Always love me some Rivecourt! Friendly people, dedicated hunters, and plenty of activity.
Grey skies and cool:
Cold enough that a fairly good sized lake was frozen over.
Hey- if it will take you hunting and break your neck...
What's the plan?
Zat ah lak' 'avin' moi ear scratched."
I was wished onto two very good pilots- Merci!
Drawing into the forest:
Busy roads always a problem. Ten wild pigs (and one errant hound) crossed here, but no one followed.
Then hounds stuck, and off we went! They were in the jungly bit right below this road, and this whipper-in is, like us, trying to figure out which way they will go:
Which I don't know why it's so difficult, there is an arrow RIGHT THERE.
Across a cut place. FAR more people a half hour after the meet than before it!
Now waiting on this road- even busier:
Then, hounds speaking, bundled into the truck and away! Looking off to my right- what's that, coming out of that dead ground?
No pricket this!
Definitely a slow track:
He went on, we moved, and he crossed behind us. Like our coyotes, these stags are bold and take little notice of humans or roads if they have a point in mind.
Continuing through a village- hey, this looks familiar!
As it should, we had returned to the scene of my hunting crime. All alone for a while, we were joined by a whipper-in and a bicyclist. Patientez...
Hounds, running right across in front of us!
Back en voiture, and another familar spot- gunpit lane.
Onward still, to the place of last year's rainy Rendezvous. Sure enough, again he ran right in front of us again. No picture, grr.
What's French for "Come on, hound!"
Later another lost hound got a free ride:
While we waited by the woods.
Aristocrats, capitalists, millionaires every one!
Lost him, so regroup and redraw:
He ran, again, right in front of us.
Around to a new place, all by ourselves in some old forest. Wait, whats that sound? Pad pad pad thud thud thud CRASH, again across the allee twenty yards (sorry, 18.288 meters) from us. We couldn't hear hounds at all, just the approach of the King in his forest. Well, Count anyway. Just beautiful.
Then on to wait at this allee:
But, because I had the camera ready, he went another way.
It came on to be rainy and dark, and he was given best.
But there were hounds and hunters scattered all over, far from the rendezvous. They were still coming in at a Forester's lodge as darkness fell.
There was the usual ferry back to get trailers, and it was black night before the scene was clear.