A reasonably mild evening saw seven teams of hounds meet at the traditional meeting place at the top of Swanston Street.
After some delay caused by a number of factors (teams and fox), the first hunt got underway with the teams chasing the first of four legs. This was located beside the Darebin Creek in a gully leading off to a tributary (near a bike track). The hounds soon had the measure of the slow CW and located Dough VK3JDO and Chris VK3CKH. First in was YDF with YQN and VR/etc close behind. Other teams straggled in after these.
The second leg saw the fox on a bicycle riding along the Merri Creek bike path between Bell St and St Georges Rd- those who deployed the right tactics soon had their calls in the log and were off after the next leg. Unfortunately the battery that had been charged the day before gave out on this hunt and so there were some teams badly affected by this. However as each leg of the hunt was scored separately it did not affect the overall score too badly. TVB/etc were the best with YQN coming in second – the rest got 10 but this was probably a function of the battery problem.
The third leg was on a bike track (have you picked the theme yet?) near the Ivanhoe golf course. I think the nearby fence must have had an effect and this leg proved very difficult. YDF led in TXO with BLN sneaking in seven minutes later. The rest took longer than 10 minutes.
Our final leg saw a return to the bike track beside the Darebin Creek with the fox again on a bike (different rider) riding between Bell St and Grange Rd. MZ/etc was the best team on this leg with YDF TXO and BLN following up.
Scoring was done on each leg in a similar fashion to the normal hunts with the shortest leg time scoring 0 and a point per minute for teams after that with a maximum of 10 points. Scoring in this fashion there were joint winners of the first hunt – YDF and VR/MZ/JMD/TVB on 13 points each, next was YQN with BLN a ways back in fourth.
The second hunt of the evening was a two legged affair – Once again Doug JDO lead the hounds to a reserve by the Plenty River on a bike track (yes another one!) Near Para Rd in Montmorency. First to locate Doug was TVB/VT/JMD/MZ, Geoff managed to find the nearby blackberries on his way out but the fox was not actually aware of these when selecting the spot. All teams found Doug and Chris within the 10 minutes.
Second leg saw the fox sitting on Cresswell hill in Macleod and as all the new roads in the area are just being built access was a problem – on my Melways this looked to have bike tracks planned so the theme was upheld although they could only be considered mountain bike tracks at the moment!. First to this was YDF with YQN close behind, BLN made it just before time and JMD/etc just beyond time other teams were in the area but difficulty in finding the access tracks proved to be their undoing.
Supper was at the home of Chris VK3CHR and for the first time for a while there was food left over – is everyone watching their weight or did we over cater? Or worse was the food unpalatable? Results were announced but the actual calculations of leg times had not been done so the results published here are the official ones. Winner for the evening was YDF with 14 points, second VR/MZ/JMD/TVB (how do they know what to call out!) on 23 and just one point away third YQN.
Scores are as follows (While discussions are encouraged there may be little chance of changing them!). Actual times and leg times are available for those that are interested.
MZ YQN TXO YDF OW BZQ BLN Hunt 1 Leg 1 3 2 10 0 8 6 5 Leg 2 0 5 10 10 10 10 10 Leg 3 10 2 10 0 10 10 7 Leg 4 0 10 5 3 10 10 7 Total 13 19 35 13 38 36 29 Hunt 2 Leg 1 0 2 8 1 6 2 2 Leg 2 10 3 10 0 10 10 9 Total 10 5 18 1 16 12 11 Grand 23 24 53 14 54 48 40 Place 2 3 6 1 7 5 4
73
Greg VK3VT