Stag chase a danger to kids
A stag chase that spooked horses at a Riding for the Disabled site could have been far worse had it happened 10 minutes later, the charity says.
Three primary school-aged children had just arrived for riding sessions at the Nelson branch of the Riding for the Disabled Association (RDA) in The Brook on Wednesday morning when the stag, being chased by two dogs believed to belong to a poacher, streaked across the back of the property, breaking fences, slamming into a gate and losing a three-pointer antler along the way.
Head coach and riding coordinator Pam Harwood said she had just asked staff to put bridles on the horses when ‘‘all hell broke loose’’.
‘‘One of my volunteers yelled out, ‘Stag!’. She’d seen it from across the paddock . . . and then it flew down around our laneway, which is just above the end of our yard.’’
The chase about 9.40am came from the hill at the back of the property in the Brook Valley, over the group’s ridgeline fence – where the stag broke a post and stretched wires – through another fence, back up over the hill, and over two more fences before ending up in the laneway, about 20 metres from the RDA riding arena.
‘‘It came down that laneway at a great rate of knots, flat to the hammers, and that’s where it slammed into the gate at the bottom of the hill, down by the road,’’ Harwood said.
The horses were in yards 4m square, with one horse 20m from the laneway, Harwood said.
‘‘They were panicking. Their eyes were just about popping out of their sockets.
‘‘I was very alarmed. I thought I was going to have horses jump out of the yards.’’
She made a ‘‘health and safety call’’ to cancel the sessions after the incident.
Just 10 minutes later and the situation could have been an ‘‘absolute disaster’’, Harwood predicted.
‘‘If we’d been . . . leading those three little kids in the arena, those horses would have flown, they would have spun. We probably would have had three kids thrown off.’’
Young adults from disability day service programmes also missed out on riding on Wednesday morning, she said.
‘‘The horses were spinning circles in the yards and sniffing the air, and any noise they heard, they’d stand and stare.’’
It took the horses all morning to settle down, she said.
Harwood blamed the incident on illegal hunting.
‘‘The owner would have been up around the back with his dogs. Then the dogs have flushed the deer out, but it’s come across our paddocks with the dogs in hot pursuit.
‘‘Don’t come illegally hunting up here with your dogs.’’
She had not spoken to police about the matter, and planned to approach RDA committee members before deciding whether to do so.
Harwood said she wanted to see if the hunter had the ‘‘guts’’ to front up, apologise and fix the damage.
She estimated it would take around $2000 to fix the damage caused by the chase, and said a donation would be welcome.
‘‘We rely on applying for funds, and the goodwill of people in the community.’’
The RDA would try to catch the dogs if they came on to its land again, she said.
‘‘I know what the dogs look like, and if we catch them, they will be impounded.’’
‘‘If we’d been . . . leading those three little kids in the arena . . . We probably would have had three kids thrown off.’’