Joe Bills / Monica Powell photoThis excellent hunting morning started early, as I arose at 5:00 am to check the forecast and discuss it with Carrollton Hounds MFH and huntsman Dulany Noble. Being “the weather guy” in the hunt, I checked radar and several different weather services as sleet had been predicted the night before. The precipitation had been shoved back so we decide to give it a go.
I drove out to the barn to prepare Joe, Jr. for the day’s hunt. Luckily my barn is within hacking distance from the fixture, so I got him ready and tacked up. We went up the driveway, down into the bottom, back up through the neighbor’s and up to Begg Road. We saw a family out walking with a small child and stopped to wish them a Merry Christmas. We paused to give the child her first encounter with a horse. Then on we went up the road. I enjoyed the view from the ridge, looking over the farms of Maryland’s Carroll County and seeing the houses decorated for the season. The skies grew steel grey as the morning progressed, portending the coming precipitation. The air was heavy and winds slight.
We met at 10:00 am, an hour earlier than normal for this special day. We had an excellent show of members including children on ponies, all well turned out and festive. After a welcoming we were off for the first draw of our Begg Road fixture, a few miles outside Westminster. We walked or trotted up harvested fields with excellent footing and the hounds drew the bottom where Reynard was often found. It was only a few moments before they hit, and we had a nice run back toward the parking area. As with previous experience here, a whipper-in view-halloed, and in short order Sir Charles was put to ground in the same place as a couple weeks before. After Dulany praised her pack and blew Gone to Ground, hounds were soon off again in full cry, in the direction from where we just come.
No, they were not running heel. Another fox had led them back up the bottom. Tally-hos were heard, and he soon went to ground in holes around a lone telephone pole in the middle of the field. Again, Dulany dismounted and blew Gone to Ground. Flasks saluted our pilot and we all beamed in delight of our pack.
Hounds were now lifted and taken over the hill to Sullivan Road where they would draw a woods and bottom. As I led the Second Field this day, I took my charges up the road to the other side of the woods. We had a nice view of the bottom land the hounds were drawing, and soon they hit again. I took the field up and over the hill, to the lower fallow fields where we enjoyed watching the hounds work the bottom and around “the cat house.”
Hounds hit and missed through this bottom area but we enjoyed watching them work and thought we would have another good chase. However, as the noon hour approached, our MFHs worked back toward the trailers and soon we called it a day, sufficiently early to allow members to go home and prepare for the evening’s festivities and services.
After putting Joe, Jr. up I went to join friends at the Oregon Grille outside Baltimore. Our predicted rain arrived as snow, and since the early afternoon we have enjoyed a lovely snow—wet and heavy, coating the branches, but not too much. Just enough to make our little town festive for Christmas Eve. Finally, a White Christmas!
Posted December 31, 2012