Charles Sainsbury-Plaice photo
“Would you like to ride up with me?” asked George Thomas, MFH and huntsman of the Why Worry Hounds. Thomas is a direct descendant of the Bywaters family of Virginia—renowned foxhound breeders of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—and he hunts a pack of Crossbred hounds, most of which carry the old Bywaters bloodlines. The meet was at Basset Hill in Aiken, South Carolina, home of Ward and Mary Lou Welsh. I was being offered a chance to watch a lovely pack of hounds work their country.
“I sure would,” I replied.
I was riding Bailey, a black draft cross owned by my host Art Richardson, ex-MFH of the Wayne-Dupage Hunt in Illinois. Richardson and his wife Judy remove themselves to the benign climate and attractive environs of Aiken each winter, where friendships are easily made and annually reunited in the hunting fields of the Aiken, Whiskey Road, and Why Worry foxhounds. One can conveniently hunt six days a week here, if one were so inclined. Indeed, Larry Byers, ex-president of the United States Pony Clubs, makes a bold run at it. If he doesn’t quite achieve the six-day-a-week marathon, he comes close by whipping-in to each of the three local hunts! He whipped-in to Thomas this day, and the huntsman was glad he did. But I’m getting ahead of my story.
Charles Sainsbury-Plaice photo
Thomas moved off with hounds and with me and Mel Haas, ex-MFH of Whiskey Road, in his pocket. A field of perhaps twenty followed, led by Field Master Nancy Benjamin, another transplant from the north.
Thomas likes to have four whippers-in moving with him on the flanks in a box formation. Some go in pairs. They remain mostly unseen, however, because of the wooded country. Wife Jeannie Thomas, Larry Byers, Heidi Beaumont, Marie Craig, Emma Biederman, and Julie Hearn were whipping-in this day.
The country is mostly flat with pine trees and scrub oaks dropping their needles and leaves on the sandy soil. It looks like difficult scenting country, especially when dry, as it was this day. A grid of wide paths are cut through in a mostly rectilinear pattern.
Thomas uses the trails, drawing carefully and patiently. His hounds spread out well ahead and were active and busy, cris-crossing the trail ahead of us, plunging into the scrubby covert on both sides, sterns up, noses down. It was a special treat to see Braveheart in the pack—the big, handsome blue-ticked dog hound that was Grand Champion at the Carolinas Hound Show last spring.
Hounds opened just a few times in the early hours, but couldn’t own the lines. Juliet, a lemon and white bitch with a wonderfully cold nose was consistently there to find when any scent was to be had. She could trail enthusiastically for short distances, but although the other hounds came to help out, the pack never could get running. Finally, a holloa!
Thomas picked up hounds and harked them to whipper-in Larry Byers who stood across the path, hat in the air, horse pointing in the direction the quarry had crossed. Thomas slowed his horse well before reaching the line, walked slowly forward, and allowed hounds to find on their own.
Byers trotted by heading to his next position.
“Fox or coyote?” I asked.
“Coyote,” he replied.
Hounds found with a roar, and we were off. I love a horse that thinks forward and goes forward, even at the end of the day. All I had to do was stand in the irons and set my hands on Bailey’s withers to contain him to a steady, ground-covering gallop down the sandy trails in Thomas’s wake. It was a nice, final burst before hacking back to the meet, where, magically, food and drink appeared from many trucks and everyone relaxed under the bright sun and clear skies. Life is good in Aiken!
December 15, 2010
(More Charles Sainsbury-Plaice photos may be viewed on the photographer’s website.)