Brought to you by the VK3YQN team
Firstly, a welcome to novice YQN foxhunt setters Mark and Suzanne. Anyone who has run a foxhunt knows how consists of short periods of manic intense activity to keep ahead of the hounds and periods of boring waiting around for ther 1st team to find you !
Hunt 1
This was a two legged hunt, both on 2m. All multi-legged hunts were scored on leg time, effectively forming seperate hunts without the need to re-group. It sometimes produces some unexpected results not immediately evident at the time.
The 1st leg was near the Eastern Freeway in a bushy part of Yarra bend Park near Dights Falls 2D C5 with Mark & Suzanne & a bottle of red wine. Leader was YDF followed 4 minutes later by VT and OW. The 2nd leg was Bruce hidden in a tricky to locate drain reservation the other side of the Yarra near River Retreat (those houses must be worth a bit!) at 2D K8. OW took the least time to the 2nd leg (and was 1st on the scene, despite some slow sniffing work), followed by BLN (leg start time taken from when 1st fox turned off), and just before the gong VR. The 2nd leg was out of 15.
Hunt 2
A close staged 3 legged hunt. Originally the fox had plans to have 10m as the middle leg, but as VR found themselves without a sniffer, and the 10m leg was essentially a sniffer hunt only, we swapped it around so 10m was the 3rd leg to allow them, to at least score well on the 1st two legs and then go for coffee. 45E2
Leg 1 was Neale (with helpers) between the freeway sound barrier and a cyclone fence. Access was meant to be via a hole in the fence the fox had found, but as it turned out all teams ended up climbing the fence. 1st in were YDF and TXO, followed within 6 minutes by all others. Leg 2 was Bruce “up the creek” outside Hays paddock 45 J2. Again this presented no difficulty for Adam of YDF. On leg time David of BLN was 2nd. All teams found this fox within 9 minutes.
The 3rd leg was meant ro be a simple 10m sniffer hunt, but the weak signal from Mark JMD’s 10m fox resulted in teams thinking it was a long way off North of the freeway, and it took some time for them to finally return. It was in fact just behind the lake in Hays Paddock 45 J1 (one square away from Bruce). YDF was 1st back from the wilds, with OW doing it 5 minutes longer on leg time. BLN and VR both did in fact find the fox, but their leg times took them way over any time we could score sensibly, so we limited the damage to 10. TXO was apparently nearby too but we had to call it a day finally. VR team decided to call it a night at this point for unknown reasons.
Hunt 3
The original plan was this would be a single leg hunt, but due to the re-arrangement of the previous hunt for VR, we inserted an extra leg to give time for Mark to get to his proper location.
Therefore the 1st leg was Bruce with the fox buried in some creeper on the bank of the old outer-circle railway cutting 46 A9. Winner was BLN for a change, followed very shortly by YDF, then TXO. After watching the sniffing antics of the OW odd couple Ewen & Clifford, OW finally gets a 7 (with Cliffoird standing on top of the fox declaring “it’s all around I just can’t make any sense of it”).
2nd leg was Mark who was chased into his location by both Adam and David. Therefore YDF and BLN score well. TXO does well on leg time and OW takes way too long despite eventually nabbing Mark. 61 B12
Supper Hunt
There is time for just 1 more hunt, so Bruce is located on the bank of a creek near High St. Again YDF is 1st and BLN is 2nd. OW and TXO draw on 4.
Supper
A great supper put on by Mary Banks, added to by that yumscious flourless chocolate cake from Suzanne. The following scores were announced. Well done to YDF for owning the evening.
| Team | YDF | BLN | OW | TXO | VR |
| 1A | 0 | 10dnf | 5 | 10dnf | 4 |
| 1B | 15dnf | 10 | 0 | 15dnf | 14 |
| 2A | 0 | 6 | 6 | 1 | 5 |
| 2B | 0 | 2 | 4 | 8 | 5 |
| 2C | 0 | 1024 | 5 | 10dnf | 1026 |
| 3A | 1 | 0 | 7 | 3 | 10dnf |
| 3B | 0 | 1 | 1011 | 4 | 10dnf |
| 4 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 10dnf |
| Total | 16 | 40 | 41 | 55 | 69 |
| Place | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |