Things that make you go, hmmmm...

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Spring is trying...

Okay. so this was weird.  Sometime between 6:30 and 7 PM I'm walking down the driveway on my way to get the horses.  It's blowing pretty hard, but less than earlier.  About halfway down the driveway I can hear a car coming from the south.  It goes by at 45-50 mph.  A little dark blue/black SUV - maybe a GEO Tracker?  - with swirly gray detailing on the side.  Not a vehicle I've ever seen before, or one that's typical of what usually goes by this far out.  As soon as it's past the driveway I can hear it starting to slow down.  When I get to the end of the driveway I can see brake lights and it's almost stopped about 1/4 mile down the road, and I hear BOOOM.   

?!!!

Nobody gets out of the car.  The doors are all closed.  It sits for about 10 seconds and then speeds up again, goes up the next mile and heads east.  So my first thought is, "Oh goodie, idiots with a gun.  Good thing they left."  And then I thought, "Crap, the horses.  Didn't hear a shot before though"  And I set off up the hill in sort of a hurry.

Horses are fine, all the way back on the top of the pasture, not at all worried about the shot 'cause they've all lived through hunting season in SD, three of them next to a pheasant hunting place.  I holler, they come galloping.  I'm standing by the gate with an arm full of halters, happen to look down the road to the north, and here comes the little SUV again.  It gets to about the place where it stopped before, stops again, and people get out and mill around for a few minutes, then get back in.  Drive a bit further and repeat.  Turn around in the driveway, drive slowly up the road, U-turn again and come back my way.  Didn't look as if anybody went into the ditch at any point, so they either missed what they were shooting at or decided not to pick it up.

The horses and I are watching all this.  Not that they'd make good witnesses, but they were definitely interested in the vehicle that wasn't behaving normally.  And I'm thinking... hmmm, I have a camera in my pocket.  Should I take a picture of the car as it goes by?  See if I can get the plate?  Nobody has permission to hunt, and nothing's in season that I know of, but...  And: they have a gun.  Do I really want to take a picture?  Like that.

So they go by pretty fast, nobody in the car looking at me.  Big guy in the back with his shoulder turned to the window so all I can see is a grey sweatshirt back.  They didn't stop, slow down,  or even wave to say "Hi, how are you?", which is very unusual for out here.  And here's another thing:  I looked, but I didn't see a plate on the rear of the car.  KS doesn't have front plates.  Either it was just really, really dirty (very possible, as I'm not sure you can read the one on the truck right now), or - to be a tad paranoid - they'd taken it off one of the times they were stopped. 

I watched it out of sight up the hill.  Brake lights came on again at the stop sign, but I couldn't tell which way they turned.  I waited for a few minutes to see if they were going to come back.  Debated leaving the horses up there.  They were a bit snorty, probably because I was anxious, but decided that I didn't want to leave them there in case the people with the gun decided horses looked like good targets.

Despite the wind and my nerves, the trip down the hill went just fine.  No reappearance of the SUV.  I took the truck up to fill the water tubs so that I wouldn't have to do it in the morning and out of curiosity on the way back I drove on down to the mailbox past where they'd done all the backing and turning to see if I could spot what they'd been up to.  Nothing I could see.

Not sure what they were up to.  It's probably a mountain of a mole hill, but the whole thing struck me as off.  I'll mention it to the cow folks when I see them and keep an eye out, I guess. 

Hedge posts: the new bane of my fencing endeavors.
Probably should have known something was up
when I noticed that there wasn't a staple in one of them.
Just wire loops holding the barbwire.

Finding frame and frost

Not too much to report this week.  It's been pretty much routine around here.  Hard frost meant time to get the fall worming done and bot fly eggs removed.  We picked up 25 small squares and got them stacked in the barn out at the farm.  Large rounds have been coming in right along, and there should be plenty of hay for another cold winter and extended "spring" of rain and mud.  I'm hoping 2012 isn't a repeat of 2010 and 2011, but we're prepared, just in case.

Didn't get too much riding in, but yesterday was too gorgeous NOT to get out.  I rode about 8 miles with J and a couple of his vet student interns.  The wind was brisk enough to make long sleeves feel good, although the sun was out and the temps were in the high 60's.  Everything's so dry and rattly that it was a mostly silent ride as far as conversation went.  Unless you were almost someone's hip pocket, it was almost impossible to hear anything that wasn't yelled. 

The horses had that pre-storm, on-their-toes feel to them.  Not just mine, either.  They were all looking twice at almost everything, from the laid-flat roadwork signs, to the same-old, same-old cows.  Steady-Eddie Caspar was about as animated as I've ever seen him, foraging ahead snorting with the rest of them.

One thing they weren't though, was hunchy.  Not that I'd have expected any of J's horses to be, but Thunder....  Other than one rebellious scoot and swing to get farther away from a passing tractor, he ponied along pretty as you please, though.

Of course, the tractor evasion could have been fairly dramatic - we were on the stretch of the road that runs between to rather marshy, water-logged areas with deep ditches on both sides full of algae-slimed water.  When Thunder swung and hit the halter he ended up facing Sunny, who was not thrilled.  Luckily I saw the shy coming, and I was already spinning Sunny around to the left.  We made a tight turn against the road-edge, managing to miss falling in, pulling Thunder along as the tractor rattled past.  Then we "chased" it down the road for about a 1/4 mile.


To help keep Sunny occupied and focused on me I worked on asking him to collect for short periods.  I'm beginning to feel a difference when he steps up underneath himself at the walk.  Trotting... well, he's still nose-poked out hollow too much of the time, but when I ask him to round up he's finding that soft spot much more quickly and maintaining it for longer.  Starting to get that engagement is darn cool.   

For whatever reason it seemed as if there were a lot more hunters out this weekend than last.  At least pheasants are hunted with shotguns rather than rifles, so I can worry a lot less about spent bullets!  We were passed by multiple trucks with men and dogs, and rode by one group of 4 or 5 guys lined up walking a field.  They paused and tipped their guns to rest for us to pass, which was thoughtful of them.  Not everyone is that considerate.  I've more than once been out riding and had people driving towards me slam on the brakes, hop out and shoot past me.  (Road hunting is legal in SD - but not within so many yards of livestock, buildings, or where it's posted.)

Back at J's Sunny and Thunder dozed on their leadropes by the trailer while the four of us stood and chatted, enjoying the sunshine. I don't know about you all, but I'm crossing my fingers this weather holds a while longer.

News of the week

My news? I'm not sure there is much. Horse time has been scarce as hens' teeth. I've patted noses & checked that all 4 (x 8) legs are still on the ground. Not much else, unfortunately. J stopped by last night, catching me sitting on the floor in the living room with a stack of clean laundry - she thought that was really funny - to ask where I'd been. Our schedules haven't had us crossing at the farm since sometime last week.

She had news. Not great news, but news. The lady who was to have looked at Pennie found two really nice geldings that were already buddies and had good kid-experienced backgrounds. She decided she'd rather go that route rather than introduce a strange mare into her gelding herd. Which I can understand.

T and I will continue to ride Pennie. No sense letting her slip back into pasture complacency when he got along with her so well and I enjoy her, too. And since I know she'll pony, we might just let her drag her son behind her a time or three this fall yet. Thunder and Amyra are both due for more work than they've had, so as long as the weather and the daylight hold....

I have horse plans for the weekend. The weatherman (and we know they neee-verr lie) is promising sun, 80's and more sun. Sounds lovely. Only a few weekends left until pheasant season opens and the roadways get clogged with gun-toting men*, so I plan to make the most of them.

*************
*For those of you not familiar with pheasant season
in South Dakota, a short overview follows.

Background:When I first contemplated moving here to SD from Michigan ten years ago, my female friends winked & mentioned cowboys. My male friends (and acquaintances, and strange men in stores who overheard my moving plans... you get the picture) salivated at the thought of pheasants and pheasant season. "When are you moving and how soon?" they'd ask. "Do you know anyone there with property yet?"

Present: For some reason, SD is a pheasant mecca. Every year in October, hoards of shotgun-wielding natives and hunting-crazed tourists hit the back roads and the fields in search of chicken-sized, ring-necked, brightly-plumaged birds. [Funny story: a few years ago in October at the annual SD Library Association conference a woman from out East somewhere - VA? - flew in to speak. Our opening speaker, after she was introduced she mentioned that it was the first time she'd ever been west of the Mississippi, and described getting off the plane in Sioux Falls. "It was amazing," she said, "to see all those musicians collecting their instruments in the airport. South Dakota must be a highly cultured state - all those violin players!" ???? Shotgun cases=instruments=lots of culture, you betcha! LOL.]

In SD, road hunting is legal. I didn't know this when I first moved here, but I learned fast, let me tell you.

It's not legal to shoot a bird on the ground in someone's pasture, but it is legal to shoot one in the air over the road and then climb the fence into the pasture to retrieve the dead bird.

It's illegal to shoot within so many feet of inhabited buildings or livestock - but a lot of hunters ignore these rules in the heat of the moment. (How do I know this? Because on more than one occasion I've had drivers slam on their brakes, dive out of their cars, and shoot over my horse's head to drop a horse-flushed pheasant. And I've seen cars stop on the road next to the large, orange, NO HUNTING sign, hunters leaning out across their hoods to take a shot over the horses grazing in the pasture. And I take license plate numbers.)

Not to mention, SD is the first place I have EVER seen the following: blaze-orange, gun-carrying figures lined up all the way around a mowed field, walking towards one another to chase up any birds that might be lurking in the stubble. When a bird does lift, the shooting side fires toward the beaters. Over their heads, yes, but shot that goes up, must come down.... Doesn't look like something I'd want to make a habit of, but hey, whatever works for them, I guess!

It didn't take long before I learned to wear blaze orange if I was going to ride the gravel roads after opening day, and to ride early in the mornings before it's legal to hunt (before noon, and late in the season, before 10 AM). And to get used to being buzzed by the Game Fish & Parks helicopter if I was out riding early in my vivid new vest - they take poaching pretty seriously.

But so far, although I've flushed out a lot of birds out riding, I haven't developed any great desire to shoot them. They're pretty.

Don't get me wrong - my family hunts and so does my husband. (And those pretty pheasants are mighty tasty when cooked properly!) I have absolutely no problems with responsible gun owners and/or hunters who hunt for practical reasons, or who use what they shoot. Nor with those who abide by hunter safety guidelines & exercise some common sense and courtesy. What I don't like are the irresponsible ya-hoos who fire at random movements, hunt in areas posted "No Hunting" and trespass to get their bag limits!