Hunting country is a hunt’s most precious asset. The late Mrs. Nancy Hannum, MFH, Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds, set the bar for how to protect hunting country, hers just thirty miles from Philadelphia.
The season has started and so far so good. Young hounds are entering well and have been given the space and time to work things out. But every season brings headaches the Masters can well do without.
Most field members are blissfully unaware of the amount of year-round planning that goes into every day’s hunting. During the spring and summer Masters need to go and visit their landowners and make sure they are welcome for the following season. Secondly, they need to look further afield to increase their hunting country. Why? Because there are too many ways good country can be lost. Here’s one that I experienced.
A local hunting farmer had expressly asked the hunt not to come through a certain field up by the railway. He had put his newly bought bullocks there, as it was well away from anything and fenced in with wire on two sides with the railway line on the other side.
But, as they say, ‘The best laid plans of mice and men.’ Of course, hounds ran through the forbidden field. The huntsman did jump the wire in with them and then out of the field over more wire.
The Field Master, however, seeing what was unfolding in front of him, very sensibly turned his horse away from the field of bullocks and went the long way around, for he also knew the wishes of the farmer. Sadly for the hunt, two local members, who should have known better, followed the huntsman into the field.
The fact that they had got it wrong was bad enough. At that point the situation probably could have been saved, but worse was to follow. The farmer had been leaning on the only gate into the field and had seen the huntsman jump in and go to the railway where his hounds had crossed and so he came down to the wire and jumped out so he could get along to the only safe place to cross the railway line and get on with his hounds. The farmer had no problem with this as he was a hunting farmer and understood the huntsman had to go with his hounds.
He was not so forgiving to the two thrusters who had taken their own line when the Field Master had clearly made a point of avoiding that field. As the pair came to the only gate out of the field, the farmer, who would normally have opened the gate stood quietly beside the latch end. And things got still worse.
Not recognizing the landowner and being the very antithesis of what responsible field members should be, they proceeded to let fly a number of expletives and, “Why couldn’t he open the !!##**! gate!”
This hunting farmer, a strong supporter of the hunt and a regular follower, decided in that instant that the hunt would no longer be welcome on his land. Even more unfortunately, his brother stood by him and asked the hunt not to hunt on his land either. That brother owned more than two thousand acres!
And that my friends, is how easy it is to loose country. For almost five years that hunt was not allowed on any of the family’s farms, making it immensely difficult for hounds, huntsman, and Masters. All because two members could not follow simple directions.
Now it’s one thing if your country is well established and everyone including your neighboring hunts know your boundaries. But if you need to expand your country and believe me, you always do, your Masters need to be actively investigating any possible new piece of country throughout the spring and summer with the intention of, at the very least, taking hounds to this new piece of country for cubhunting the following season. And once you have established a new piece of country it’s vital you keep it open.
There are many ways you can show your appreciation to your landowners. A landowners’ supper once a year always goes down well, and all they should need to do is turn up. Everything should be free to them and their family.
A clay shoot for farmers and keepers—or in North America, farmers and landowners—should be a summer event which they can enjoy with a good scoff after.
I remember one Master who would go around at Christmas time and deliver a bottle of Scotch and/or wine to all the farmers and keepers in his hunting country. Whilst this took a lot of time and money, it was very much appreciated and more importantly meant that the hunt would be welcome throughout the season ahead.
It is old school, but it’s something that new Masters should take on board and understand that unless they make the effort to both increase country and retain existing country, they are destined to loose it all!
Posted October 2, 2019
London-born Andy Bozdan carries the horn for the Camargo Hunt (OH).