Since there will be no hunting (which would have been rip-snortin', I'm sure) and no hunt report (which would have been scintillating, I'm sure), I thought I'd send out a little explanation of why we canceled hunting.
The forecast calls for a high of 36 degrees with wind speed averaging 25 mph. With the wind chill, it's going to feel like 24 degrees.
1. That starts to be not a lot of fun for the riders.
2. The wind carries scent away. In normal conditions, hounds will find traces of scent and work up to the game and get it running. That doesn't happen in the wind. Basically, they've got to be lucky enough to just stumble over the quarry. And in this kind of weather, the quarry is hunkered down somewhere, waiting it out.
3. The wind carries sound away. And the wind makes a lot of noise.
In the wind, hounds can't hear the Huntsman. If they try to hunt, they get strung out. Sometimes they won't even try, preferring to stay with the Huntsman. Both of those scenarios are going to happen occasionally, no matter what we do, but it's better to avoid them.
In the wind, hounds can't hear each other. Again, they get strung out.
What happens when they get strung out and why is that a problem? If we were out in open fields, it wouldn't be such a problem. Hounds could see each other and see the horses. Unfortunately, we hunt in the woods and in the hills. If the Huntsman and part of the pack go over a ridge, the hounds that are left behind have no idea where to start looking for them. And we want every hound to look for the pack and Huntsman. We want to encourage them to act as a pack. We don't want them to happily go off hunting on their own. If they do that, it's inevitable that some hounds will get into trouble. That might mean getting into someone's trash or it might mean straying onto the road.
4. The wind means the hounds can't make sense of what they do manage to hear. In these hills and valleys, we get a lot of echoes and hounds have difficulty figuring that out on a calm day. In the wind, that problem is compounded by sounds being carried differently from usual and differently every minute.
5. There is some scientific evidence that when the still air temperatures are in the low twenties, the hounds can damage their scenting ability by trying to hunt. That doesn't apply so much today but if we left hounds out tonight, it will be colder than that. And when it's windy, hounds are more likely to get strung out and it's MUCH more likely that we'll finish the day without getting all the hounds in.
6. We've had so much windy weather lately that this isn't such a problem but, usually, it's not safe to ride in the woods in the wind. We're all aware that limbs and trees blow down. The odds of being hit are pretty slim but not hunting reduces those odds to zero.
So, there are a lot of reasons not to hunt in high winds. Yes, we could probably take out a small group of older hounds and we'd probably get by without any disasters. But it's just not worth it. There is absolutely no way we'd have a great day of hunting in this weather. We'd be teaching the hounds bad habits. We'd be taking risks that simply aren't justified.
I hate to look out the window and see no visible reason to stay home but I have to admit that I probably won't ride at all today. Tomorrow's another day.
