Get the local calendar before the season starts
Shooting and hunting run to schedules, and most estates, shoots and hunts will share dates with neighbouring horse keepers who ask politely — it is in their interest too, since a loose horse can ruin a day's sport. Get the shoot days, the hunt meets and the rough timings into the yard diary, and note which fields the drives or the meet will pass closest to. Exercise plans, farrier visits and turnout groups can then be arranged around the noisy hours instead of colliding with them, and nobody is caught out turning a fresh horse into the paddock nearest the first drive of the morning.
Stable or turn out? Decide horse by horse
There is no universal answer, because the risk is different in each direction. A horse turned out may gallop himself into trouble — fences, wet gateways, strained tendons — while a horse shut in may panic in a confined box if the shooting is very close. The settled herd that has grazed through ten seasons of distant shots will usually ignore an eleventh, provided their field is far from the action and its fences are beyond argument. The flighty horse, the youngster, the new arrival who has never heard a gun: bring those in. Judge by the individual, not by the yard's habit, and when in doubt choose the option where a fright leaves bruises rather than a horse on the road.
Build a calm picture inside the stable
A stabled horse takes his emotional temperature from his surroundings, so make the surroundings boring. Keep him in his usual box beside his usual neighbour, or within sight of a companion if his neighbour is out. Give him a generous hay net to occupy the hours, put a radio on at normal volume so bangs arrive against a background of sound rather than out of silence, and keep feeding and mucking-out times exactly where they always are. Avoid isolating any horse alone in a block, and avoid changes — the new rug, the moved water bucket — on the one day you want his world familiar.
If horses must stay out, prepare their field
Choose the field furthest from the shooting or the hunt's likely line, and walk its fences and gates that morning rather than trusting last week's memory. Take out any horse with a reputation for jumping or charging fences, and do not put a mixed, excitable group out together on a day when one runner can set off the whole herd. Plan your own riding to avoid the busy hours entirely: a horse being ridden past a drive or a meet is a problem you can simply decline to have. If the hunt may cross or pass your land, a polite word in advance about where horses are turned out is worth more than any fence.
Afterwards, check legs, fences and tempers
Once the noise has moved off, walk stabled horses out in hand or turn them out and watch the first minutes, then run your hands down legs for the knocks, heat and filling that galloping leaves behind. Check the fences of any field that held horses before those horses go out again, because a fence that was shouldered hard at noon may be a gap by evening. A horse that is lame, still wound up and not settling, or off his feed after the event needs a vet call rather than a watching brief. Plans on the day sometimes have to change — a shoot moves a drive, a horse is more upset than expected — and for the questions that change raises, put a follow-up question to KinsLe's Kinny; he answers using the KinsLe Answers library.