Accompanying Joe Bills’s story are Karen Kandra Wenzel’s photographs, including a sequence of one of the foxes viewed away.
“I love to shoot there whenever possible,” says Karen. “Carrollton has gorgeous territory—all rolling farmland and not a housing development in sight!”
The Carrollton Hounds met at Rolling Acres Farm near New Windsor, Maryland on a sunny Boxing Day. About thirty mounted riders came out for the noon meet in this pretty and rural part of Carroll County. I was not riding this morning as my Naval Aviator nephew dropped in for a visit, and I decided to car follow and show him the sights and sounds of the hunt.
After greeting members and several guests, Master and huntsman Dulany Noble took hounds out the long drive of Rolling Acres, a short distance up John Hyde Road, down a long tractor road, and into a field to draw the first covert. This covert is several acres of thick scrub and usually has a fox in hiding, but this morning he did not want to play. Hounds worked for some time, and then it was given up.
Hounds were then taken over the hill and up Roops Mill Road, a long gravel country lane to draw from behind our fixture “the old Shriver Place.” It is now in name transition as Mr. Shriver passed on, and hunt member Monica Smith Powell and her husband recently acquired a good part of the property. Next year we will have a new fixture name, but to us old foxhunters it will be forever “the Shriver place.”
We car followers parked in fields on top of a hill that gives great views of the Wakefield Valley. The vistas are stunning anytime of the year, and this day was no exception. As we waited we saw two horses in a far pasture become curious, then excited, and we knew hounds were on the way. Soon hounds, staff, and the first field appeared at the bottom of the hill and worked their way into the woods in front of us.
It wasn’t long till a fox broke on the far side and we gave a tallyho. A number of hounds broke from the woods and gave chase, but many hounds remained in the woods providing great music—perhaps on another? Staff and second field were standing on the near side of the woods to us, and we were all given a grand view of another fox darting across the field. We expected the pack still in the woods to break out on this one, but it seems the majority were on the strong line of a third who continued to circle in the woods. Whippers-in were sent to collect those who had broke on the first fox, while Dulany worked the main pack. But Sir Charles must have decided it was time to go home as hounds soon lost.
After the pack was put back together, hounds were taken on to another covert. We drove over the tractor road to watch. Hounds opened in the woods, but with the sun warming the ground and scent rising and disappearing in the breeze, they could not hold in the open fields.
As I drove out to go back to the meet, the same coppery-colored fox that gave us such a nice view ran back to the woods he originally broke from.
Click any photo below to start a slideshow. Karen Kandra Wenzel photos
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Posted January 13, 2012