Illustration by Doug Pifer
The late Matthew Mackay-Smith—internationally renowned veterinarian, editor of EQUUS magazine, foxhunter, and elite endurance rider—began foxhunting at the age of eight behind his late father, Alexander Mackay-Smith (ex-MFH, author, and longtime editor of The Chronicle of the Horse). Matthew left a treasure trove of hunt reports and countryside observations which, thanks to the permission of Matthew’s wife, Winkie, FHL will publish from time to time.
In my veterinary rounds in the country of Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds (PA), I often took a shortcut by using West Road, a primitive gravel lane with grass between the tire tracks. There, on a blustery March afternoon, I spied a feminine fox upwind of me, nonchalantly toting half a rabbit. In the gloaming, she was heading toward her den with the family supper. I stopped. She stopped, too, but oblivious of me. She was maybe fifty feet away.
She listened and looked into a tuft of longer grass, carefully laid the rabbit down, and assumed the mouser’s crouch. After perhaps a minute of motionless suspense, she pounced, seized her prey from under her paw, dragged it out of the grass, and bit it through and through. She laid it, almost tenderly, certainly carefully, on another tuft nearby. She walked over the carcass, squatted, and shed a drop of urine on the deceased. I was charmed and intrigued.
The vixen looked, but did not move toward the rabbit remnant lying twenty feet away. Then she resumed her mousing. She caught another, took it to the first, laid it carefully alongside, and marked it similarly. Over the next twenty minutes, this intent mother caught another four or five mice, same ritual each time. She had made a trove and labeled it unmistakably.
As suddenly as she had begun “shopping” for her family, she broke off her hunt, went over to the pile of provender and carefully covered it with long grass. Finally, she trotted back to her rabbit, picked it up with a flash of teeth, balanced in her jaws, and trotted off, continuing on the line she was on when we met, presumably to shelter and kits. Never a glance to me.
This whole performance transfixed me, oblivious to all self or duties, for perhaps half an hour. Every detail is still fresh in the mental video of recollection. I can still see the curve of the little stream, the lay of the grass clearing, everything.
Foxes are endlessly fascinating….
Posted July 26, 2019