{"id":1816,"date":"2010-08-17T08:24:29","date_gmt":"2010-08-17T12:24:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thegreathorse.com\/?p=1816"},"modified":"2017-06-01T12:51:26","modified_gmt":"2017-06-01T16:51:26","slug":"how-to-hunt-a-horse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/2010\/08\/how-to-hunt-a-horse\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Hunt a Horse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mostly, you don’t.\u00a0 Horses are prey in the wild, but few predators dare confrontation with a healthy equine. You could call horses “extreme” prey.<\/p>\n

\"stubbs,<\/a><\/p>\n

The opening historical scene of Eclipsed by Shadow<\/em> is set in prehistoric times, highlighting the earliest relationship between man and horse: hunter and hunted.<\/p>\n

It was not our most enjoyable association, casting humans in the shabby role of trickster … and leaving the horses not too happy either.<\/p>\n

The horse has few natural predators<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lions and wolf packs are the only major predators with horse on the menu, and they mostly avoid contact. As a horse’s kick can crush an adult lion’s skull — something we could call a ‘game-changer’ — the horse’s enemies remain on the lookout for immature, elderly or sick equines.<\/p>\n

If hooves are the danger in horse-hunting, getting close to the animal is the difficulty. A horse may not have the sprinting take-off of a gazelle, but with a short headstart no predator on earth can catch him.<\/p>\n

The horse’s anatomy is a balance between power and swiftness: his heavy body is balanced on thin, well-leveraged limbs that take a few strides to reach full speed but allow him to gallop for miles. The horse simply outclasses all predators at any real distance.<\/p>\n

So sneaking around is the rule for horse-hunters \u2026 and it ain’t easy. As anyone who has spent time with horses knows, our silent partner is quite alert to potential lions in the flower-pots. The horse instinctively knows his survival depends upon a good headstart.
\n_______
\nCopyright \u00a9 2010\u00a0 John Allen Royce, Jr.<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sneaking around is the rule for horse-hunters\u2026 and it ain’t easy. As anyone who has spent time with horses knows, our silent partner is quite alert to potential lions in the flower-pots. The horse’s creed is “he who quickly runs away, lives to run another day,” and he instinctively knows his survival depends upon a good headstart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[359,137,142,158,154],"tags":[70,162,116],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1816"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1816"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15049,"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1816\/revisions\/15049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}