Huntsman Graham Buston, hounds, staff, and field of the Blue Ridge Hunt / Joanne Maisano photo
The November morning was unseasonably warm as I tacked up my beautiful Cleveland Bay/TB cross, Fearnought. It was a surprise that I had come home from school, but with my mother keeping him fit for me, I knew that he would be all ready for a day’s hunting. Conveniently, the Blue Ridge Hunt (VA) meet was only a fifteen-minute hack from my grandmother’s stable where I keep my horse. By the time we arrived I was already very warm in my formal coat and wondering, ‘Did I drive all the way home for nothing?’
The author on Fearnought / Douglas Lees photoHounds moved off promptly at 9:00 am. It was trying to rain but that did not deter the forty-plus riders from following the beautiful pack of English and Crossbred hounds and their huntsman Graham Buston at a trot to the first covert. Hounds instantly started speaking and working their way south through the covert. Off to our left we could hear John, the kennelman, hollering a fox away, but hounds seemed to be on the line of another fox. We galloped through the covert and ended up in a wide-open field surrounded by woods. The hunt was on, and foxes were flying in every which direction. In total, at least two brace were seen. We went round and round from the covert back into the field and then back into the covert. After an hour of these foxes playing relays on who would give us a run next, ex-Master Doris Stimpson and others in the field viewed yet another fox peering out from the same well-used covert.
Graham shook his head. “We’ve done quite enough here,” he said wryly. “I’m going to new country!”
I had been asked to help whip-in by the Master, and from there we headed west towards Billy Eyles’s Mount Airy Farm. I took the left side while Graham’s wife, Sheri, had the right. Almost immediately hounds started speaking. At this point the rain was coming down pretty steadily, and the temperature had dropped a few degrees—perfect hunting weather. Hounds took off heading northwest. They screamed through the next farm over, Salter Hill, and then across the road into the big covert, Fox Spring Woods. Hunting hard, hounds made a huge loop through Fox Spring Woods and followed the line back across the road to Salter Hill. They flew through Salter Hill in full cry, ran back through Billy Elyes’s farm, and ended up near Christ Church almost to Millwood village where Graham and Sheri stopped them.
We collected hounds and, being all on, moved on to the next covert. Graham put them back in at Salter Hill and drew through and across the road and into Fox Spring Woods again. They found somewhere in the middle of the woods and ran first left-handed then back right handed. The fox, hounds roaring on the line, made a full circle in the large wooded covert, well criss-crossed with trails, and came out the east side. We ran through the next three or four farms, easterly then northerly into all fresh country until we were almost on the opposite end of the county. After about forty-five minutes at a dead gallop hounds checked near the bank of the Shenandoah River. Did the fox swim across? The huntsman decided not to find out and stopped hounds at that point. Sheri and I had been picking up tail hounds as we ran along, and, since we were quite a distance from the meet, the decision was made to meet the hound trailer at Master Brian Ferrell’s farm not too far away. Hounds were praised as they loaded.
With two views and a very tired horse (and rider) I was ready to go home. The rain had stopped and a breeze was picking up. A good time to say goodnight after an excellent day’s hunting.
Posted November 15, 2015
Denya Dee Leake started her hunting career at the age of nine in the first field at Blue Ridge on her wonderful gray pony Happy Mouse. Her mother Caroline Treviranus Leake rode in two 3-Day World Championships for the U.S. in the 1970s. As a child, Denya absorbed a love of foxhunting from her step-grandfather Alexander Mackay-Smith and her grandmother Marilyn Mackay-Smith who whipped-in the Blue Ridge hounds in her day. Through the past four years in college, whenever she has been able to take a weekend from school, Denya often serves as honorary whipper-in.