It's that time of year again. The paddocks glitter with early-morning frost, steam rises from my ponies' nostrils like smoke from a furry dragon, and the stockpile of winter blankets comes down from the hay loft. And there are gunshots. Everywhere. All the time. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Constantly.
At five a.m., the hunters show up with their diesel trucks and the flatbed trailers that their precious ATVs ride on rattle and clang their way up the gravel road to the woods behind my house, sipping their coffee, smoking their cigarettes and ready to hunt Bambi down and shoot him.
Most of the year, living on 100-acres of classified forestland is phenomenal most of the year, especially for an event rider. My horses are always easy to leg up and get fit very quickly, there are plenty of hills to hack out on, a creek crossing to ride them through so they're "desensitized" (not that they still don't find reasons to spook at the water complex) and a lovely field to jump in. But when it's gun season, I'm stuck riding in that tiny sand rectangle thing that poses as an arena, and I have to "hack out" in the three-acre paddock in front of my barn.
Maybe hunt season isn't so bad in places that aren't rural southern Indiana, but unfortunately I wouldn't know. I constantly hear horror stories about people who have had their horses shot out from underneath them, or even killed while grazing in their paddocks. I can see how, after three or four cans of light beer and hours of isolation on a cold, overcast December day, that you could mistake a horse trotting through the trees for a deer.
So for now, I either have to dress my ponies up in obnoxious colors that would make even Liberace wince and risk my neck for a little canter through the trees, or stay in the safe, gun-free arena and wait it out.
