Animal Magnetism

The Thrill of the Hunt

A life well lived is one filled with pleasures. Troubles and pain find each of us, and it’s up to us to find our own delights. For me, these exist in nature. The Metropolitan Museum of Art delivers pleasure for a time, and the same is true of the theater. But eventually the crowds begin to wear on me.

H. L. Mencken defined Puritanism as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” Good description. That type of personality exists all over the globe among humankind. Animals aren’t that stupid. Unfortunately, in some parts of England and the United States north of the Mason-Dixon Line, Puritan qualities—prudence, thrift, sobriety—are valued above other fine attributes. The Protestant work ethic is hallowed. Poor sods.

Apart from those who have inherited wealth (a curse as well as a blessing), we all must work. I suppose we make a virtue of necessity. For me, it’s necessity. I like my work but I like hunting better. I feel most alive outside, flying along or walking along studying the brush for tufts of fur, small spirals of feathers, scat. Foxhunting is the grand passion of my life.

Again, Americans don’t kill the fox. If a fox is old or sick, yes, it is dispatched, but in the last seventeen years, I’ve had that happen three times. The English kill. Their agricultural practices differ from ours and their enclosure laws have created a nation of lovely squares and rectangles. Not so here. Cultivation over large areas came late to our part of the world—no Roman invasions to begin the process over two thousand years ago. Good news for wild creatures, especially the fox. There are dens in which to disappear, fallen logs to jump up on and lift one’s scent, the dens of other animals to pop into in a pinch. And you can always hop in the back of a station wagon, which I saw a fox do in the late 1980s when a lady had the tailgate of her Wagoneer down. Fox hopped right in as she motored slowly away.

Hunting sharpens my senses, for I must use each of them. The people who come out in all weather add spice to the process. The hunt field isn’t a place for wimps. Foxhunters are throwbacks—another reason why I love them. Physical prowess keeps you in one piece. Sooner or later you’ll break a bone but they heal fast enough. I’ve ridden with broken ribs, separated ribs, broken nose, torn hands. Your adrenaline spikes so high you know you’re hurt but you don’t really feel it until later. I did feel it when a horse went over on me, but I crawled out from under, thank you, Jesus.

The acceptance of risk fades from our world. People want guarantees. Your government lies to you, brokerage houses lie to you, insurance companies lie to you. They tell you they’ll remove or reduce the risk. Impossible. What government can and does do is redistribute the pain depending upon who is in power.

Foxhunters accept risk. I won’t go so far as to say we court it like a bungee jumper.

The images you see of foxhunting usually involve horses at a gallop, people on their backs in varying states of grace, and a lovely pack of hounds forward. In reality, you often walk or trot for an hour or more, depending on conditions, before you move on. You can smell the earth if it’s not frozen, the leaves on the ground as they pulverize, the scent of other animals if your nose is good. Up in the sky you’ll see sundogs glinting. Once a group of us were walking back from a long hunt in early March and we caught a rare sight. Slashes of turquoise crossed the sky at one in the afternoon. It was as if one of the gods had taken a crayon and marked up the heavens. The turquoise was so vivid it stood out against a backdrop of robin’s egg blue and the white clouds. Other times you’ll cast your eyes west, sun on your face, to see gunmetal gray clouds piling up behind the Blue Ridge Mountains. A thin cloud cover soon obscures the sun. Swirls and streams of snow slide down the eastern slope of those fabled mountains. In ten to twenty minutes, depending on the speed of the clouds, the snow will fall on my farm. The fox knows that the snow is coming long before you or I see the clouds. By the time we do, she is snug in her den, tail curled over that black nose.

Everyone needs a passion, something that won’t bring you money, something on which to spend a bit of money, something sublimely impractical, capable of stirring your emotions. Watching your favorite football team can stir your emotions, but you are sitting on your can. Better to keep moving. For some it’s golf. For others it’s gardening.

Such a passion often brings people to good deeds. For instance, many foxhunters are involved in animal rescue, including horses, which are difficult to place and expensive to bring back to health. But we do it because those wonderful animals allow us to do what we love.

Deer hunters all over America contribute to organizations like Hunters for the Hungry. Somehow, our passions do lead us, most of us, to a form of giving. Or teaching young people. If those of us who farm and hunt don’t pass on our skills they’ll be lost by the middle of the twenty-first century. For me, this is a terrifying thought.

We are medium-size predators. Farming is perhaps ten thousand years old, maybe a bit older in some parts of the world, much younger in others. We survived by hunting. We learned to cooperate through hunting. To hunt is to be human. Remove this and slowly you destroy the human animal. Look at what has happened to certain breeds of dogs in the show world. There is no way they can perform the functions for which they were first bred. The AKC has awakened to this threat, as have many of the breed organizations. Extinction, or the diminishing of some wonderful, irreplaceable species, can and will happen if we don’t wake up.

Foxhunting has taught me to cooperate with my horse, the hounds, and other humans. It has also forced me to confront the dangers of untrammeled development. Once concrete is laid over the corn you won’t eat from those acres again and neither will any other life form. From the 1950s onward, suburbanization has gobbled up productive land, created traffic problems, and forced taxes to be raised to pay for services to those developments. I’m opposed to environmentally unsound development.

Foxes, being omnivorous, can and do live in cities. More live in the suburbs. The fox and I, however, flourish in the country. I have noticed an affinity for churchyards for both of us.

I don’t think animals have an impulse toward religion, yet they appear to have affiliations. There’s a fox in Nelson County, Virginia, who is a careless Protestant. The above-mentioned fox keeps a den near Trinity Episcopal Church, displaying little interest in the service or parishioners. However, only a mile down the road reposes the small, abandoned, but lovely St. Mary’s Chapel. A succession of gray foxes have lived there for the last seventeen years, probably longer. As I am directly across the road about twice a month from October to March, I have had occasion to observe their practices. The Hollands, owners of Oak Ridge, have not been able to purchase the chapel, which was once a part of the estate. It sits exposed. John Holland does his best to protect it. Mr. Tyree, former manager of Oak Ridge, now in his high eighties, does his best, too. But out from under John and Rhonda Holland’s protective umbrella one can only expect so much, and occasionally the door will be forced open. When times are bad, as they now are, homeless people have sought shelter there. No heat—but it is a roof over your head. Heather Goodwin, the Hollands’ oldest daughter, helps run the estate. I know preservation of the church concerns her and her husband, too.

Once I parked my horse trailer at the church only to be chastised by a descendant of Thomas Fortune Ryan (he who made Oak Ridge what it is today, which is to say stupendous) for parking there. The descendant was visiting from New York, I think. Our hunt club also does its best to protect the chapel because it has deep meaning for us, a few of us being Catholic and the rest of us adoring the gray fox of St. Mary’s. City people have a hard time imagining why people who have no financial interest in a structure will care for the property. Money, money, money. If we aren’t being paid, how could we possibly care? In short, we were trespassing. So I no longer look out for St. Mary’s. I don’t go where I’m not wanted.

But I still care for the fox. She gets her kibble with wormer once a month. When pregnant, no wormer, obviously, and none until the cubs reach close to six months. One Christmas I left my old rosary beads at her den because Mrs. Mary Tattersall O’Brien, M.D., had given me a new set of silver rosary beads. Quite a present. Later, I checked for my old beads. The fox had pulled them into her den.

Foxes like pretty things almost the way blackbirds do. Maybe that’s why the Catholic fox stays by the chapel. Despite all, beauty lingers, and every now and then I can’t resist. I’ll ring the bell, tidings of joy for a beautiful day, robust health, wily foxes, willing hounds, and kind horses. There’s so much to celebrate. When I can’t contain my happiness I have noticed a pair of eyes peeping out at me. She likes the bell, too. She likes what I bring to her after a hunt even better, for we always have a tailgate. The Catholic fox occasionally cooperates and gives us a run. The Episcopal fox only does so if he’s jumped coming back late from a hunt. Years ago, I did surprise him. He’s a big red. I picked him up on the other side of the racetrack. Mrs. Hazel Wright, still alive then, delighted in having us hunt her land, which sits smack in the middle of Oak Ridge. Until the last two decades of her life—she was close to a hundred when she died—one of our members would bundle her up and walk her out so she could listen. Her sight was gone by then. Whoever inherited this duty then heard all her hunting stories, and she had stored up quite a collection. I miss her.

The Episcopal fox, down in an old barn that was maybe a mile west of the house by the farm roads, must have fallen asleep on a full stomach. All this land lies south of Oak Ridge’s above-mentioned wonderful racetrack. The horn awakened him and he shot out of that barn like a bat out of hell. What a run, straight as an arrow. We had to negotiate a less than perfect coop in the fence line by the racetrack. A coop is an attractive jump built into a fence line, so named because it resembles a big chicken coop. We stayed on the outside of the track. His tail was straight out, his stride stretched to the fullest. What a glorious sight. Foxes are fast. The hounds closed in, keeping about ten yards behind. He crossed the macadam road. No traffic—we breathed a collective sigh of relief. The choir boomed from Trinity; we could hear the hymn. The fox disappeared, either into the graveyard or perhaps into a den by the foundation. I couldn’t find out because the hounds were considering joining the service. And in full cry. The field—the people following the hounds on horseback—had the great good sense to pull up on the east side of the church by the graveyard.

I couldn’t blow my horn or I’d disturb the service, but I had to retrieve my hounds. Dr. Mary (our nickname for Dr. Mary O’Brien) was way on the other side of the racetrack where she should have been. My other whipper-in, Dana Flaherty, a Lutheran, was laughing so hard she just about fell off her horse. In other words, she was useless at that exact moment.

I quietly called my hounds, some of whom entered the vestibule. A few canine heads turned my way, but the singing inside Trinity thrilled them. Some of them stepped out of the vestibule to find that smart fox. Finally, after pleading, I managed to extract the remainder. The minister, a marvelous soul who blesses our hounds on opening hunt, Rev. Judy Parrish, saw fit not to fly out and deliver a blessing of another sort. I was never so glad to ride away from a place in my life. Those of us who lived through that incident occasionally recall it.

This Episcopal fox lacks Christian charity. We picked him up two years later heading out of the graveyard. He barreled straight to Route 29, a four-lane highway heavily traveled, and ducked into a culvert under the road. Some of my hounds crossed the road. No one was hurt. I blew my horn and held the rest of the pack, and John Morris, Jr. wheel whip (meaning he’s in the truck), laid rubber getting around to that spot, which was a good two miles from where I was in the meadows. Thank God, the hounds returned to the horn. Snow lay on the ground. I shivered a bit as I counted heads. “All on” means all your hounds are together, and they were. Except for Juno.

Later that night, Mr. Wright (no relation to Hazel) called to tell me he had found Juno dead among his cattle, not a mark on her. John picked her up and we buried her, with difficulty. We needed a pickax to dig, for the ground was like concrete. It could be she died of shock from having been hit by a car. I still mourn Juno, for she was a terrific hound bursting with Bywaters blood, a line I prize. But Juno was naughty about returning to the horn. She’d keep hunting until it suited her to stop. Much as I miss her, and she was a beauty as well, she reminded me of this old piece of wisdom: Don’t keep a hound if he or she doesn’t listen to you or your horn. The foxhunting word to describe an obedient hound is “biddable.” So in foxhunting terms: Don’t keep a hound that isn’t biddable.

I avoid the Episcopal fox. Murder rests in his heart. Even the good words of “Father Judy” (I tease Rev. Parrish thus) don’t soften his attitude.

As for the Catholic fox, I saw her last week when I cruised through Oak Ridge. Her children are dispersing to form dens of their own. One—I’m pretty sure it’s hers—lives in front of the grand estate, sunning himself and cavorting, mostly to amuse the Hollands.

When I first saw Oak Ridge in the early 1970s there was a tree growing up through the breakfast room and out through the roof. How sad to see such grandeur fallen to ruin. It’s all restored now. Back then, I also found a family of black foxes. They’re grays, really, but so dark they look black. To this day, Oak Ridge has black foxes; they have traveled as far as Mrs. Anne Fortune Henderson’s Cherry Hill, maybe three miles away as the crow flies but further for us. They’ve also made it all the way to the Upper James River, for I have seen them at the Old Norwood estate. How beautiful they are. I have also seen one that was raised as a pet. I was driving and saw him walking along. I stopped to pick him up, then noticed the collar with a nameplate on it. This was a good ten years ago, but that was one happy fox.

My hounds are Episcopalian. For close to fourteen years, the Reverend Daniel Wheeler blessed them. He passed away Saturday, October 4, 2008. Although a Baptist, he never chided the hounds for their Episcopalian affiliation. Possessed of a voice that could herald angels, when he blessed them, all those hound heads, and horses, too, turned to face him, ears forward, eyes bright. The hounds loved him. You can tell when hounds favor someone, and Reverend Wheeler was beloved. For years he headed a church and we would all contribute as a thank-you for the blessing. After he retired, he simply wouldn’t take a penny. “Feed the hounds,” he’d say with a smile.

Now, most of you know that an unemployed minister is hardly a millionaire. Rev. Wheeler’s generosity touched all of us who were staff. His son, David, is one of my Joint Masters. Bob Satterfield, he of the deadly charm, is the other.

When David called to tell me his dad had left us, I went to the hounds. My grandfather and great-uncle told me whenever someone hounds love passes, you must tell them. This is also true of bees. You must go to the hive.

The hounds know. How? I don’t know. The usual excitement that greets me every time I go to my children was subdued. They live with me but on the other side of the creek. I can walk to the kennels in seven minutes. I sat with them to inform them of our loss. We considered how lucky we all were to know such a man and his family. Good people. His wife, a great beauty whom age has not dimmed, was married to him for sixty-odd years. His daughter, Rosemary, by the way, looks just like her mother, a real head-turner. Hounds understand fidelity, love, and kindness. David and his siblings, Marion, Rosemary, and Tim, share these traits.

Three years ago I named a wriggly puppy Wheeler for Rev. Wheeler. Now a full-grown hound, he’s a whopping seventy-five pounds at least, and quite noticeable in the field. He’s just coming into his own. He hunted the Sunday after Rev. Wheeler’s call to glory. He hunted the best he’s ever hunted in his life. The Reverend Daniel Wheeler would have been proud.

On December 21, 2007, I was also given a reminder of how animals know when someone they love has gone on. Al Toews (pronounced Tays) was Master of Bassets of Ashland Bassets in Warrenton, Virginia, about an hour and a half north of my farm. Al, a combat helicopter pilot in Vietnam, was a good hound man. Like most men who have actually fought in a war he never paraded his masculinity. He was a real man, and the hounds responded to his authenticity. Hunting hounds wasn’t natural to Al. He had to learn, and he did so pretty much as he’d learned to fly helicopters, by breaking everything down into sequences. He became a good huntsman and a good hound breeder, importing Gascon Bleus from France for an infusion to his pack, a masterstroke. Sometimes when hunting he lacked the patience of his Joint Master, Mary Reed, who now hunts the hounds and is a natural. Both Mary and I, in those few minutes we snatch to catch up, talk about how much we learned from Al precisely because he wasn’t a natural. He left volumes of notes and clippings, which his widow, Kathleen King, is wrestling into shape when she isn’t struggling with the aftermath. Al, a stubborn man, didn’t leave a will. A week before he died he said he’d make one and then boom, there went his heart.

This story leads back to my hounds, but first I have tell you a little more about Al. He was a true introvert, as am I, the difference being that I had cotillion so you’d never know. Al, from Nebraska, never heard of cotillion until he landed, literally, in Virginia. He and I—well, for me it was love at first sight. I simply adored him, a common response among women. Kathleen endured it. Al hadn’t a clue. Women and hounds loved him. He preferred hounds.

He drafted (gave) me four bassets to start my pack: Leah, Luciano (her son), Robin, and the aptly named Outlaw. From them I bred two litters. Two years later, the day Al died, I walked into their kennel to feed, clean, and exercise the bassets. This is an afternoon chore, as the foxhounds are worked in the morning. So it’s the close of my working day and I look forward to it. The youngsters bounced up, but Leah, Luciano, Robin, and Outlaw looked as though they’d eaten poison. Listless, depressed, no appetite. For a basset not to have an appetite is frightening. They’ll eat you out of house and home. They can be at death’s door yet still pig out. I took their temperatures, checked gums; they seemed okay. Worried though I was, I’ve been around animals long enough to know that you shouldn’t panic. Unless you know it’s serious or you see the injury, wait a bit before calling the vet. It’s the equivalent of taking an aspirin and calling the doctor in the morning.

Dr. Mary worked with dogs while in medical school. She’s used to my frequent queries and is always gracious about it. I went inside to call her, picked up the phone, and got the message beep. Kathleen had left a message that Al had just died of a heart attack while driving his truck. A pilot to the end, he got it off the road so as not to harm anyone else. How this man did that in excruciating pain I will never know. He was a warrior. The four hounds knew before I did because Al trained and hunted them for years. I hurried back out, sat with Leah and Robin, petted the boys. We helped one another but it took a good two weeks for them to return to their ebullient selves.

The bassets, I’m pretty sure, are Catholic, although Al was not. There’s a touch of Rome about them. They adore ritual and adornment, and they wait for me to issue papal bulls. Only, with them I suspect they emphasize the bull.

Animals feel and they feel deeply, some more than others, just like some people. That they know about death before we do is a mystery. And yet I have friends who have told me that when someone they loved passed away, they woke up to see the departed in their room or felt that the figure had come to their desk at work. They were surprised, scared in some cases, when they found out that the visitation occurred at the loved one’s time of death.

I am not blinded by science. I don’t need answers for much of what I don’t know. That I observe and feel is enough for me. I fear we are hag-ridden by logic, losing spontaneous beauty and wisdom. I trust my senses. I trust myself. Those animals that love you know. They also know when you’re sick, often before you do. I trust my animals, on many levels, more than I trust myself.

Anyone who thinks animals don’t have emotions is a blistering idiot. I’ll give ground on religion. Maybe my St. Mary’s fox doesn’t really care for mass, but does she feel, can she be weary with sorrow, leap for joy? You bet. While I don’t think my foxes have read the Bible, there is a passage they follow religiously: “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord.” They sure do. And we should, too.