Snack Time, Brats (pup hunt)

*Cascade* · 05-11-2015, 09:44 AM

As the pups one by one began to practice what she'd taught them, Cascade found herself smiling around at them, tail wagging. Not out of amusement, though the antics of the youngest Imperialis and the seriousness of the elder pups were in their own ways funny, no. Out of pride. Look what they'd created in the short time since Imperium had been claimed by Valentine. A mere year and some odd, and already the next generation grew so promisingly, so much potential for the future blossoming in the environment Valen had built for them all. Ah but she was getting all nostalgic here - time to move on while the lesson was still fresh in their minds. "All right, you guys are doing great. So let's move on to learning our prey. Some of you older kids have probably already been hunting them - we call them jackrabbits, but they aren't rabbits at all, they're hares. You might wonder why that matters; a rabbit's a rabbit, you might think. Well, rabbits and hares have very different lives and have very different ways of escaping predators, so you need to have a very different method of dealing with them. Hares, like what we're hunting, don't live under ground. When they run, they aren't looking for a convenient burrow to dive in - they're going to try to outrun you. They can do it, too. A hare is much faster than we are, so it's up to us to trick them, not chase them. Chasing them down will use up far too much energy for far too little gain."

She swept her eyes over them quickly, pairing them up mentally. "I'm going to give you all partners. Hunting in pairs is much more efficient than solo hunting, but you have to learn to do it properly. So... Integra, you go with Colette, Atreides with Shakespeare, Sirius with Sabre. Hm, Evangeline, you'll go with Karabela, and Angelus, you stick with Ashmedai. I'll jump from group to group to keep an eye on you. So!"

Had she had hands she might have rubbed them together excitedly. "What you're going to do is find yourself a hare. They usually hang around under bushes during the day to keep them safe from predators, but it's still early enough in the morning that they're probably out in the meadows feeding. The best way to catch a hare is to surprise it in its shelter and pounce before it can run, assuming you can even get through the brush. They birth their young above ground in their shelters so you can get at their leverets that way during the spring birthing season if you need a quick snack, but do that too often and you're going to seriously impact the population, which means you'll be going hungry in the future until the population rebounds. You aren't always going to be able to find their shelters or get through the brush, though, so the way we are doing it today is going to be invaluable. Ok get with your partners," if any hadn't already, "and I want you to decide among yourselves who out of the two is the better runner, or the better tracker. That one is going to be the wolf who finds the hare. Once you've found it, that wolf is going to chase it."

"Now," she said, holding up a paw, "I know I just got done telling you that chasing a hare is inefficient, but you aren't going to be trying to catch it. That's going to be your partner's job. The chaser is going to herd the hare toward their partner, who will be waiting downwind to ambush the hare before it even knows they're there. Hares run in a zig zag pattern so keep that in mind as you chase them, and conserve energy. Don't attempt to keep up with them, just make sure you keep them going in the correct direction. Got it? All right, let's get moving and see if we can't catch ourselves some breakfast. Angel," she added as a quiet aside intended only for her son's ears, "I suggest you let your brother do the chasing and you do the catching. He is as high energy as the hares, but he's still small enough they might just run right through him." And she didn't want the young pup to be discouraged from the hunt, as young as he was. He needed encouragement at this age to eventually step into his future role as a functioning member of the pack.

OOC: Go chase some bunnies! Starting a separate thread isn't for your hunt isn't necessary unless you want to or are planning to do a lot of posts for the hunt, but - Remember that for those who have hunting as their skill you need to have 3+ posts and a clearly defined kill for the hunt itself to claim the hunt separately from the training thread. Ash, Siri, and Sabre are the only ones with hunting set as their skill - if you play or are partnered to them see if your partner would be willing to do the necessary number of posts for that.

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