keeping everyone out too long and she burnt
the eggs for brunch. However, she also had mixed up the stirrup cup, so that
may have had something to do with burning the eggs too.

The hunt ball was fun, beautiful venue, pretty tables, great silent auction,
good band (except they did NOT do Wipeout, even though I promised them that
they might see some tops fall off if they did!). Everyone went to bed
exhausted!"

Eleanor
BSH