Gil and Fecni were both entered, and we were very excited to welcome our Silken Windhound friends for their very first official hunt. In addition to the MAs and Silkens there was a full stake of Ibizans and a lone Deerhound bitch. The MAs, Silkens and Deerhound made up the second stake of rare breeds, which added us up to two rare breed hunts and one Borzoi hunt.
Due to the very heavy cover it was very difficult for the dogs to get sighted and stay sighted. However, the rabbits weren't quite ready for us after having spent all summer snoozing and fattening up. The very first course of Borzoi resulted in an AK within the first 50 feet of the run!
From then on it wasn't hard for us to find the rabbits but it sure was hard for the dogs to chase them very far before they would duck into the brush.
Gil's prelim course was one of two good long courses we had that day. Below is a graphic image of his course transcribed from my Garmin GPS:
You can see at the top that he makes a 180 degree turn. I thought he almost had it at that point, but the hare managed to get away just in time.
The second rabbit that Gil ran wasn't as lucky. The jack popped right under our feet and almost as soon as I let Gil go he caught it. I don't think he ran more than 50 feet before he caught him; not much of a run but definitely very exciting!
That UK put Gil at the top of the line up at the end of the day, followed by the Deerhound in second. Fecni settled for a fifth place tie, but she redeemed herself at our last outing (more on that later ...)
So how did the Silken Windhounds do?
ReplyDeleteThe silkens did great! Unfortunately they had a hard time sighting in the tall cover but they placed in the top 5 of the day.
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