Did something last night which with hindsight was possibly most stupid thing...

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Sarah1

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...I've ever done on a horse!
My sister & I set off hacking around the estate at dusk - it's a private estate, hardly any traffic, and we knew it would be dark when we returned to the yard but as the ride we planned on doing was only short & very very quiet we thought it would be fine and it was...luckily! :eek:
The game keeper was shooting in one of the fields we passed to get back to the yard! My sister was wearing light coloured clothing on her grey pony but I was wearing dark colours on my bay horse and we would have been virtually invisible had it not been for my sister - I didn't even think about it I was just in a rush to get out riding! :o
Lucklily nothing bad happened & the horses were amazingly good but it was only afterwards I thought what a pair of twonks we'd been! It's not so bad riding in the dark around the estate but we both should have been hi-viz'd up to the eyeballls and probably not the smartest move hacking in the dark during a shoot! So lesson learned and everything turned out ok! :o
 
Haha...this reminded me of when i hacked my horse out, had to go over a main rode and then you get into a lush wood which then leads down the canal and you can ride for miles......after riding out on a sunday for 2 hours i thought i'd best head back.....so towards the woods i go when i realised they'd started a sunday lunctime pheasant shoot......eeeek......couldnt see any shooters, just land rovers and could hear bangs......so opted for galloping as fast as i could (technic of trying to go faster than a bullet!!)....luckily we survived....but after realised it was a stupid idea!! x lol x oops!!
 
Definatly lesson learnt!!!

I never hack out without wearing a hi-vis vest even in the summer, not just for people to see me and my horse more easily but also for my piece of mind that I've done as best as I can to make us highly visible!
 
That reminded me of when I used to work on a yard in Italy in the Tuscan mountains. We rode out on wonderful tracks and paths through dense woods where there was a lot of hunting for wildboar. We used to have to sing and chatter like mad things all the way so that they knew that the rustling wasn't a pig and didn't shoot at us! We were also told to do this in summer to scare the snakes away.
 
Glad all was well :) Reminds me of my first yard; one of the best hacks went through some woods which were used for paintballing! In hindsight, probably not the most sensible short cut to take :eek:
 
lol hind sight is an amazing thing but you are all ok and thats what matters but why not get into the habit of wearing hi viz everytime you hack out - a simple vest helps drivers etc and hey hi viz leg straps take seconds to put on - even on a sunny day they make you more visable - why can we not make it fashinable to wear hi-viz. my daughter as had it drummed into her from day she was born(shes 22) and would never hack out without :) xx
 
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