I made a swing through Tennessee to Georgia to pick up horses, hunt horses of course, and chased around after hounds along the way. Some of those hunts were worth mentioning, and I'll try and recount them here in perhaps not so wordy a format as I may be wont to use.
My mother, who is also on this List, sort of asked me out of the blue one day to be on the lookout for a hunter for her (the last one so acquired had a few nasty habits which I will describe later) and she knew I was making a trip to Hillsboro, a very good place to get such a horse. I've described the first ever hunt I attempted with that pack in a previuos post, and found a horse that first time there for her with Johnny and Karen Gray. A horse that I thought she could ride. Based on the Grays reputaion and on my reccomendation, my parents bought the horse, a sixteen plus hand gray thoroughbred, previuosly hunted by numerous guests to Hillsboro, whipped-in off of by Karen, and used by Dennis Downing to hunt hounds off of during the Hillsboro Field Trial. On my return trip to pick up that horse and another down in Georgia I figured I'd confirm the wisdom of the purchase and ride behind the Hillsboro Hounds again on the First of March. It was a wise decision.
If you saw an aluminum stock trailer with some faded and peeling Foxboro Hounds signs stuck to the side on the highways or in gas stations (like some did) then you were witness to a tiny portion of the trip I made earlier this month. The driving was fine, no incidents to report, so the tale is mercifully short. (that rhymed!) I got to Cornersville, TN in one piece and ready to watch the Hillsboro Hounds in action again.
Conditions weren't exactly classicly ideal for hunting that Wednesday, and I think Johnny drew out some older, a tad slower, but more cold nosed and perhaps better bobcat dogs than he might otherwise have if the day had looked like a flyer. Temps were in the seventies, hunidity felt low, sky was clear as a bell, and a slight breeze was blowing, desiccating grass, ground, trees, leather, lips, and parching throats. It seemed dry.
Irish (wouldn't you know that would be his name), the horse my parents had just purchased, was in good form as I lead him out of the trailer, and I slapped my saddle on his back, affixing a borrowed bridle and breast plate to his head. Both lent items of tack were sized to fit a big headed quarter horse and needed adjusting to skinny tb levels. The nose band was so loose as to have been useless in it's intended task, but not to fear because Irish was very easy in his mouth. Irish jigs a bit before the going really starts, and he and Johnny's horse fed off each other for the first fifteen minutes, egging each other on to new heights of shimmying and sidestepping.
The first place to draw was one of those "never drawn blank" coverts that everyone seems to have, and of course the conditions of the day proved the exception to the rule. The place was a tangle of brush, vines, prickly branches, and game trails, perfect covert for a coyote to lay up in or a bobcat to inhabit and looked gamey as all get out. Hounds were so disinterested with the potential for anything to materialize, however, that Johnny rode through the middle of that mess to encourage dilligence to the task, and I sidled along the outside to get a look for anything breaking covert into the hardwoods that bordered the tangle.
Most of the way along through this wonderful looking covert one hound spoke. A deep, authoritative voice proclaimed to all his comapdres, the hunt staff, the Field, and probably the next county that something runable was about. The hound was Midland Churchill, '94 (or so) who was getting up there in years but possessed an excellent nose, big voice, and is the sire of several puppies across the country. He worked a slow line up a hill, but none of his pals could help out or smell and Johnny decided to let that alone and move on.
The next covert was a more bobcatty looking place, and I got sent on a bit ahead (I was riding with Johnny that day) to see if anything bolted out of covert close to hounds. Karen, Chad, and the other Hillsboro staff who knew where they were going were stationed at distant intervals to be able to get with the pack quickly if a coyote got up and away from the huntsman. I was the huntsman helper fo the day.
Moving off on Johnny's flank and a bit uphill from him, almost everything in Hillsboro country has two directions, a compass point and an elevation consideration, I heard a brief flurry of hound voices, in a line with the last place Churchill had spoken just over the brow of the last ridge, and moved up to a cross path to se if a cat would pop out. Nothing. Night lines maybe? Johnny stuck with his plan amd moved on to yet another tangled place, asking that I take a station ahead to see if anything would pop out now.
I followed a trail that was nice and wide, most hillsboro trails are bush hogged for ease of maintenance, a very nice touch, but this one eventually peetered out and vanished. I tried bushwhacking to lkeep station while hoping to find another cut trail but was eventually stopped by an unpassable fenceline and an outgrowth of vines that looked like a fish sieve. Giving up hope of looking out in favor of just keeping up, I abandined that course and made for more open country, meaning hardwoods not completely blocked up with creepers and vines. I discovered just how handy and bendable Irish was by sneaking around trees, backing up from unbreaking vines, and picking through sinkholes and ditches. Sighting a space of clear going just beyond a widowmaker log (crosswise tree at about head height,) I steered Irish for the gap and perhaps gave him a boost without paying close enough attention. The top of my huntcap connected with the tree limb and I telescoped my neck a bit as I banged through. Took some bark off both tree and cap. Ouch.
I made my way back to Johnny and looked on as the hounds drew through a classic bobcat covert, full of little criss crossing trails and brambles. Johnny marched into the middle to encourage hound participation, and I and a regualr whipper-in looked on. This covert was also in a general line as the previous two places hounds spoke, and in this place, to, hounds started speaking and working a line. They swirled this way and that, moving through the thickest stuff while opening, a bobcat indicator. They tried one direction and then another, never really working out where the critter went, and once again Johnny picked them up to try a new place.
As we drew up and along the side of a deep fold in the hillside, a direction some of the hounds were trying to go initially, the pack suddenly opened with gusto and roared off uphill. Johnny and I followed in their wake, straight uphill and dodging trees left and right through a trailless wood while the other fellow at that covert with us flew around on trails to get uphill. Do you see a pattern developing? It took us until later in the day to figure out that the very first covert had probably held and we were just bumping this thing along. And the way it ran in the woods had coyote stamped all over it.
Johnny and I reached the top of that big hill, big enough though average for that country, and reached hounds as scent failed and cry fizzled out. Back to the drawing board. Johnny took hounds around the end of the next hill in an effort to regain the line, but the face of hillside he was drawing was sunbaked and dry, death to holding scent. I met up with the pack down in the bottom between that hill and the next as Johnny attempted drawing the other side of this little valley. The hounds picked up some line and went roaring off back the way they'd come from the stream that divided the bottom of this paticular fold. Johnny snarled and we knew it was not right at worst, heel at best and several of us took off ot head the pack. Hounds came right back, and Johnny at the time figured it was the line of some cur dogs inhabiting the area. Hind sight made us think more of a heel line on the coyote we were bumbing, either way it was counterproductive.
Headed back in the right direcion, the pack drew the thick places on the next hill face. And again we got some reaction out of hounds, but nothing to really hang a hat on. That is, until they hit the woods at the top of the ridge and bolted off like a shot in full cry. I can't remember if someone got a look at the coyote at that point, but there was no doubt what was in front of these hounds and the race was on.
Uphill and down we went, through pastures and across yards out to Blue Creek Rd., one of the mainlines through the middle of Hillsboro country. Hounds had gotten across Blue Creek like a shot, and we could just get a climpse of them as we came up to the road. We'd opened several gates to get to that point, maybe jumped a coop, but got really checked up at a series of three metal gates off Blue Creek away fromt he direction we'd just come. Johnny got one gate, I got the next, and Chad got the final one, each of us working in a relay with me jogging the forty yard distance from gate two to three on foot. I about keeled over from heart failure as my cardiovascular system said joging uphill in this heat wasn't a good idea. I THOUGHT I was fit enough, wasn't, and felt respect for horses and hounds that were doing real work.
Johnny caught a sound of hounds and raced on, leaving Chad and I to do up the last gate and catch up. We two topped a hill, jumped a coop, and I held up as I saw Johnny stopped 200 yards ahead and heard hounds open hard on my left. Johnny made a whoop, motioned us up to him and tok off down the opposite slope of the hill we'd just crested, hounds flying to and in front of him. He'd seen the coyote!
Chad and I road up to him through the rolling cow pasture we were in, heading toward a pond where Johnny had seen a big, black coyote bolt away from. Just as we were about to follow Johnny to and around the pond a group of six or eight couple took off tangentially to the main pack. What a time for a split. I looked at both the renegades leaving fast and Chad fighting his horse to move toward them and knew that my horse could do the job, so off we went. Chad caught up and we stopped the split and ushered them back to the main body, but at the sacrifice of staying with the run. Chad's radio allowed us to follow the path the pack had taken, but everything was over by the time we caught up. Such is life.
The coyote had cricled back to Blue Creek Rd. and made for a fenceline right in front of Karen Gray. The pack came over the hill on the heels of Wiley, speaking like fiends, and one canny old hound saw Karen on the road trying to turn the critter and left the line to make a grab at the pursued. Ghaza was the hounds name, and he caught and rolled the coyote, snatching at the ear of the quarry, but the coyote was full of more tricks and was able to leap away from old Ghaza and got away clean.
Chad and I made the scene minutes after this business went down, Chad's horse on three shoes from an overreach during the run, but everyone happy as calms at the cool run that had developed out of nothing. The hack back to the trailers over hill and dale was kind of long, but it gave us time to work out just what had happened. Piecing everything together, it looked like we'd come up on a coyote track from the very first and steadily got closer until hounds were able to jump him up and smoke him. I was treated to a birds eye view of the absolute synergy that can happen between hounds and staff, the combination of cold noses, biddable hounds that honor each other, staff that knows it's tricky country and how to get around it as a team, trust in hound ability and trust in huntsman to help the pack across difficult scenting patches, culminating in catching right up to the hunted quarry. I wish I could do justice to what actually happened and I'm not sure I even understand it all now.
Oh, and Irish was perfect the whole time.
A little background before I describe the day to help fix the terrain and the players in your mind before I describe hunting there and forget, in my enthusiasm, to do the place justice.
Tired of stopping hunting around January in Illinois because of cold and slippery conditions, but mostly because of the cold I think, those responsible for providing the hunting for Fox River Valley, Vicki Fitch, MFH and Tony Leahy, jt.MFH began searching around for suitable Winter quarters for the hounds in a place that would allow the hunting season to continue and even expand if possible. FRVH tried visiting in the Carolinas, but that was at the invitation of other hunts and the problems of being perpetual visitors made themselves manifest. Other, not necessarily greener, pastures were searched out. Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, and other states were considered in a search that lasted somewhere around two years, give or take, with a friend of the hunt pointing the initial way to South Georgia. The country was visited, met with approval, and steps were taken.
That's enough of how the relocation came about. Many more details of how the hunt established itself down there are obviously missing from this report, but those tidbits make much better fare for sitting around a table in the evening over a cup of tea told first person. Suffice it to say that this move down south by FRVH was a classic exercise in developing hunt territory the correct way.
To describe the terrain is both easy and difficult. Easy because the natural beauty of the place lends itself to description, difficult because the distances covered are out of my usual bounds of reckoning. Pieces of property down there are casually referred to in the thousands of acres where I'm more used to dealing in the hundreds, and it's not easy for me in the best of circumstances to estimate area or distance. I'll give it a whack, though.
This area around Morgan, GA has several distinct land uses, creating some pretty diverse hunting conditions and territory specific barriers to getting around. The countryside is intensely crop farmed where possible, strewn about with cattle where practical, and taken up with quail plantation where desirable. The crops consist of most things you can grow here in the States, corn, wheat, peanuts, beans, and cotton. Yes, my first introduction to cotton rag left over in the field was down near Morgan, engendering the subject lines of many of my latter posts about hunting from last year. The first time seeing left over cotton balls in the field had me puzzled for nearly half an hour until, with help, I worked out what it was. My powers of deduction are, at times, underwhelming.
Plowed ground makes up a good portion of the territory presently hunted by FRVH in Georgia. The ground is a mixture of soil, sand, and clay, chalky brown in parts, deeply red in others, but excellent footing throughout. Imagine hunting in a vast sand schooling ring and you have an idea. The plowed up sections are cut through and bounded off from each other by deep, thick, tangled, bushy, brushy, thorny, viney, tree festooned, swampy, low places. These low spots are needed for drainage, or rather, are there because they are good for nothing else but drainage, oh yeah, and covert. To take a horse into one of these rough old places means you know of a path cut through, are desperate to stop or keep up with a hound, or you've no idea what you're getting into. I've been off my horse a big bunch of times in that "stuff" (keeping it clean for the kiddies,) wire cutters in hand to cut my horse out of vines, or brambles, or both mostly because of the third reason I gave to go into the tangle above. Fortunately, for each such episode I was riding a level headed horse that would stand still when hog-tied like that.
Cattle country in GA is like cattle country pretty much everywhere, excepting the nasty low places that occupy ground next to the cows as well as the plow. High, tight, new cattle fencing is interspersed with old, rusty, lower cattle fencing. Some fence is electrified, some is barb wire, some is woven wire, but all gets in the way. Standard chicken coop rigs dot the countryside, outnumbered by post and rails, though neither type of jump is nearly as numerous as will be the case in a few years. I've helped put in a few coops in my short career, and I expect to become an expert at it err I'm done, but I know what an energy commitment it is to get the things installed. I have it on good authority that anyone handy with a hammer, or able to lift large, unwieldy objects will be welcomed with open arms.
The last type of country open to FRVH down there would be quail plantation, a type of country very familiar to those who hunt with Live Oak. I'd no clue about the stuff before seeing it first hand, and I've only followed a pack of beagles into that type of terrain, but the consensus is it's brilliant country to hunt. For those who haven't seen a quail shooting plantation, it's got trees, mostly pine, widely dispersed. Low brush and creepers fill in the spaces, but everything is open and airy feeling compared to the tangle along the cricks and sloughs in the cattle and plow country. Quail do well in 60% sunshine, if I have it right, so every year the quail plantations hold an undergrowth burn off to keep things open and the quail happy. As a result, a horse can pretty much go anywhere, in all directions, at speed.
The Fox River Valley gang have over 10K acres of property to run across, and when I mean over, I mean that number could probably double, but just one farm operator has given permission and access for just the ground he and his family farm to the tune of 10K. See what I mean by hard to comprehend scale? The fellow that was so generous, and I've met him and his family and have given up trying to find a more friendly, helpful, and generally nice set of people (I'm fortunate, though, to know a whole raft of people equally as wonderful,) sold a small chunk of ground to the hunt for a barn, kennels, kennelman quarters, and just this year a proper house for hunt use. There's nothing ostentatious about the physical plant, but everything is workable, well thought out and planned, and terribly comfortable. I visited three times this year and was loath to leave at all.
Right, that's enough background. Why was I down there in the first place? I kind of like to hunt, and FRVH is a prime pack to hunt behind. I was lucky enough to be able to send a horse down with Fox River Valley at the end of our hunting season in Illinois, a horse I figured would suit the country and also make himself useful when I was not able to be there. His name is Rocky (Rockn' if you ask my Mom) and one tough little s.o.b. Rocky kept me coming back, I mean, I had a horse there so I'd better justify the expense of shipping. Had nothing to do with the fact that the people down there are fun to be with at all. Nope, didn't figure in the least.
A normal day hunting with FRVH down there has just two or three people on horses behind the hounds. I've been on one or two of those days, but the day I'll describe was different for several reasons. First, and I'd like you to keep this in the back of your mind throughout the description of the day, we were invited to the Live Oak hunt ball that Saturday night, the Fourth of March. Nothing like hunting and then going to a big fancy party. There was also talk of hunting with Live Oak Sunday morning at seven, but that idea got nixed, for reasons that will become apparent.
Secondly, we had seven people mounted that day, a large gathering. Tony hunted hounds, ably assisted by Paul Jeremy (hope I got the name right Pokey) who was in turn accompanied by Kevin Ward, jt.MFH for the Cornwall Hounds in Illinois. Heidi Leahy, Tony's much better half, just ask, was leader of the female patrol consisting of herself, Paul's event riding girlfriend Allison (I rode her horse briefly that day and marveled at her riding ability. She's good!,) and Karen Ward, married to Kevin. Oh, and myself. I'd been out with that number of folks in that location earlier in the year, and with slightly more than that number once last year, but that was a pretty big group for down there. Used up all the saddles in the barn to mount everyone.
Third and last reason the day was out of the ordinary, but for a more personal reason. The last time I'd been to Morgan, old Rocky had been lamed up with a nasty abscess. This horse had once had his hoof sole impaled by a piece of sheet metal, had the offending item extracted mid hunt, and kept on going without taking a lame step. This abscess, garnered probably from an over reach that caused a bad contusion that became infected, had the horse dead hopping lame. Three days of soaking and icthamol (sp?) finally burst the pus pocket, providing almost instant relief, but the rest of the healing process took a while, to the tune that Rocky hadn't been ridden for better than two weeks, or, not since the last time I'd taken him out the day after the St.Valentine's/Hallmark Greeting Cards celebration. Rocky at this point had been used to great effect in Georgia and surrounding areas, was as ripped fit as any horse has ever been, and hadn't been out in days and days. Anyone care to guess what type of horse I thought I was going to be riding that day? Thankfully, we were able to ride by ourselves, which is Rocky's strong suit.
Janice Sensi mentioned rain in a hunt report, and the ability of some of Maryland's hunt country to absorb or deflect moisture in incredible mounts and still be huntable the next day. South Georgia is like that, good drainage and sandy soil to provide good footing even after a deluge. A killer tornado had come through that area in February, dumping lots of rain on Morgan, but the ground was fine to ride on mere days afterwards. March 3rd left a present for the 4th in the form of rain, but at seven in the morning when we all mounted up, you'd barely know any substantial amount of precipitation had been deposited. Puddles, that was all.
With radios distributed and activated, almost essential items of equipment in that country to be effective or safe, everyone settled into saddles, and smiling, Tony took the hounds off in the direction of the first draw. I'd been detailed off to make sure the kennel hounds, irate at being left, didn't start up a row or try and scale the kennel fence to join their lucky buddies. Rocky getting left isn't usually a problem. Rocky catching up can be a wild ride, but I manfully took up my station, bracing for an equine as well as kenneled canine outburst as the pack hacked down the drive to the first covert.
Oh, I forgot to describe the pecan trees which occupy pasture and field with cattle and crops all over the Georgia farm country. The kennel complex has lots of these tall, majestic, yet limb dropping, messy trees, and the sight of the hounds and staff moving off under the spread branches of the pecan's evoked a bygone era. Matter of fact, the whole atmosphere in that area is a unique blend of old and new. Dirt roads abound, kept in shape by modern scraping equipment. Fields are laid out as they have been for probably hundreds of years, but are worked by men on tractors instead of men behind mules. Unpainted houses from a hundred years ago sit next to porch girdled manses from even further back in time that butt up next to fifty year old feed and seed store warehouses that are neighbors to BP Amoco filling stations with brand new pick up trucks at the pumps. I had a smile and wave for nearly everyone and usually got as good as I gave.
Okay, so hounds were far enough away for me to move away from the kennels, which I did, and at a surprisingly sedate pace. We actually trotted to catch up, a fast trot obviously, but controlled none the less. We became last in line, Rock and I, with no real need to move up to take a hound control station and Rocky was fine with that situation. I had to check to see if I was on the right horse because Rock is not the behind anyone kind of animal. His one fault. Rocky used to race, usually above his head, and as a consequence during his entire racing career he was behind more experienced horses and was beat and cajoled into trying to be number one. He's got speed, and tons of heart, but was subject to this unfortunate training that makes him feel inadequate if he isn't the lead horse while in company. He will stand perfectly still as a whole herd goes streaming by, but once he joins the flow he is mad to be the leader. But he wasn't hot to be the lead that morning and I honestly can't say why.
Our first draw wasn't too terribly far from kennels, and as Tony brought the hounds around to draw from South to North, almost every hound head came up in unison, winding something in the covert as they passed, and so Tony put them into this swampy low place, standing water evident through the bushes in places, and they immediately went to work. Rock and I trotted back up the road the way we'd come, watching for something to pop out, and by golly I was in the right place at the right time to view what was either a gray fox or bobcat (thought I saw a tail but wasn't sure) and gave a tally-ho ten minutes into the hunt. The very beginning of what was a game filled day for me.
Hounds were brought to the exact crossing place in very good order, no one deciding to stay behind to hunt on their own, and within seconds began speaking to confirm my sighting. Always good to have hounds validate your observations, especially those that are solo, as this one was. The place the quarry ran into had been burnt out within the last few days, allowing hounds to get right into the covert, but something wasn't exactly right. Once the hounds first spoke I trotted further back up the road to get a look at anything breaking out of this brushy spot, but wasn't encouraged by the amount of, or lack of, hound voices. It was obvious that hounds were working tracks in the covert, but not enough voices were engaged, indicating weak scent. Paul viewed what he believed to be a coyote leave that covert for another, and the hounds were lifted forward to this new line in an effort to get something really going and not one hound spoke on the new line. The theory for the lack of voice and scenting was soot packed foot pads on fox or coyote, stuck there by the rain form t he night before, and disallowing scent to act in a helpful manner. A portent for the rest of the day?
Tony called hounds out and headed for a nearby woods that had produced a good running gray fox in most previous draws, a covert I actually remembered and took up appropriate station with little prompting. Hounds did indeed find, spoke in the right spots, totally ignored the deer they flushed out, but were as ineffective on this line as the last. Nuts! At this point the radio I was carrying ran out of juice, incomplete contact with the poles of the charging unit to be blamed, and I was back to using ears, eyes, voice, and intuition to be any kind of help.
Tony continued the draw on in back of and around into the "bull field," another isolated spot I could locate on a map, he following the sound of hounds opening every once in a while on some kind of a line. I'd been left to guard to the north of this covert, giving up station when everything had gone out of earshot, catching up with Tony at a wire gap and ending up in the bull field proper. The bull field had been electrified, and hounds were getting shocked left and right as they entered the pecan tree dotted pasture to pack up by a curious hot wire slung along the very bottom of the barber fence. Goats are also kept in this pasture which I guess is the reason for the low to the ground electricity. A coop gets one out to a road, complete with rider to keep cows confined and I was asked to knock said rider down in preparation for jumping. I tried to lift the rider off with my whip, it was too tight, and ended up getting off Rocky only to discover a continuation of the hot-wire in a bad place. A white, three quarter inch plastic tape woven with electrified metal was stapled to the top board of the coop. Horses could jump out over that easily, but the hounds were going to get blasted to smithereens once they touched the top board to push off into the open. No glorious jump to take, but instead a gate to be opened.
Gathering up our forces, horses and hounds, we made it across yet another dirt road, also one that was familiar to me ( I must be catching on to things in my old age.) We stopped to chat with a pickup truck containing a pair of local fellas, kin to some of the landowners in the area, describing the frustration of the day so far. These guys were not new to hunting, nor even fox hunting, but were just getting used to the idea of chasing fox and coyote during the day with a pack on horses. Instead of nodding and being polite, they were very curious and very interested in how our hunting was going, no matter how the hunt was conducted. That describes the general attitude of most people down there. Hunting is a way of life and a celebration, and anyone who shows talent and expertise is to be commended even when the style is unfamiliar. The fact that a large pack of foxhounds is so well trained, in their simplified version of what we do, that they will come when called, etc. is novel and intriguing, and has opened territory for hunting in and of itself.
Bidding goodbye to the vehicle clad hunters, we tried yet another covert gauged to produce a fox. The last time we'd drawn this covert a fox had been put to ground in there, and we were hoping to get the thing to run on a bit. Alas, nothing. We'd been out maybe three hours by now, some of these coverts take a long time to draw when they're blank, and thoughts of knocking off for the day entered the hearts and minds of several gathered. Tony picked up the hounds and hacked them back towards the kennels (through some scary pigs at one stretch) and we figured we were on the way in. Figured wrong.
Very close to the very first covert of the day having hunted back around in a giant circle, Tony kneed Chester, a white stallion owned by his Mother-In-Law, Nancy Schmid, over off the road and onto the wide as anything grass roadside and ditch, making for a coop off the road and the covert on the other side. The roadsides down there are unbelievably horse friendly, one can ride with confidence in any line, including along the bottom of the ditch, and the grass is wide enough to contain the entire pack of hounds away from the road and still move forward. Onto this stuff Tony moved and asked Paul to drop the coop rider so everyone could get into the next field in further attempts to find something to chase.
We had a little interlude here as Paul carried out his task. Paul was mounted on an ex-show jumper named Finest. I'd ridden Finest on his very first hunt and been dumped unceremoniously two hours in when Finest figured there wasn't anything in his mouth bit wise to keep him confined and took off with me aboard like so much corn meal in a sack, leaving me upside down in a tree line as he made back for the trailers. Better riders than I cured that deficiency, but old Finest had more tricks up his sleeve. As Paul reached for the pole atop the coop, Finest took the opportunity to spook, rear, and fall over backwards. I say took the opportunity because I had a perfect vantage point from which to evaluate the situation. Paul's reach was not sudden, nor awkward, nor anything that would make a normal horse spook. The horse went up in a controlled way and came down like a tumbler breaking his fall in a hunched up rolling motion. The horse scrambled up with no apparent injury, was not in the least perturbed, but was just far enough out of reach to see his escape path and cantered all the way back to the barn.
With a look of disappointment on his face at the pack of us not grabbing up his animal, Paul stood around looking floored as to what to do next. The horse was in no way confused and knew exactly what he was up to, and even accomplished his goal of ending the hunt early. Guilty at not reacquiring Finest for Pal, I hopped off Rocky and gave him to Paul in case he needed a horse for hound control and set off on foot to either catch the horse, or help ride it back when finally caught. Heidi and Allison brought Finest back from the barn area, he'd gone maybe a mile and a half to two miles to get back to the stable, and I hopped up on Allison's horse as Allison road Finest back to the rest of our party. Allison was on a horse having back trouble and was obliged to stay up off of it's spine for most of the day. She was also in a skimpy close contact rig that about had me on the ground three or four times as we hacked back to the group. I wouldn't have lasted another fifteen minutes in that saddle, and Allison had been in it all day. My hat went off to her and I told her so.
Horses back in proper places, we popped over the coop, though some got stuck at it and had some trouble with the jump, and on to the next covert which had apparently been the covert we'd been making for from the beginning. We fixed the time at eleven thirty, Heidi looking at her watch and worrying about getting back to the barn in time to prepare for the ball that night. I, on the other hand, was experiencing stomach cramps of horrendous proportions, and was gaining sympathy for all those afflicted with monthly visits of these things. Hard to sit a horse when your gut is on fire. But we're tough, we fox hunters, so on we all went.
Having had enough riding by myself without any radio contact, I attached myself to Heidi, Karen, and Allison. I didn't literally attach myself, but you get the picture. Tony sent Paul off to the west, he took the center of this new covert, and we in the gallery took the east side as we drew toward the North. I was the gentleman and got a series of gates for our little crowd, questioning my decision to be gate getter after trying to hoist my leg into the stirrup while cramps contracted my stomach muscles. I about didn't make it back into the saddle on the last gate and was on the very edge of taking Rocky home when hounds spoke. Typical.
Let's take stock of the situation at this point. We'd been in the saddle four hours or more, I had a radio that didn't work, riding a horse that was coming off an abscess, my stomach felt like a midget with a bat was tenderizing it for dinner later on that evening, and I was in completely unfamiliar country. So what do I do? I start down a trail running alongside a high, tight wire fence, paralleling hounds as they are speaking ever more authoritatively, dodging tree branches as I scan ahead for a glimpse of anything cutting east and crossing the sun dappled trail in front of me. At a canter. I think I need my head examined.
We passed a newish red gate hung in the fenceline we were running along, Heidi and the other girls coming up from behind when I caught a fleeting glimpse of shaggy gold mottled brown flash across the trail left to right in front of the hounds. One hound that had been leading me down the path, also waiting for something to flush in front went absolutely bonkers as it caught sight of the coyote and I gave my second tally-ho for the day. The only one, again, to see this hunted quarry. Yelling over my shoulder for Heidi to cut left at the gate we'd passed, I went along to where the coyote crossed, helped cheer the hounds on together as they worked out the line under the tight fence into tall weeds, and then cantered further on in an attempt to get into a good position if the coyote jinked back the way he'd come.
Rocky and I sped down the trail, jumping fallen tree limbs, ducking unfallen tree limbs, and trusting that this nice, wide, well tended path actually lead somewhere. My instinct was to get forward or to the right to follow hounds, but the trail eventually stopped in a corner, an ungated corner, and sent me off to the west, my only hope to find a gap into the huge field I could see across a perpendicular fenceline to the one I'd dodged. My frenzy to get into that field was fueled by sight of the coyote absolutely burning out of covert from the brushy stuff he'd cut into, angling diagonally away to the north and west of where I last knew hounds to be. I cursed my frustration into the wind (which was picking up I might add,) and set Rocky a mighty pace across an open hay field in search of a way to the coyote's line.
Rock and I traveled half a mile down that fence, totally alone, assessing and discarding places to jump out along the entire metal length, bemoaning my cursed fate. No gap appeared, and most places that looked jumpable had something overhanging to knock us askew. We two had eventually to retrace our steps and go back through the gate I'd sent Heidi through fifteen or twenty minutes before. As I got through the gate, I caught sight of a few hounds, and heard Faithful open.
I made my was as best I could to the cry (per Eleanor H.) further into the corner of that brushy place the coyote had originally ducked into, hoping to get back into the race. Rock and I dodged weeds taller than I was astride, creepers and old wire that tried to cut Rocky's legs out from under him, winding up in a mess of old fencelines and downed, dead, weed overgrown trees that cut our progress down to nil. Strangely enough, I caught up to Tony just across a nasty wire fence and divulged my meager store of information. It was enough to set Tony straight and give him a clue as to where the hounds had gone. Later, he told me he'd moved from that position just in time to see the last three hounds make their way into a woods and give him an idea where to go.
I attempted to get onto Tony's side of the fence, preparing a place in the wire to jump by draping a stick across as a top line, but was dissuaded by Tony. Instead I moved back into the weed tangle, slowing back to a crawl once again, in an attempt to move to the east and find a gap or gate. Rock and I raced east nearly the same distance we'd gone west, and ran into another corner with no gap. No trees overhung this section of fence, and knowing Rocky had jumped wire before, over we went. I picked a lowish place, put him at the fence, which he stopped on the first time. Fair enough, but this next time we got to get over and over we got. He hung a leg in the top strand of a hot wire stringer, I don't think he saw it or we'd have missed it, and we came down awkwardly. I bent my glasses on his neck, but we both kept upright, and I hadn't sawn a leg off. I checked.
One other time I'd been on Rocky when he stopped dead like that. He pulled a shoe off and pulled a tendon crossing a railroad track at one of those car crossing with boards building up the center and side sections to get autos and trucks across. The ground we jumped across the wire into was deep plow, and I couldn't tell if Rock was feeling funny because of the plow or the wire. I let him pick his own pace for a while, which turned out to be pretty fast after a while, and off we raced to catch up to Tony and the hounds.
Jumping the wire, I'd caught a glimpse of Tony and white Chester across this irrigated field, the same one I'd seen the coyote burning across, and marked the place he disappeared. I've described this day to several people since, and have an honest idea that this irrigated piece of land was probably 1,000 acres. Coyote, hounds, Tony, Chester, and then Rocky and I, and whoever else from our group (I hadn't seen anyone but Tony for half an hour) crossed that stretch of plow, probably as fast as Rocky and I. I could be persuaded that the field was smaller, or bigger, but it sure was immense as I crossed it that day.
Hounds were mostly silent as they crossed that filed, as Tony told me later, but they found they're voices when they reached the woods on the other side. I had one hound with me as we crossed, and I kept an eye on where that character went, eventually hearing the faintest hound voices seemingly coming from behind a set of buildings in some woods across yet another dirt road. I'm not one to go tramping through people's yards as a habit, but no good alternative presented itself if I was to get to where I heard hounds speaking. I made my careful way up a drive and then through the yard of some type of farm family, Rocky and I acquiring an entourage of boxers, three or four, as we waded through. The boxers were curious, but also a little territorial, and one of the buggers attached itself to Rocky and I for about ten minutes. He never made to bight, nor even growl, but he moved in a stiff legged way showing his displeasure at his domain being invaded. For the longest time this boxer dog kept station on Rocky's tail, a place he would not have been able to occupy if I'd been riding my pal Deja (who will smack a dog away from his rear if he's of a mind.)
I finally ditched the boxer at the edge of a cotton field, getting closer to hound cry and also the strident yells of Heidi Leahy as she attempted to cal hounds in. One little bitch coming up from behind heard Heidi, and then me as I started in trying to call in hounds, and then I watched as she struck a line and went screaming off to the north, following the general music of hounds that were also ignoring our summons'. Fine, ride to cry, and this cry was getting a lot stronger.
I retraced some of the steps I'd taken with the boxer on my heels, thankfully he'd gone all the way home, and glanced over my shoulder as Tony entered the cotton field I was about to exit. I hoped he caught sight of me and my direction, no radio to tell him, and way to far away to yell and be understood. My mission at that point was to stay with those hound voices as best I could. And it weren't easy.
The place where the coyote, perhaps a different coyote from the first one I viewed across the path in the patchy sunlight, had made for was a thick banding of woods along the Pachitla Creek. There was water in this creek, access to cattle birthing pastures (afterbirth, yum!) and dense, undisturbed, huge covert. Coyote Heaven and foxhunting staff hell. I could hear hounds just inside the tree line of this covert, large sections of crop land allowing me to keep pace on the outside of the forest. The wind had decided to pick up some more, and hounds would run in towards the center of the covert and the creek, away from the edge, and the combination of dense vegetation and wind would completely dissolve the sound waves that were keeping me in touch. Many times I gauged forward hound progress by the squawking of crows as they were disturbed by the chase.
Rocky and I, profoundly alone, charged along between the edge of these woods and the verge of the plow for what seemed like miles and an eternity. I'd be very interested to know the distance covered, and could probably find out if I wanted, but it seemed like we were going to run out of luck in keeping with hounds way before hounds ran out of covert and scent. Rock and I jumped ditches, avoided chasms, held our breath through weeds, but somehow made it to a place where hounds seemed to be getting closer rather than farther. Maybe luck will be with us.
Turning into a large, what I can only call a bay of plow in a sea of trees, we seemed to have gotten ahead of the hounds and it even looked like I had easy access to a place they were making for that would allow interception. A miracle, especially as a hard op road was fast approaching and would allow the quarry to flit across the creek at a bridge and back down into the other side of the Pachitla, making the task of stopping hounds nearly impossible if that were to happen. I made it to an old, old fenceline, down in most places, and sat in a god spot for a split second to stop the hounds when what should come galloping up to me? You would be right if you guessed a coyote. A big, healthy, fuzzy critter running head up and crafty, and without meaning to I turned that fellow right 180 degrees around and into the oncoming pack, notorious by their strident cry in pursuit of this particular Wiley. Jeez, from being way out of it to right in the thick of it. Persistence pays off.
I hadn't the heart to stop the hounds at that point as they were so close to their quarry. I'm not sure I could have done it if I had wanted to, but I stepped off the line to watch the hounds work it up to the last place I'd viewed. I don't know that many FRVH hounds by sight, but I had no trouble picking out Midland Music, a gift from Midland in the lead and about eight or ten couple tightly grouped around her. The abrupt doubling back of the coyote caused a check, solved by a trailing hound that caught the scent of the new line as it worked back into the woods. Not wanting to see a huge hound split, I cheered the front runners on to the new line, watching in awe as the hounds listened to me and streamed to their comrades, everything turning back due south and running as hard as it could in the precise reverse of the line that had taken us to that northern boundary to begin with.
I though for sure this coyote was done for, but I think it was a relatively fresh one, marked differently than the two I'd seen previously, and it must have had energy to burn to get away from the pack when I turned it. At this point I was beginning to see signs of fatigue in my horse, and figuring regular staff was most likely coming from behind I decided to ease up on our rocketing pace. I couldn't help but beam quietly to myself, however. For a while there, it was me my horse, and a stellar pack of hounds, all together, hunting like anyone would want a pack to hunt, and it had all gone right. At times on that run I was literally almost beside myself with the thrill of that chase. A feeling one hunts all year just to experience for a few seconds and counts the season a success when it happens.
Making our way back south, I ran into Paul, radio intact, and hooked in with him to finish out the run. Eventually hounds slowed down, split a few times, and settled in to running around in the thickest parts of the swamp as the coyote used crappy going to foil the line these hounds wouldn't let go of. Scattered up and down the line of the creek, in touch by radio, the rest of the staff, Tony and Heidi, worked out strategy for picking up hounds with Paul. I offered to hold a horse while Paul tried to get into the covert to dig hounds out and was amazed at the small distance he was able to travel toward hounds before the swamp stopped his forward progress. I got of Rocky to hold both horses, and finally saw the bottom of my horse. Never before had I been out riding that animal where he was standing up falling asleep. I guess miles and miles of plow and hours and hours of running are the trick. Too bad I don't have those conditions all year long. Will have to make do with big hills.
Tony and Kevin caught up to our position, we gathered up all but four couple of hounds, starting with seventeen couple, I think, and made back overland for the kennels. Paul swapped his horse for a truck and tracking collar box, Allison riding his steed, as tired as mine was, back in with the hounds. And, after a surprisingly short little jaunt, we made it back to the kennels and off our horses at 2:30 in the afternoon.
Everyone pitched in to wash off horses, hound collars, and tack in preparation to washing off ourselves in anticipation for the coming night's party. Anyone want to bet we were going to be a lively group for the ball that night? The last hounds were picked up around five o'clock, Tony's best marking and catching hounds and the theory was that a coyote either got itself caught or found a tree to hide under with the hounds marking it for hours, people unable to get to them.
We made the ball on time, were greeted individually at the door by Master Marty Wood, and were welcomed by a very friendly bunch of foxhunters who had been on a chase of their own that day as well. The country club where the ball was held was beautiful, newly remodeled, and packed with laughing, talking people who evidently enjoyed each others company. Several visiting MFH's were there, from as far away as Connecticut and Illinois, and Captain Mark Phillips even put in an appearance at the invitation of the Wood's, hunting the next day with live oak and riding behind Kennel-Huntsman Charles Montgomery. Master Daphne Wood was as gracious a host as any have ever been, and the evening she planned for us topped of perfectly the day that we'd had in the saddle. We left, thankfully before midnight along with the rest of the foxhunters who were going hunting at seven the next morning. That's dedication.
I'd like to publicly thank Live Oak for such a nice party, and I'd also like to thank my FRVH pals for allowing me to share in their experience down there so far from where I call home. I haven't described it adequately, I know, but I hope a sliver of what it's really like down there has been revealed. I intend, if they'll have me, to continue to visit and reveal more glimpses of life and hunting down there near Morgan.
submitted by Jeff Eichler