This amazing week of hunting in Middle Tennessee that happened nine years ago was recently on my mind after I read the hunt report from Longreen Foxhounds’ sixty-sixth Opening Meet. And I can’t think of those Tennessee joint meets without thinking of the late Albert Menefee III. I hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane and keep a sharp eye out for the flying coyote!
During the first week of December in 2014, several of the registered packs in Tennessee met for four days of hunting. The week was hosted and organized by the late Albert Menefee III, who was the founding MFH and huntsman for Cedar Knob Hounds, with help from the Hillsboro Hounds MFH Orrin Ingram and MFH Hill McAlister. Two of the visiting packs, Longreen Foxhounds and Tennessee Valley Hunt, brought their Penn-Marydel hounds to hunt with Penn-Marydels of Cedar Knob and crossbred hounds of Hillsboro. Mell’s Fox Hounds brought its members and staff.
Thursday – two Penn-Marydel packs combined. On the first day Susan Walker, MFH and huntsman of Longreen Foxhounds, hunted the pack with Ryan Johnsey, Professional Huntsman of Tennessee Valley Hunt (since then an MFH), and Albert. They hunted a combined pack of twenty and a half couple of Penn-Marydels from Longreen and Tennessee Valley with Johnny Gray, then the Professional Huntsman of Hillsboro Hounds, acting as a much valuable Whipper-In. The morning meet was at the Menefee’s Foxview fixture. It was a beautiful, quiet day without much scent.
Friday – three Penn-Marydel packs combined. The scent returned for the afternoon meet held at Marianne Byrd’s barn on the next day. Ryan Johnsey hunted the twenty-three and a-half pack of Penn-Marydels from all three PM packs: Tennessee Valley, Longreen, and Cedar Knob. The pack hit hard on a coyote. The run was fast and hard over fields, hills, and a wide, shallow creek that lasted about 45 minutes without another check.
Grosvenor Merle-Smith, then an MFH to Tennessee Valley Hunt, was road whipping on Hart Leonard Road and got a great view. He could hear the pack roaring towards the road, but he couldn’t see due to a thick hedge that lined the roadway. He leaned back against the hedge to wait for a view when the coyote jumped the hedge, right over his head! He could have reached out and touched its belly as it flew overhead. Later, the coyote was viewed coming out of a covert behind a herd of deer and was soon afterward accounted for in a muddy creek.
Saturday – Hillsboro Hounds crossbred pack. The third day was an overcast, very damp morning at Emily and Hill McCallister’s Time Out Farm. Johnny Gray took out twenty and a half couple of his English and crossbred hounds from the lawn meet. The pack quickly found a coyote and in a low trail just below Hill’s impressive barn the coyote was accounted for. It was a quick result, less than an hour had passed since the hunt began.
Sunday – all four packs combined. The last morning on the fourth day promised to be a legendary day with 59 hounds from all four hunts, Penn-Marydel and crossbred alike, all thrown into one pack. The meet was again at the Menefee’s Foxview fixture where the first day held such a quiet hunt. Quiet was not the word to describe this last day. Albert carried the horn in his green coat (as Cedar Knob’s livery was green instead of scarlet) for this massive pack, with the other three huntsmen riding with him
The hounds worked on a coyote for almost an hour without a check until three more coyotes were flushed out of the top of another ridge. The massive pack had split into four groups, with each group containing hounds from all four hunts. Here is where the day turned into a scavenger’s hunt with each huntsmen looking for his hounds scattered in all the corners of the two counties, covering the entire hunt country. Staff was sent out in all directions, some hitching rides in passing trucks, to collect the hounds, a few couple at a time.
This was the first time that all these packs had come together for a joint meet. It was also the first time for some of the packs to be hunted jointly with hounds from other hunts. Remarkably, all in all, the week was a resounding success on all points. The Menefee’s of Cedar Knob did a phenomenal job of organizing and orchestrating such a busy schedule of hunting.
Hound Music Amongst Howls of Laughter in the Dawn Light
I can’t help but reminisce about Albert after reading this old hunt report. I first met Albert Menefee back in the 1980s when he was outriding a point-to-point race at the Sloan farm in Franklin, Tennessee. I was about 13 years old, and I went to the point-to-point with a lady who had gone to high school with Albert. He rode up to us, and she introduced me to him. As a young twenty-something, Albert cut quite a picture up on his horse. He leaned down from the saddle to shake my hand, which he really didn’t need to do for a 13-year-old girl. But southern gentlemen do such things.
Now, at the ripe old age of 13, I had NEVER had a grown man shake my hand, much less from atop a horse. To my 13-year-old self, it was a fairy tale. And I will always remember the image of dashing, young Albert leaning over the horse’s shoulder with his hand out to me.
When I met him again at a foxhunt about twenty-five years later, I told him about that point-to-point. He smiled and said that he had recognized me. I have no idea if he did remember and was just being polite, but I appreciated it all the same.
My hunt had several joint meets with his new pack at Cedar Knob Hounds over the next few years, and he was always the consummate southern host. But my favorite memory with Albert happened at a fox pen in Virginia. Poole’s Pen is an annual tradition for Penn-Marydel packs on the East Coast. We started around dawn and were to follow the pack in a convoy of trucks (no horses allowed inside the pen). The twenty or so packs each turn out five PDM hounds inside the 1,000-acre pen, totaling about 100 hounds.
I loved hitching rides with other clubs during these hunts at Poole’s to spend time with friends that I didn’t see much. The point of these meets, in my opinion, is to make and strengthen new and old friendships and to not stay cloistered within your own hunt’s company.
On this particular morning, I conned my way onto Albert’s truck. Albert had come to Poole’s with his Kennelman, Clare Pinney (who took over the horn after Albert’s accident for Cedar Knob, and currently is a Professional Whipper-In for Mells Fox Hounds), and his First Whipper-In, Rob Caldwell (now the huntsman for Full Cry Hounds in Alabama). Unlike most of the other hunts, they hadn’t brought their hounds in a trailer. They had put their five hounds in a goat pen inside the short bed of Albert’s farm truck. I hopped up into the truck bed with Clare while Albert drove and Rob had shotgun in the truck. Clare and I had to stand up on the tailgate, leaning on the goat pen, as there was no room for both of us in the cluttered back seat.
That morning all the huntsmen of the various packs had decided that Albert would carry the horn as the honorary huntsman for the combined 100-hound pack. The pack was released, and after a half-mile, Albert stopped the truck to get out. In the quiet dawn of morning, Albert blew his horn to encourage the hounds to keep looking. Almost immediately, the pack hit. Even the most cynical among us will get goosebumps with a hundred Penn-Marydels in full cry during a new morning.
Albert was just BEAMING. He turned to look at us and said, “Did you see that! After five minutes with me, all those hounds listened to me! I’m the greatest huntsman!” He giggled like a boy at his joke. Poole’s Pen is full of foxes, and only foxes, so there isn’t much need for staff there. That was his mood for the next five hours – a giggling boy having a blast.
We raced around those dirt roads with Albert alternating yelling encouragements to the pack and teasing the hell out of Rob. Clare and I spent the first half of the morning howling and cackling like idiots as we tried to survive the reckless driving while holding onto the goat pen that was not in any way restrained or tied down to the bed of the truck. At every bump or hill, we risked getting shoved out of the bed by the pen sliding out. We had to lean into the pen as we stood on the tailgate to try to keep us inside the bed.
Serotonin from not dying after every pothole, ditch, and hard curve had Clare and me high on life. We begged Albert, in between fits of giggles that had us crying (but not brave enough to let go long enough to wipe our eyes) to tie the goat pen down. He teased us with all the usual things men tease women with to get us to “man-up”. It was all good-natured teasing back and forth. Clare and I started yelling that we just had mastectomies from keeping the pen in the truck bed and that we were now risking hysterectomies with the next pothole. But he still just continued to tease us, when he paused teasing Rob, that is. Albert, looking like Santa Claus in Carharts, was in hog-heaven.
Albert finally decided that we were having way too much fun, and he jumped onto the tailgate with us. He made Rob drive, with more loving abuse. After ten minutes of trying to keep the goat pen from killing the three of us, he yelled for Rob to stop so he could secure the pen. Men.
The rest of the hunt was spent more leisurely now, as the pack had been lost in the depths of a Virginia wood that covered hills and hollers. We spent the time stopped, listening to the pack while standing outside of the truck. We shared flasks, favorite hound memories, teasing jokes, best horse stories, childhood tales, and future goals for our hunt clubs while all those PDM’s in full cry raced around and around us. Albert grinned through his iconic beard the whole morning. His glee was infectious. While the energy level had come down several notches, as death was no longer staring at us in the back of the truck, Albert still never gave up the chance to tease Rob.
That morning of following the monster pack of PDM’s with Albert, Clare, and Rob is one of my all-time favorite hunting memories. I had the time of my life with them that morning.
A few months after Poole’s, Albert had the riding accident that led to his passing. And I haven’t been back to Poole’s since. His funeral was held at a large Catholic church in downtown Nashville, Tennessee. Several notable hunt members from across the East Coast were mingling in the vestibule when I noticed the great huntsman for Hillsboro Hounds, Johnny Gray, had arrived dressed in full scarlet. He was telling Rob, “I can’t do it. I just can’t.” Albert had been a long-term master of Hillsboro Hounds before founding Cedar Knob Hounds and had known Johnny for decades. Later, I noticed that Johnny was sitting by himself in the choir above us at the back of the church, elbows on his knees and bouncing his horn in some distress. It hit me like a ton of bricks – Johnny was going to blow his horn to end the service as Albert’s coffin was carried out. Even knowing what was coming, the sound of Johnny’s horn echoing incredible decibels across the marble expanse of the church’s interior was the most moving sound I have ever heard. And I’ve never cried so hard in public.
Mells Fox Hounds has since changed its livery to allow green coats on informal days for staff and gentlemen with colors in honor of Albert.
