MIDDLESEX TWP — The hunters became the hunted Tuesday morning when a pack of hunting dogs got loose.

At least a half dozen hounds belonging to the Saxonburg Hunt Club on Cherry Valley Road in Clinton Township broke free about 8:30 a.m., authorities said.

It was not immediately known where the dogs were when they made their getaway.

The animals ran onto and made it across well-traveled Route 8 in Middlesex Township, a few miles west of the hunt club.

“It’s busy this time of the morning and it’s lucky none of the dogs got hit,” said Middlesex Patrolman Randy Davison.

The Butler County Communications Center got a call that possibly one of the dogs was hit. That turned out to be a false report, police said.

But the sight of a dog pack sprinting across the highway wasn’t the only spectacle for Route 8 motorists.

Before long, a woman on horseback, dressed in traditional English hunting attire, clippity clopped by in search of the dogs.

“The lady on the horse was with the hunt club,” Davison said.

She rode into the brush near Route 8 and Kilgallen Road and came out with one of the escaped dogs.

A motorist near the same intersection had stopped and managed to capture another one of the breakaway hounds.

Police said the hunt club member on horseback continued on in search of the still four or five dogs on the lam.

“They were last seen (about 9:30 a.m.) running from Kilgallen (Road) toward Suncrest Golf Course on Brownsdale Road,” Davison said.

A hunt club official declined to comment on the incident but did confirm that all of the dogs had been rounded up by 11 a.m.