A hunter pace does not equal a free for all

[saje]

Equibrit wrote:

A whip doesn’t slow down and shout out which side he’s going when he rides through the field out hunting. It’s WARE STAFF and you’d better get the hell out of the way! It’s up to those riding in the field to BE AWARE. Just as those riding slower should be.

Yes, but he yells " 'WARE STAFF!" Therein lies the difference, I believe.

And a hunter pace is NOT the hunt field in the same way that a schooling event is not a 3-day. A little courtesy and being aware of others potential troubles goes a long way towards not ruining everyone’s fun and education (riders and horses both).

[FairWeather]

Regardless of why you are there, if you are bringing a green horse you have a duty to everyone else to ensure that you have some semblance of control before you come out

Doesn’t that go without saying?

(ie if you will freak out if he runs off in an open field, then you have more work to do at home first).otherwise you are a danger to yourself and everyone else.

Not sure if thats just an ‘in general’ thing or a dig at me. I’ll assume just “in general”? Again, seems like that would go without saying.
Here’s the thing, experienced hunt horses wouldn’t deal with this type of behavior much better than a greenie.

Is it that hard to tell people you’d like to pass? We aren’t out hunting, we’re out hunter pacing, big difference–I’m with one other person, not an entire field. And I guess we’re lucky, if a Whip comes through our field we know it–either we hear them or someone asks us to let staff through.
Sometimes you just cannot hear that kind of thing behind you when people come up on top of you (wind, moving at pace yourself).
Not sure why there are arguments from people who think it’s ok to behave this way.

I agree with the reverse issue too, slow folks not getting out of the way. Is it really THAT hard to be polite?

alliex–very cool that it is in your rules–it really only takes three words and 10 seconds to be safe. “On your left”
It’s easy folks, try it!

[Jaegermonster]

No nothing was a 'dig" at anyone. If I have something to say to someone I usually say it to them outright and there is no confusion. And yes all of those things should go without saying, but most of what is in your original post about this should also go without saying.
Who is it that says good manners and courtesy never go out of style?

But then we have several people at every pace on green 2 or 3 year olds that have never been out of a ring and only been cantered once if at all, and then the riders freak if another rider canters by. That really isn’t the canterer’s problem IMHO. They have a responsibility to ensure they and their horse don’t cause a hazard for everyone else. But they still want to rant at the management and volunteers about the "idiots’ and “maniacs” out there tearing around like crazy. Hardly.

Or we get people who have ridden for years and are terrified of being out in the open, so instead of going somewhere for a schooling day they do it for the first time at a pace. Whhoooooeeee.

All that said, I don’t care if you are Karen O’ Connor, if you are galloping past someone at a low key event such as a hunter pace, you should call out a warning and go by politely, God forbid you should actually slow down if you see the person having a problem. it’s not the Olympics for chrissake.

We should all be polite, and most of all safe.

Unfortunately, as in the rest of society these days, we are seeing more people who think “it’s all about me”.
Now hunting is a totally different story, but we aren’t talking about a hunt we are talking about a pace.

[fernie_fox]

AHH Fairweather,I feel your pain.

Hunting is NOT what it used to be,neither are hunter paces.

“Manners and respect”, are becoming a thing of the past.

Make way for the “nouveux riche”,half of them could’nt care less about hounds,just want to gallop and jump regardless of where hounds are.

I am constantly amazed by some of the stuff that goes on,and some of the stories I hear.

People “whipping in” before they have even hunted a season.

Colours given out in their first season[having never hunted previously].

I understand that is the masters call,but what happened to the pride one has when one has earnt your “colours”.

My last hunter pace I took a “greenie”,3 times on course,the same “jerk” came galloping past us,yelling he was lost and off course.

I yelled back,if he slowed down he might be able to read the jump markers.

I have Field mastered a lot,in the past.

And believe me if I ever did it again,discipline and “hunting manners” would be understood ,from the start.

Respect = safety.

While I am on a roll,another thing that really irks me is.

Kicking horses riding mid-field,it seems it is okay nowadays,so long as you have a red ribbon on kickers tail.

It is’nt okay.

Get to the back until your horse is safe in a group.

Better shut up,I am sorry you had a rough day,hunter paces should be fun.

Ps.Rossi is still hanging out,though very stiff nowadays.He is a dear.

[fernie_fox]

Our Hunter Paces are Fund raisers. We encourage anybody to come out and enjoy our course.

Most of the folks are just schooling around the course,many have never been to a Pace before.

The guy who was charginging around on his own was the Only idiot out there .

Everyone else had a blast,lots of smiling faces.

Quite a few of kids,hacking round the course with an instructor with them.

They were great fun to watch.

[Jaegermonster]

Oh Fernie I know the man you are talking about, he was horrible. he was frightening the other horses he was hollering so loud. We thought he was in trouble then realized he was just an idiot. He wasn’t at the one we just had thank god.

And you are so right on about the people who could care less about the hounds, the “nouveau riche” (of which we are seeing more and more unfortunately, and too cliquish) and earning your colors and having them mean something. Things have changed.

[fernie_fox]

Yep,guess you saw him too.

I was riding a greenbroke 15 yr old mare.[long story]

In Fact I have video of me jumping a little jump,you can see the old girl,cock one ear back when we were landing,next minute the idjut charges past us.

[Jaegermonster]

Yep he was a nut. We thought he was getting run off with, and I said something to him as he came flying up behind us, and he said he was just talking to his horse. So I said all your hollering is scaring my horse (who is really pretty steady). He was too big a jerk to realize the carnage in his wake all around the property.
His horse was lovely though and a saint. The poor creature jumped everything he asked, and did it beautifully, in spite of his banging and yelling and jerking and snatching.

[Painted_Wings]

Our hunter paces are also fund raisers. The hunt club hosts them as well as one of the organizations that runs the local horse trials. There are also a couple of other groups that run hunter paces as fundraisers.

In general there are very few Foxhunters at our hunter paces. It’s mostly people who normally don’t have access to our fixtures and want to see the territory, or people that just like a nice trail ride and a lunch prepared for them. I really think some people come for the ribbons although it’s pretty much dumb luck and not a great accomplishment. These are people that are mainly trail riders that don’t have the funds to go to horse shows.

They are great fundraisers. I do try to go to them in support of the various groups. It’s about the only thing my husband will do.

We have matching paints now so we have a good time dressing up

It’s usually a good experience for a young horse and I do it all the time. Not everyone is courteous but it’s certainly much lower key than going to a horse show or out hunting.

[dawglover]

Our club uses the paces as fundraisers as well.

We had one yesterday, and we had a very nice group of both members and non members show up.

Our paces are usually 8 to 10 miles to simulate an actual hunt, and maybe that backs people off from galloping the whole thing.

Our little flyer instructs folks to ride at a SAFE hunting pace, seems to have worked thus far.

[Jeannette_formerly_ponygyrl]

@Equibrit;3146234

A whip doesn’t slow down and shout out which side he’s going when he rides through the field out hunting. It’s WARE STAFF and you’d better get the hell out of the way! It’s up to those riding in the field to BE AWARE. Just as those riding slower should be.

umm, yes, and if two whips, or a whip and the huntsman, pass the field, they pass on the same side of the field as each other, not one to the left and one to the right, don’t they?

  What I understood from the OP was  one group of 3 or 4 came up galloping on another group in a field. Half the gallopers went left, half went right, so the slower group was surrounded by galloping horses for a moment at least. That does seem thoughtless - and no more likely to get the galloping team a fast time than staying to one side or the other of the slower team.

 I an gatehring it does vary A LOT by region the tenor of the HP.  Worth asking before heading out, since some seem to be more for experienced foxhunters in teh off season, and others may be more fundraisers or bait to lure others into foxhunting. Though ettiquitte always applies, expectations can differ...

[lesson_junkie]

Our paces are great fudraisers too. Lots of these folks treat it as a race-and they’re so serious about it. I’ll be honest to say it’s good money for the club but these people aren’t much fun to ride with.

[Beverley]

@saje;3146296

Yes, but he yells " 'WARE STAFF!" Therein lies the difference, I believe.

Let us pause to review this common error, even though I know it’s a lost cause. (I may be the last person on the planet that insists on use of ‘whipper-in’ for staff, a ‘whip’ is a thing you hold in your hand).

In general, ‘WARE’ is reserved for pointing out hazards- ware hole, ware wire, etc.

When it comes to making way for staff or the pack, the graceful term is ‘staff, please,’ or ‘huntsman, please,’ or ‘hounds, please.’ If you don’t get out of the way in response to these gentle phrases, then yeah, you probably do need to beware the staff.

And of course whether giving a warning or asking for passage for staff, one says it only loud enough for the next person to hear, who in turn can pass it quietly up the line. Very annoying when you are a whipper-in a quarter mile away, on the back side of the woods, to hear someone bellowing ‘ware hole’ at the top of their lungs. It does no good to the person 100 yards away to hear your warning, because by the time they get there, you are long gone and exactly ‘where’ the hole is is unclear. Stay calm, breathe, pass the info accurately and efficiently.

As an aside, I never said ‘staff please’ when I needed to traverse the field. I typically said ‘excuse me, I need to get through,’ and the clever field member translated that up the line into ‘staff please.’

Sometimes the field gets overenthusiastic and wants you to pass when you don’t want to. More than once I trailed the field, not needing to be anywhere quickly at that moment, and needing to preserve the option to head back the other way. Alas, noticed by the field, much swirling and ‘staff pleasing’ and milling about even though I protested that no, I didn’t want to pass. Sometimes I ended up doing it anyway, they seemed like they’d be crushed if I didn’t.

Oops, sorry, I digressed. Back to the subject at hand. I’m wondering to myself, in general, whether hunter paces are ‘digressing’ from hunting as in…recent thread on show hunters versus field hunters.

[citydog]

[QUOTE=fernie fox;3146447]

While I am on a roll,another thing that really irks me is.

Kicking horses riding mid-field,it seems it is okay nowadays,so long as you have a red ribbon on kickers tail.

It is’nt okay.

Get to the back until your horse is safe in a group.[/QUOTE]

:yes::yes::yes:

[SLW]

[QUOTE=Beverley;3146997]
Let us pause to review this common error, even though I know it’s a lost cause. (I may be the last person on the planet that insists on use of ‘whipper-in’ for staff, a ‘whip’ is a thing you hold in your hand).

In general, ‘WARE’ is reserved for pointing out hazards- ware hole, ware wire, etc.

When it comes to making way for staff or the pack, the graceful term is ‘staff, please,’ or ‘huntsman, please,’ or ‘hounds, please.’ If you don’t get out of the way in response to these gentle phrases, then yeah, you probably do need to beware the staff.

And of course whether giving a warning or asking for passage for staff, one says it only loud enough for the next person to hear, who in turn can pass it quietly up the line. Very annoying when you are a whipper-in a quarter mile away, on the back side of the woods, to hear someone bellowing ‘ware hole’ at the top of their lungs. It does no good to the person 100 yards away to hear your warning, because by the time they get there, you are long gone and exactly ‘where’ the hole is is unclear. Stay calm, breathe, pass the info accurately and efficiently.

As an aside, I never said ‘staff please’ when I needed to traverse the field. I typically said ‘excuse me, I need to get through,’ and the clever field member translated that up the line into ‘staff please.’

Sometimes the field gets overenthusiastic and wants you to pass when you don’t want to. More than once I trailed the field, not needing to be anywhere quickly at that moment, and needing to preserve the option to head back the other way. Alas, noticed by the field, much swirling and ‘staff pleasing’ and milling about even though I protested that no, I didn’t want to pass. Sometimes I ended up doing it anyway, they seemed like they’d be crushed if I didn’t.

Oops, sorry, I digressed. Back to the subject at hand. I’m wondering to myself, in general, whether hunter paces are ‘digressing’ from hunting as in…recent thread on show hunters versus field hunters.[/QUOTE]

Well said and a gentle reminder. Thank you.

[LookinSouth]

@Jeannette

I an gatehring it does vary A LOT by region the tenor of the HP. Worth asking before heading out, since some seem to be more for experienced foxhunters in teh off season, and others may be more fundraisers or bait to lure others into foxhunting. Though ettiquitte always applies, expectations can differ…

I agree. It has been interesting to read about the variations in Hunter paces across the country. Here in New England I am unaware of any HP that is less than 6 miles. They usually range 6 to 10 miles. There is usually a hunter or jumper division and the optimum time is based on a safe hunting pace and you are required to take all jumps(in some cases you can pick and choose). In addition, there are usually hilltopping and leisure divisions that are set at a slower optimum pace and jumps are optional. Hence it would be highly unlikely that anyone serious about placing would gallop the whole pace since they would be far faster than the optimum time. Not only that, you’d be hardpressed to find 6 to 10 miles of New England terrain that would be SAFE to gallop. There are plenty of open fields but lots of hilly, rocky, windy paths often interconnecting those fields:eek:

Usually the paces state in the entry form that the optimum time is set at “safe hunting pace”.

That said, I would never recommend for someone to take their total greenie that’s new to the open to a Hunter pace. A trail ride in a small group would be a much smarter introduction. I also never recommend that a rider (or horse) who has never ridden on trail go to a hunter pace. It can be a recipe for disaster. One pace we did 2 years ago our group encountered at least 4 riders/horses heading back to the trailer because the pace was just too much for them/and or their steed. This was at the very beginning of the pace. I just can’t fathom why people who do little if any riding in the open suddenly decide to go to a hunter pace and expect to be comfortable in the atmosphere.

[FairWeather]

That said, I would never recommend for someone to take their total greenie that’s new to the open to a Hunter pace. A trail ride in a small group would be a much smarter introduction. I also never recommend that a rider (or horse) who has never ridden on trail go to a hunter pace. It can be a recipe for disaster. One pace we did 2 years ago our group encountered at least 4 riders/horses heading back to the trailer because the pace was just too much for them/and or their steed. This was at the very beginning of the pace. I just can’t fathom why people who do little if any riding in the open suddenly decide to go to a hunter pace and expect to be comfortable in the atmosphere.

Sheer stupidity? Suspiciously Suicidal?

[Saskatoonian]

There’s a point where you don’t know what you don’t know. There are plenty of people at my barn who think that they’re comfortable riding in the open, but who get an adrenalin rush if their horse lengthens his trot in an open field when a stiff breeze comes up - and that is with one other horse who I can ride anywhere / anyhow the other horse needs. God forbid I have the baby horse. And these people think they want to come hunter pacing with me this summer. That, it seems to me, is the glitch in microcosm.

(Sighing at thought of self walking back to the trailers on the green horse who really actually could use those additional 6 miles, due to latent chicken tendencies of buddies, while you guys head off to play…)

PS sorry to butt in, as I don’t hunt (yet) - but as an eventer who hacks a lot and likes company I have all too much experience with people who are surprised at the difference between riding out and in the ring, so couldn’t help but do it. You can’t believe how easy it is to scare the pants off people - and I do have manners!

[naters]

Well the young horse that we took has always been super in a group, or high activity situations. And she was just as expected - great!

[LookinSouth]

@Saskatoonian;3147871

You can’t believe how easy it is to scare the pants off people - and I do have manners!

Ain’t that the truth. I’ve been classifed as a “yahooer” just because I like to do some cantering (and occasional galloping) on trail in good, safe footing. That said, most of the people I ride with these days are FAR braver than I in the open so I can’t help but laugh when I’M classified as a yahooer.

We once rode with a group that was shocked when we directed our horses to walk under a fallen tree ( there was plenty of room if you ducked and it was obvious the tree wasn’t going anywhere) rather than go off the path of the trail to get around. They were very surprised our horses didn’t care:confused: