Foxhunting is never the same twice. Which is why I love it so much. Scent is such a mysterious and confounding phenomenon. It was obvious after only 10 minutes that hounds werent able to smell very well this day. They cast themselves throughout the corn and we could hear them trying so hard to pick up a scent. A hound would open in one spot, and it would sound promising, then ...nothing. Right away, a hound could be heard throwing tongue a good distance from the first one, but again, nothing. This went on for well over 1/2 hour. Finally, some of Freddy's hounds began to tongue on what sounded like it might be promising. Bobby followed the cry out the farmlane and onto the pavement of Baker Rd. as the rest of us, scattered all around the edges of the field, rushed to catch up. When we did, Bobby was attempting to break hounds and retrieve them from the front yard of a house that had been vacant for years. Only, to our surprise, it's not vacant anymore - the lady of the house was standing on her front step casually observing the scene illuminated by her porch light . Wearing her bathrobe . During our haste to get hounds away, both Bobby and I mistook one of Freddy's young hounds for my Reilly- it was refusing to load into my hound truck, and I was beginning to get embarassed in front of my company. We finally got a good enough look at her ( still very dark out), and realized it wasnt her , just as Freddy asked if we had seen his puppy. Good -I knew my bitch wouldn't act like that! Ok- hounds are all loaded, and quickly moved to another area of corn about a mile further north.
[Sidebar: After the hunt on Saturday, a few horse/foxhunting friends went for a sail on the Chesapeake. My cell phone now lays somewhere on the bottom of the Bay. Therefore, times for all of the events during the next two hunts are approximate only, since I depend upon the phone for checking time.]
I'm guessing it was now closing in on 6am. and in order to expedite a find, Freddy and Jim drew the east side of the fresh corn , while Bobby and I drew the west side. Again, there was no quick jump, but after several minutes Freddy's Travis, another hound, and a puppy opened. Before we could get to them, they had taken the pack out the northwest side of the field, over a dirt road, and into country we didnt want them in. On top of that, once over there, deer were popping up everywhere, the pack split, and it took almost an hour to get everyone back. It was 7:20 when the last hound was loaded. Sheesh. As good as Saturday had been, Sunday was equally horrible. I was relieved that we had made arrangements to look over two very different breeds of hounds before heading back to my farm. At least the morning was not a total waste....
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| Reflective tape really, really works. |
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