Horse Trail Chicks

Even if you have no interest in fox hunting, I recommend you find out if there is a hunter pace in your area. A hunter pace is, for all intents and purposes, an awesome trail ride that is open to everyone. You don’t have to be a member of a hunt club, you can ride English or Western, you ride at your own pace, and jumps are optional. Best of all, in many cases a hunter pace is an opportunity to ride on beautiful land that is otherwise not accessible to you.

Let me explain. A hunter pace is an event with roots in foxhunting. Unlike a foxhunt, there are no hounds, no fox (real or pretend), and the riders do not stay together in one huge group. But like a foxhunt, it involves riding through field, forest, and fen for miles on end, up and down hills, across brooks, and over fences (optional), with many opportunities to gallop (my favorite part). The route is marked and simulates the conditions encountered during a foxhunt. You ride out in small groups of two to four riders – usually a few friends will plan to ride together and for fun will choose a team name and sometimes a color scheme. Since you go at your own pace, it’s a kid-friendly event and a great way to introduce children to cross-country riding. There is a competitive aspect to a hunter pace (though to be honest, this barely registers in my consciousness). Someone rides the route ahead of time to set an “ideal” pace. This is generally the pace that it would be ridden during an actual foxhunt. Because many foxhunts have more than one “field” – first field for people who want to gallop endlessly and jump everything, second field for people who want to gallop some and jump some while also staying alive, and third field for people who don’t want to gallop or jump at all – the organizers of the hunter pace will determine ideal times for each field. These times are kept secret. When you register for the event you state which field you will be riding in (which is basically just a statement of how fast you plan to ride – like a bat out of hell, a reasonable human being, or a Sunday driver). Then you go for your ride. At the end, the teams with the times closest to the ideal times win ribbons. Since the ideal times are secret it is pretty much a game of chance. In some cases, rather than establishing an ideal time, they will average the times of every team in each field and award the ribbon to the team that came closest to the average time.

Hunter paces vary in length, but in my experience they are roughly 7 to 13 miles. Sometimes there is a rest stop halfway where someone magically hands you a cup of apple cider or port, and after the ride there is a lunch which is a great time to meet other riders.

Hunter paces are usually organized by hunt clubs (and sometimes by equestrian centers or riding stables) as a way to introduce people to new territory, allow them to experience what it’s like to ride cross country, and raise funds for the club or for a cause such as breast cancer research. Hunt clubs work very hard to stitch together adjoining pieces of property, maintain the trails, and stay in the good graces of the landowners.

I don’t know about you, but as I drive around the countryside in my area (northern Vermont), whenever I see a beautiful rolling field or a gorgeous forest decorating a hillside I think “I would LOVE to ride there,” knowing, of course, that it is impossible. The great thing about a hunter pace is that it is the day when I actually get to ride on one of those coveted landscapes. Here is a video of a hunter pace that Kerrie and I did last month with the Green Mountain Hounds.

This hunter pace is an event that my friends and I look forward to every year. It’s about as much fun as you can have on your horse.

To find a hunter pace in your area, just Google “hunter pace” and your state or region.

Happy trails!

Monica