Gray Ghosts and Red Rangers: American Hilltop Fox Chasing 9780292784789

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Gray Ghosts and Red Rangers

Number Twenty-​​seven

Jack and Doris Smothers Series in Texas History, Life, and Culture

Gray Ghosts and Red Rangers by thad sitton

uNiversiTy of Texas press

Austin

American Hilltop Fox Chasing

Publication of this work was made possible in part by support from the J. E. Smothers, Sr., Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Copyright © 2010 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2010 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713-​​7819 www.utexas.edu/utpress/about/bpermission.html ♾ The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-​​1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper). library of congress cataloging-​​in-​​publication data Sitton, Thad, 1941– Gray ghosts and red rangers : American hilltop fox chasing / by Thad Sitton.   p.  cm. — ( Jack and Doris Smothers series in Texas history, life, and culture ; no. 27) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-292-72302-3 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Fox hunting—United States—History. I. Title. SK287.U6S58 2010 799.2′597750973—dc22 2010018573

[Frontispiece] Mr. Abilene S, Walker foxhound owned by Toby Spurlock, Woodville, Texas (Courtesy of Jeffry Abt)

To the wonderful runners

Some men think unkindly of those who waste their time out in the night listening to a pack of hounds. But the men who know are closer to one of the great mysterious secrets and their ritual is like the ancient ritual of a lodge bound of oath and cause. They know when they are out on a cold night or morning and the bugle mouths of the hounds are riding the winds, that they are close to something lost and never to be found, just as one can feel something in a great poem or a dream. —bob lee maddux If the Red Slayer thinks he slays, Or if the slain thinks he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways, I keep and pass and come again. —ralph waldo emerson, brahma

Contents



Acknowledgments



Introduction: Strange Pursuits

chapter 1

Chapter 2

ix 1

Red Fox, Gray Fox, and the American Foxhound

25



Chapter 3

Listening in the Dark

63



Chapter 4

Fox Racing

111



Chapter 5

Coyotes, Deer, and Endgames

157



Epilogue

Thought Foxes

213



Notes

223



Bibliography

233



Index

245

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Acknowledgments

arly interviews with Texans Hinkel Shillings of Shelby County, Aubrey and Walter Cole of Jasper County, and J. R. Cockrell of Polk County, as well as others, led to my interest in American folk fox chasing—“hilltopping”—the kind of ritualized nocturnal hunting described in this book. I am grateful to these men for showing me the way. F. E. Abernethy of Nacogdoches, Texas, folklorist and longtime head of the Texas Folklore Society, helped me the most. In addition to his early writings on foxhunting, Abernethy enthusiastically encouraged my research, opened his files for my study, and allowed me use of his photos of the 1967 National Fox Hunters Association field trial, held near Nacogdoches. Every time I mentioned any doubts or difficulties in telephone or Internet communications with Abernethy, his message was, “Just do it.” Abernethy also made first contact for me with hunter Rudy Eddington, who—with his brothers, Jimmy and Eddy—took me out in the dark of Shelby County to hear the dogs bark and the angels sing. It was far too late for me to become a real dog man and fox chaser, but it seemed as though I had been there before. The Eddington brothers deserve my sincere thanks. Kay Woodward of Sand Springs, Oklahoma, registration editor for Hunter’s Horn magazine, vastly facilitated my research task. Not only did she throw open her complete set of back issues of “the Horn” to me, but she graciously allowed me to borrow her back-​​issue collections of the competitor magazines, Chase and Red Ranger. Back issues of Chase I might have had ix

at its existing offices in Lexington, Kentucky, but Kay’s extensive files of the defunct Red Ranger were available nowhere else. I obtained many additional copies of all three magazines on the wonderful Internet, where anything eventually drifts up from everywhere for sale on eBay. It should be noted that two of the three monthly periodicals still flourish and may be reached at the following addresses: The Hunter’s Horn, P.O. Box 777, Sesser, Illinois 62884-​​0777. Telephone: 618-​​625-​​2711; The Chase, P.O. Box 55090, Lexington, Kentucky 40555-​​5090. Telephone: 859-​​254-​​5090. It is fair to say that without the many hundreds of past issues of Red Ranger, Chase, and Hunter’s Horn published over the decades, no comprehensive study of American hilltopping would have been possible. My final and deepest thanks go to the many thousands of unpaid contributors to the foxhunting magazines, who, writing across three-​​quarters of a century, taught me nearly everything I know about the chase. They told the story of hilltopping in their letters and first-​​person accounts. It was my job to listen as carefully to their dead voices as they once had to foxhounds in the dark woods.

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Introduction Strange Pursuits

ob Lee Maddux of Cookeville, Tennessee, was eight years old when his life changed forever. As he recalled long afterward, the occasion was a fox chase. It was on Christmas Day in 1897 that I saw my first red fox being pursued by hounds. The hunters of that community had gathered on my grandfather’s place for a hunt. Curiosity caused me to join the group up on the end of Seminary Ridge. They had found a fox in a cedar thicket above the family burial ground, and they said he was coming up our way. Mr. Pleas Randolph, the village blacksmith, picked me up and set me on his shoulder so that I could see over a ten-​​rail fence. A red fox soon slipped swiftly and silently across a haul-​​road, through the fence, over a bank and away. The hounds came into view, their great ears flapping backwards and forwards from their shoulders to the tips of their noses, and their tongues hanging down to their knees like aprons. The enthusiasm it imparted to me has never been extinguished, and that Christmas Day revealed to me the unsuspected intoxication of fox hunting.1

Before young Bob Lee’s eyes the red fox had materialized from nowhere and passed like an apparition. Red as a fire engine, great brush of a tail flowing out behind, the fox floated across the road and up the bank with no visible effort, like a furry ghost. Perhaps blacksmith Randolph needed to 1

keep a firm grip on young Maddux to keep him from joining the chase? A surprising number of persons became so excited at the sights and sounds of their first fox race that they left the human world behind and joined the hounds after the fox. Alabama native O. M. Johnson recalled, “When I went on my first fox hunt, walking a little, running more, all night, lost in the dark, the dogs started a red fox about 9 p.m. and denned him at 8:30 the next morning, fifteen miles from home. Then I said I would not go fox hunting any more. I have been a thousand times since.”2 No wonder that Johnson initially vowed never to foxhunt again. He had lost control of himself, had run and walked after hounds and fox for many miles “all night, lost in the dark,” then had returned to ordinary consciousness at first light, fifteen miles away from home. Surely he was exhausted by the time he reached his door; surely his parents were angry and concerned. But their recriminations (and possibly his father’s belt) did no good. Johnson was hooked. He had had his bell rung. Having followed the fox and hounds one night, he then followed them all the days of his life. In 1967, when he wrote the brief description of his first hunt, he served as president of the North Alabama Foxhunters Association. Whatever fox chasing was, it struck some people like a religious experience, and they were never the same afterward. This was not the foxhunting of formally clad horsemen pursuing fox and hounds across daytime countrysides, but that of small groups of hunters gathered around campfires, listening in the dark. Formal hunt clubs in the British tradition existed in North America, but their participants were far outnumbered by the nocturnal “folk” foxhunters, who stayed in one place and followed the race by ear. The sport went by several names. “Hilltopping” and “ridge running” referred to the common practice of loosing hounds from some high spot that provided good hearing of the chase. “Moonlighting” emphasized that the activity went on mostly at night (though some hunters believed foxes ran better when the moon was down). “Fox racing” revealed the intense competitiveness of hilltopping, in which each hunter’s hound exerted all its power to lead the chase for the fox, which—if it was a red—outmatched the abilities of most dogs. “One-​​gallus fox hunting” suggested that this folk variety of the sport was practiced by the common man, by poor farmers in overalls. That had an element of truth, but doctors and lawyers, preachers and bank presidents also joined the tenant farmers around the hunting fires, though they might dress much the same. In 1932 Frank Page, then president of the North Carolina Foxhunters Association, noted: “There is something in the makeup of most fox hunters 2  

{  Gray Ghosts and R ed Rangers

that strongly appeals to me, and try as hard as I may, I can’t definitely analyze it.” Page had foxhunter friends—very close friends—who were very rich and very poor; Republican, Democrat, or completely apolitical; teetotaling and hard-​​drinking; well educated and completely illiterate; court judges and convicted felons; black and white. “I turn then to the intellectual qualities and that has no influence, for some of my best friends among the fraternity can’t read or write, including a number of faithful colored men with which I have hunted and camped, and whose color of skin is quickly lost sight of and forgotten.”3 On the lonely hilltops, around the hunters’ fires, what men did in the light of day seemed to matter little. L. A. Jordan of Sardis, Alabama, listed among the reasons he was a foxhunter: “Because of the brotherhood that exists among hunters; because it is in the still of the night that all of God’s creation is glorified, and in the middle of the chase, as all eagerly listen, that all men are equal—the rich and the poor, the Jew and Gentile, the white and the black, all share and share alike in the music of the hounds.”4 “The music of the hounds” mattered most to foxhunters. To the highly trained ear, the hounds told the story of the chase like operatic voices. In one of H. I. Jenkins’ earliest memories, his father returned to tell about the fox race he had just had, enlivening his blow-​​by-​​blow account with imitations of hound voices. This “stirred my blood even then to where I’d dream about it at night,” Jenkins recalled. When Jenkins was about six years old, he and his brother began to simulate foxhound chases. The “fox” took an old Sears catalog and set out at a run, leaving a trail of torn pages across the countryside. After an interval, the “hounds” launched the chase, baying like foxhounds as they came. That was the best part of the game. Jenkins’ father had a red hound with a “long horn mouth,” and Jenkins and his brother practiced its voice until they could imitate it perfectly. By the time they were ten or eleven, the Jenkins brothers could sound like a whole foxhound pack. Once, on their way back from an errand to get milk from a neighbor just before dark, their man-​​made hound music was so good that a local foxhunter sent his two hounds out to join the chase. The delighted boys saw the foxhounds tearing up the hill toward them, as fooled as their owner was.5 Almost all agreed, fox chasers were born and not made, though the event that triggered each person’s realization of his basic nature might come early or late. In the nocturnal world of hilltopping, sounds of the chase often did this—unearthly, otherworldly sounds. The non-​​hunter, the person who did not understand and would not understand, might hear what was going on out there in the night as only a pack of dogs barking, but born hunters Intr oduct ion: Stra n ge Pursuits  }   3

experienced it differently. People found it hard to express what they felt when the chase first passed close by in the dark; many spoke of “cold chills.” Nor did it seem to wear off with repetition. Texan Glen Hayden wrote, “I have stood in places with the brush popping, feet thudding, and the wild-​​ squalling anvil chorus of the pack drowning me in a wave of blood-​​hungry melody, while my hair almost stood on end, my throat tightened and my blood raced.”6 L. W. Stephens in Mississippi and Carter B. Strickland in Alabama each heard the “blood-​​hungry melody” as boys of eight and seven and a half, and they soon acquired some sort of hound and began hunting with hardened foxhunters of their counties. By around age nine, they were staying out all night on hunts with men often old enough to be their grandfathers, hunters who seem to have recognized examples of their own kind. Stephens’ special hunting buddy was sixty-​​five-​​year-​​old Aron McClelland, “the only fox hunter in Montgomery County and deacon of the Methodist Church.” Strickland hunted with three elderly men from adjacent farms. “We would ride mules to our hunting grounds some six or seven miles. Being a kid I would get so sleepy I had much difficulty staying on my mule in the morning hours. The old timers would really brag on my old Bluetick [hound]—to keep me interested, of course.”7 Strange as it may seem, many men recounted similar stories of their beginnings in foxhunting. First came “triggering” of the born hunter in boyhood, often by hearing a fox race for the first time. Then came the acquisition—somehow—of foxhounds, association with zealous foxhunters of the neighborhood, and the beginning of a lifelong practice of staying out late at night multiple times a week listening in the dark. Fathers sometimes tried to stop this from happening at a time when paternal authority was stern and severe, but they rarely succeeded. The born foxhunters had to do it. Denied a hound by his father at age nine, a Virginia hunter sneaked around to get two puppies, arranged with an elderly hunting buddy to keep them at his house, and somehow convinced his mother to cook dog food for them every day, which he slipped over to deliver. The rest of this man’s life also typified the born foxhunter. He grew up to become a harness maker, making not only harnesses but dog collars and nameplates for all the hunters within miles of his place of business in Roanoke, Virginia. “Buck’s” shop served as the gathering place for foxhunters near and far, who often stood around telling stories of the chase and baying like foxhounds. Buck hunted all his life, hunted after he had gone blind, and was known as “the man with the infallible ear.” Blindness mattered little in 4  

{  Gray Ghosts and Red Ra n gers

hilltopping if a man had good hearing. The old harness maker could listen to a pack of thirty hounds running far away in the dark and not only identify every hound’s voice but tell exactly what was going on in the hunt. Hunters would argue over whose dog was ahead in the race, bet money, then ask the old man for his verdict.8 Sometimes the triggering of the young foxhunter to join the chase joined with the compulsion to possess the hound he had just heard—whatever his father might have wished. In 1900 young Tom Benbow of Kentucky often drove his doctor father on his rounds in the countryside. One day he heard an unknown hound baying out of sight in the woods. “His voice thrilled me to the end of my toes,” Benbow remembered. “His mouth was more like three Negroes playing a five string banjo with a bunch of Negro women taking on at a Negro’s mourning bench during a camp meeting. Right then I made up my mind to own that hound.” Presumably Tom did not reveal his compulsion to his father. First, he offered the old man who owned the handsome black foxhound everything he had—seven dollars and an old shotgun. No deal, said the owner of Old Black Joe. Then Tom offered him seven dollars, the old shotgun, and one of his father’s best milk cows, and that was accepted. Tom knew that his busy physician father had a goodly number of milk cows and perhaps did not count them very often.9 Virginia lawyer H. D. Dillard rode behind his father on his first fox chase one night at age nine and was never the same after that. Of foxhunting, he noted, “It is born in him, and all that is needed to bring out such traits is for him to hear just one real fox chase and the die is cast.” Nor can the genetic foxhunter ever really escape this, in Dillard’s opinion; though circumstances might make him give up the hounds and the chase for a time, he would always come back to it. Knowing full well his fate, Dillard became a lawyer, set up practice, prospered a little, and met the woman he planned to marry, then drew up a prenuptial agreement for her to sign that accompanied his bended-​​knee proposal. It read: “I do hereby solemnly agree that H. D. Dillard shall keep as many as twenty foxhounds without complaint on my part.” Perhaps not very surprised, his sweetheart signed the document.10 Most fathers and mothers and children and wives did not understand the foxhunter in their midst. H. D. Dillard said that his wife wavered only once, the day when his favorite hound, Old Charlie, slipped into the dining room before a dinner honoring his oldest daughter’s betrothal and took the ham off the table. Years of exposure to foxhunting and foxhunters did not mean that family members understood them. Rather often, they did not have a clue. A hunter wrote in 1964, “Sometime ago on a cookout and hunt, Intr oducti on : Strang e Pu rsuits  }   5

our daughter remarked along in the evening, ‘Dad, is this what you do in fox hunting: bring them out, turn them loose, let them bark, and load ’em up and go home?’ Maybe so! At least it appears to the non-​​hunter.”11 Growing up in Keatchie, Louisiana, young Steve Milam gradually became aware that his father did not behave like other fathers. Despite a demanding job as a high school teacher and head football coach, Bill Milam stayed out all night foxhunting an average of three nights a week. Steve had grown up with this, in no way understood it, but took it for granted until he noted that his fellow students looked at him strangely when he mentioned it. Apparently their fathers did not do this. Three times a week, as he had done for the last thirty-​​five years, Bill Milam came home after football practice, put his dogs in his truck, left for the woods, and hunted all night. He returned home early the next morning, ate breakfast, and left for work as if he had not just lost a night’s sleep. Asked one day why he did this, he told his son, “Well, Steve, when I walk out to the pen and see the fire in my hounds’ eyes, it builds a fire in my heart, and they just seem to say, ‘let me run,’ that’s all they really want to do.”12 Across the United States, from Iowa to Florida and from Texas to Kentucky, tens of thousands of foxhunters did much the same as Bill Milam. Foxhunters had a fire in their heart and had to do what they had to do. Sometimes family life and daytime employments cracked under the strain. Harriette Arnow’s classic novel Hunter’s Horn (1949) tells of a poor farmer in the Cumberland Mountains who became so obsessed with the chase of a certain notorious fox named King Devil that he starved his family and ruined his daughter’s life. Other children laughed at Nunn Ballew’s children in the rural school they attended, taunting them that their father hunted all the time and left his family to live on “rabbits and poke shoots cause he’s too lazy to do nothin but fox-​​hunt.”13 Arnow’s story was not unrealistic. At about the same time as her fictional tale of the Cumberlands, set in the 1930s, Dr. R. D. Williams of Arkansas suffered a physical breakdown and a family intervention because of his obsessive foxhunting. Only just recovering from a bout of dengue fever, Williams nonetheless rose from his sickbed and went foxhunting all day in the cold and wet. He became exhausted during the long hunt and commandeered a horse from a passing black man after he could no longer walk. Then he relapsed with the “break-​​bone” fever, and while he lay in bed his sheriff brother came up from Alabama and took away all of his foxhounds. “He said if I had not better sense than to kill myself following them, he would relieve 6  

{  Gray Ghosts an d Red Ran gers

me of them.” Dr. Williams accepted this, partly because he could not get out of bed, partly because “I am neither financially nor physically able to maintain and hunt that pack of hounds—they will make any man, who is a fox hunter, kill himself trying to hear their races and keep up.” The fire in their eyes would do it. He was out of foxhunting—at least until he regained his health.14 As H. D. Dillard asserted, many things could intervene to drive the foxhunter away from his passion. Illness, a new job, a new wife, moving to a new town—all of these things could do it; but it was common to relapse and return to foxhunting. As the twentieth century advanced, “running conditions” deteriorated in many areas. The coming of wire fences and high-​​speed roads and the return of deer resulted in dead foxhounds. Many hunters became disgusted and quit, then could not stand it and got back in. (One preacher retired from the hunt until a good race came past his rural church one Sunday morning.) Eventually, old age put every foxhunter out of business, since keeping a pack of hounds was both costly and time-​​consuming, and only an able-​​ bodied man could do it. Cooking the daily dog food for a pack of twenty required hard labor. But even after giving up their hounds, born hunters often managed to hear other men’s hunts. Many sad letters bemoaning old age, ill health, and a lack of good foxhound music appeared in the hunting magazines. Herschel Rawlings wrote that advancing age had forced him to give away his hounds two years before, but he still missed them and from time to time traveled to visit them and listen to them run. Eighty-​​year-​​old George W. Brown’s health broke, doctors told him he was dying, and he got rid of his hounds. Then he asked for one back, since he realized he could not even die without at least one hound around. George Washington Pratt of eastern Tennessee hunted for more than eighty years. After he could not leave his home anymore, he often sat up all night on his porch listening to races on the nearby mountainside. Pratt had a house with what some people called a “foxhunter porch,” a porch built on all four sides of the house to facilitate listening to the hound music, whichever direction it came from. (Fox chases normally ran in big circles.) In Kentucky, G. H. “Chick” Story hunted almost until his death at seventy-​​six, usually going out two times a week. Two months before he died, Chick suffered a crippling stroke, but he still “had to have a little running.” His sons would cast (release) the hounds, and after they had jumped a fox the sons would load their father in the car and drive him around so he could listen. Intr oducti on : Strang e Pursuits  }   7

They did this for the last time only three nights before the night Chick died. They buried him in the Fooks Cemetery, a traditional casting site for neighborhood foxhunters. Three years younger than Chick Story, Brown Whittington of Magnolia, Mississippi, told a friend that “when the Good Lord gets ready for me, there would be no time or place that would be better than sitting on the bank of a roadside listening to all the voices [of the hounds] coming toward me.” And John Wiseman of Coryell County, Texas, died exactly like that. A hunting companion said: “When he died his boy come up there and was running a fox pretty close to the house, and he died listening to that fox race. He was in a bed. They had to raise the windows, and he could hear these dogs running. He died listening to the dogs.”15 Many rural Americans knew a foxhunter or two in the decades before World War II, but most did not understand them. Rural life in the small-​​ farm era had a practical bent which in no way fit with foxhunting. Nearly every farm boy grew up with a multipurpose hound or two, perhaps of no particular breed, able to tree possums and coons by night and run rabbits by day, game that often ended up in the pot. They also kept varmints away from the henhouse and gave the alarm when a stranger came down the road. Some were even good about killing snakes. Such hounds often took cues from their masters about what they were expected to do. Men on horseback in daytime with certain gear signaled hounds to quest for free-​​range hogs and cattle. People with lanterns on foot at night meant a search for possums and coons. And boys with guns in daylight cued hounds to look for rabbits or squirrels. These multipurpose hounds would run deer, but there were few left to run. White-​​tailed deer had mostly disappeared from the eastern United States by the meat-​​starved 1930s, although remnant populations of whitetails survived in remote locations such as the Maine woods, parts of Appalachia, the Big Thicket of East Texas, the South Texas Brush Country, and the deepest and darkest Southern swamplands and river bottoms. Many rural boys grew up roaming the woods without ever seeing a deer. People hunted for sport, and the sport mattered and was enjoyed by many men and boys, but hunting had a materialism and a practicality to it. The exciting nineteenth-​​century big game of black bear, puma, and deer had virtually disappeared. Hunters now primarily sought small game for the pot. In the oft-​​told story, parents sent their son out with only three shells for his gun and expected him to return with three squirrels for the frying pan. After the country boys grew up and moved to town, they still hunted for bobwhite 8  

{  Gray Ghosts and Red Ra ngers

quail and ducks and squirrels and rabbits, all things they could bring home and cook and eat. But foxhunting was entirely different; nobody ate foxes. In fact, foxhunting brought no material gain whatsoever, and so the obsessed foxhunters were puzzling to their practical neighbors, who usually tried to get something useful or to advance themselves with every expenditure of effort. Survival on the hardscrabble, half-​​subsistence family farms that dominated rural America in the decades before World War II demanded it. Fox pelts had value, but foxhunters ran foxes entirely for sport and normally did not try to catch them. If an accident happened and their dogs did catch the fox, the dogs usually spoiled the pelt. Pelts were a sore spot for foxhunters in any case, since they detested fur trappers and their fox-​​killing, hound-​​maiming steel traps. Foxhunters did not even help out much with varmint control. Rural Americans had no good opinion of the fox, which they almost universally regarded as a chicken-​​stealing predator deserving of eradication. Virtually every rural home had “yard chickens” that roamed away from the henhouse every morning, searching for grasshoppers and other insects in nearby pastures and woods. Farmers’ wives depended on them for Sunday dinners and “egg money.” Rather often, not all of the chickens turned themselves in at dusk, and people blamed foxes for the disappearances. Some farmers also thought that local foxes had designs on their pigs, spring lambs, and even calves, all improbable targets for an animal weighing eight to twelve pounds that subsisted mainly on rodents, insects, and wild fruits, with an occasional big-​​game cottontail thrown in. Nonetheless, farmers hated foxes and approved of foxhunters on their land partly in hopes that they might catch them. The farmer who heard the dogs barking, lit his lantern, and came over to the foxhunters’ fire to ask, “How many have you caught?” was an old story among hunters. Sometimes they told the truth—“We don’t actually try to catch them”—but more often they said, “Oh, maybe five or six.” The fox chasers’ real attitude toward foxes is revealed by a grandson’s story about his Mississippi grandfather. Whenever the old man saw a dead fox on the highway, he invariably remarked, “There’s many a good race gone.”16 Foxhunters paid a large price for what they did, in sleep lost, families abandoned, daytime work neglected, and money spent—or so many neighbors thought—and got nothing back for it. The neighbors might go out with their hilltopper friends or relatives once a year or so in perfect weather and hang around their fire for a few hours’ socializing and listening to the dogs Intr oducti on: St ra nge Pursuits  }   9

bark, but that was all. These people were not real foxhunters, only curious tourists looking over the fence into the lunatic asylum. Nunn Ballew, the obsessed hunter in Harriette Arnow’s novel of the Cumberlands, often felt that his friends and even his family were laughing at him (as well as the fox) and that he and King Devil, the fox he pursued, both “lived in some God-​​ damned bewitched world that other people didn’t know about.”17 He knew of no way to explain that world or to explain why he did what he did. Other foxhunters made some attempts, however. They spoke of good clean fun, the brotherhood of the campfire, the stars in the sky, and—sometimes—the fox left alive to run another night (a rare conservationist stance for the early twentieth century). Religious reasons for foxhunting often were hinted at. Charlotte Crockett of Wayne County, West Virginia, noted: “No one has ever felt the presence of the Almighty God until standing at the break of day on some hilltop and watching the sun sneak up and chase away the darkness as sleeping birds sing a welcome song and the broad stillness comes slowly to life.” Then she, as did many others, mentioned the stars in the sky and the wonders of the night experienced by foxhunters: “No one can feel how unimportant he really is until he glances up into the endless night sky cluttered with stars, their numbers too great to count.” N. D. Craft, Sr., of Mississippi, added, “Folks, in such a situation you can get closer to God than to your own existence.” Bob Lee Maddux of Tennessee seemed to step outside of a Christian worldview when he spoke of a “brotherhood of blood and cause,” the “hound voices riding on the wind,” and “something lost and never to be found.” Foxhunting, Maddux said, was at its roots a certain “emotion” similar to that evoked by “a great poem or a dream.” Similarly, Mason Houghland wrote in 1933, “Fox-​​hunting is not merely a sport—it is a racial faith that harks back to the clear and simple outlook of our tribal gods.” But only very occasionally, and writing for other hunters, did someone mention those gods’ bloodlust experience of the chase, “the wild-​​squalling anvil chorus of the pack drowning me in a wave of blood-​​hungry melody.”18 Still, many people thought hilltoppers a bit deranged. From time to time, newcomers showed up to sample their nocturnal pursuits, and a good many soon became sorry that they had done so. Hunters built a fire, cast their hounds into the dark, and listened. They spoke in low voices or not at all (some zealots even refused to build a fire because of the noise it made). After the dogs had jumped a fox, the visitor commonly found that nobody conversed with him to explain what was going on, so focused were they on sounds coming from the dark. Listening required the discipline of silence, and the visitor soon found himself standing among men listening so intently 10  

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that they seemed to be having out-​​of-​​body experiences. Time meant little to real foxhunters (which the guest was not), and as hours passed, the fire burned on and the stars swung across the sky. The hunters reconstructed the intricate story of the hunt from the hound music, while the guest heard only a bunch of dogs barking. The guest grew sleepy, cold, and bored, trapped in a social situation from which it was impossible, or at least impolite, to escape. He could neither identify the dogs’ voices nor follow what happened in the chase. His experience resembled standing on his feet all night in the cold and dark hearing someone read a Russian novel in Russian. Folklorist F. E. Abernethy of Nacogdoches, Texas, who had a scholar’s interest in foxhunting, accompanied local hunters a number of times in the 1960s. He liked to hear the hounds run better than most, but he did not like staying up all night in the way the committed hunters did, and he did not like waiting and searching for wayward hounds in dawn’s early light. One of the last times he went out, the folklorist grew sleepy, hungry, and ready to go home well before daylight. Hunters finally caught their last hound by midmorning and began to leave the woods. However, on the drive out, a fox ran across the road in front of the hunters’ pickups, and they skidded to a stop, jumped out, and released the dogs!19 Things like that made rural Americans from Maine to Texas shake their heads about hilltoppers and remark, almost as a saying, “Foxhunters are crazy.” Insanity was an old accusation. Eighteenth-​​century Englishman Peter Beckford had heard that too, and in his Thoughts on Hunting (1781) he responded: “It is said, there is a pleasure in being mad which only madmen know; and it is enthusiasm, I believe of fox-​​hunting, that is its best support: strip it of that, and you had better leave it quite alone.” American foxhunters sometimes made cryptic statements not dissimilar from Beckford’s. W. C. Boone of Palo Pinto, Texas, on a characteristic pilgrimage out of state to visit a fellow foxhound breeder, remarked that hunters were born and not made and said, “Unless when they are running you can hear the angels sing, you just as well not go out with ’em.”20 Having heard the angels sing himself once or twice, F. E. Abernethy was one of the very few folklorists, social scientists, and historians to have written about American folk foxhunting—hilltopping. Histories of hunting in the United States form a very short list, and novelists like William Faulkner, William Humphrey, MacKinlay Kantor, and Harriette Arnow have gone more deeply into the subject than most of the scholars. Kantor’s novella The Voice of Bugle Ann (1935), later made into a movie starring Lionel Barrymore, told a realistic story of foxhunting, dog murder, and man killing set Int roduct ion: St ran ge Pursuits  }   11

in early-​​twentieth-​​century Missouri. Arnow’s Hunter’s Horn (1949), noted earlier, portrayed a poor hill farmer obsessed with one of those “dog killing” red foxes that hang around for years, take on a public persona and a name, and vanquish every pack of foxhounds that goes after them. Harriette Arnow grew up in Kentucky and lived in the Cumberland Mountains precincts she wrote about, and her book about hilltopping finished runner-​​ up to a work of William Faulkner’s in the 1950 Pulitzer Prize competition. Some readers may have questioned the believability of Arnow’s crazed foxhunter, uncatchable red fox, blowing-​​horn concerts played at twilight, quitter foxhound thrown in the hunters’ fire, and other unusual local details recounted in her novel, but all such things are paralleled in historical sources. If hilltoppers were not crazy, they were certainly very strange.21 A very considerable literature exists about British-​​style equestrian foxhunting, whether practiced in Great Britain or in North America. There are hunt-​​club histories, memoirs, and general books about foxhunting, like the excellent 1975 work of Englishman Roger Longrigg. Occasionally social scientists, such as anthropologist James Howe, have tried to explain this sort of daytime foxhunting on horseback in such scholarly journals as American Ethnologist (1981).22 The legions of American hilltoppers have been neglected, however, though as Mason Houghland pointed out, they far outnumbered British-​​style adherents to the chase. Houghland had a foot in both foxhunter worlds, since he was both the “master of hounds” of an American organized hunt and a hilltopper. He wrote in 1933: It is these Brahmins of the chase who make the picture the world sees, the scarlet coats on green fields, the great leaps, the beautiful backgrounds. But in shadowy outline behind them, outnumbering them a hundred to one, are the legions of Fox-​​hunters, like Franciscan Brothers, whose profession of faith neither poverty not sacrifice can dim, some who must even deny themselves the necessities in order to keep a couple of hounds. On horseback, on mule back, or more often afoot, every night of the year, somewhere in every state of the Union, the horns of this vast army of hilltoppers awaken the echoes of field and forest.23

To this neglect of the shadowy hilltoppers there is one serious exception that has enlightened my general social history of the activity. Folklorist Mary Hufford’s book Chaseworld, besides being an interesting application of ethnographic theory, is an excellent case study of an elderly group of die-​​hard fox chasers still contriving to run “outside” in the Pine Barrens 12  

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of southern New Jersey. By the 1980s, when Hufford participated in their hunts, the Pine Barrens men had adjusted in many ways to modern circumstances. Foxes had been rehabilitated in the public mind, deer had returned, and there were many competing interests for recreational land use in the large state forests that occupied much of the Pine Barrens. For a century, many foxhunters had practiced conservation of the fox, but Hufford’s hunters had gone entirely “green.” They no longer tried to catch foxes (and used dogs almost too slow to catch them), hunted in daylight so they could better control the chases, avoided deer season, and practiced a pickup truck and CB radio form of hilltopping that was also characteristic of most other places across the United States during the last years of “running outside.” By the time of Hufford’s study, most American foxhunters had either quit the chase entirely or begun to hunt “inside,” as they euphemistically termed it— within the electrified wire fences of special hunting clubs. The anachronistic New Jersey hunters’ days were numbered when Mary Hufford joined them and told their story.24 There are several justifications for a general history of American fox chasing—something never before attempted. For one thing, hilltopping was a unique nocturnal activity of obsessive seriousness for tens of thousands of Americans for more than a century. Many people, almost all of them male, literally built their lives around the sport of foxhunting. In fact, the term “sport” hardly seemed to apply. Foxhunters always were a minority group within any given rural community, but few other rural Americans practiced any recreational activity with the frequency, intensity, and overall obsessiveness with which hilltoppers chased the fox. No other form of traditional hunting resembled this hunting of the inedible fox—not even close. In attempts to explain the zealousness of fox chasers, Mason Houghland and others suggested that there was a hidden religious dimension to the activity and that it fit better with “tribal gods” than with Christianity. Hilltoppers performed their rituals in the wilderness of the night, chasing a creature almost too swift and enduring to be caught, with hounds that they rather often named for themselves. Foxhunters commonly did that, and an observer did not need to be a credentialed psychologist to imagine that it might be significant that a hunter named Taylor would choose to call his hound “Taylor’s Iron Man” or even “Iron Man Taylor,” launch it into the dark after the wonderful fox, and listen to it run. Hunters intensely identified with their hounds. Mary Hufford noted a telltale pronoun shift in fox races she observed, when at some point an excited participant might cry out something like “I’m crossing Bedford’s Creek!”25 Int roduc tion: St range P ursuits  }   13

This is the existential (psychological, philosophical, or theological) reason for the study of foxhunting, but there are other good reasons. It is worth noting that George Washington, the Father of Our Country, was an ardent foxhunter and practiced it at the true-​​believer level, two or three times a week during the two decades before the Revolutionary War and the decade after. Washington’s Mount Vernon journals of the 1760s contain more entries about foxhunts and his kennels than almost anything else. None of the first president’s biographers really have known what to make of this side of the great man. On April 11, 1768, Washington wrote, “Went a fox hunting and took a fox alive after running him to a tree.” On August 13, 1768, he recorded, “Lady brought four puppies—named that with the most black spots, Vulcan, the other black spotted dog, Searcher, the red spotted dog Rover, and the red spotted bitch, Sweettips.”26 The United States, it seems, began with a crazy foxhunter. Another reason for a study of foxhunting is that, arguably, foxhunters were among the first American conservationists. A few true naturalists such as John Muir were abroad in the late nineteenth century, but they were well in advance of their time. No effective state game and fish departments or well-​​enforced game laws existed in any state in the Union much before 1900. Hunters all across the East shot the white-​​tailed deer until most of them were gone; the need for saving a “seed stock” for the next generations occurred to almost no one. Professional hunters killed ducks and geese and passenger pigeons by the ton, hauled them to railroads, packed them in ice, and shipped them away to cities by the boxcar load. Tourists on the first transcontinental railroads fired indiscriminately into bison herds as they passed, often sportingly focusing on calves, which were easier to kill but harder to hit. The trains, of course, never stopped. Then, in the 1870s and 1880s, hide hunters slaughtered the giant herds by the many millions until they were all but extinct. Meanwhile, within this same cultural milieu of game gluttony, commercial exploitation, and idle slaughter, foxhunters studied the red fox, fed the red fox, trapped and released it, and assisted in its gradual spread south and east across the eastern half of North America. They behaved like the first wildlife conservationists. Some red foxes were native to the extreme northeast of North America, Pennsylvania through the Maritime Provinces, but British settlers soon arranged for more. Old World or New, the species was the same. Hunters on Long Island and Maryland’s Eastern Shore released red foxes from England around 1730. These flourished, crossed the ice of frozen Chesapeake Bay during the hard winter of 1779–1780, then spread south and west, ably 14  

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assisted by foxhunters who fed foxes, dug dens, and bought foxes for release in their hunting areas. The foxes prospered; the mixed, human-​​altered landscape of farms, pastures, and woodlots that developed across the East exactly suited the red fox and resembled its favorite landscapes in Europe.27 Study of the fox and assistance to the red fox—one might almost say game management of the fox—continued and became a tradition of hilltopping. From the 1920s to the 1960s, a North Carolina hunter named J. F. Manning served as middleman in an elaborate fox-​​planting program. Manning imported several hundred red foxes a year from commercial fox raisers (and den diggers), then sold them at cost in small lots to his fellow foxhunters for raising and release. By sometime in the 1950s, Manning had his fox-​​planting program down to a science; hunters easily converted the board-​​and-​​wire crates in which he sold the young foxes into dens where they lived until they adjusted to local circumstances and were able to take care of themselves. Manning was exceptional, but thousands of foxhunters did much like George Rambo of Ohio, who for thirty years purchased six to ten fox pups annually, usually from Minnesota, usually in May, and placed them in an existing den that he knew was not occupied—an old groundhog hole or a sawmill slab pile. He put out plenty of food around his den site, usually meat scraps or chicken parts from chicken-​​processing plants nearby. The young foxes stayed around, prospered, and later ran like the wind before Rambo’s hounds. Nothing made foxes faster than plenty of chicken heads to eat, George believed.28 But foxes ate many things. Some hunters went around planting persimmon and mulberry trees to provide them fruit. Hilltoppers not only planted and fed foxes, they watched foxes with a field naturalist’s eye. Many hunters knew every den within miles of their homes. They knew when the vixens were cleaning out their dens in preparation for giving birth and when a bumper crop of seven-​​year locusts left every local fox fat and ready to run. Whenever fresh snow fell, they tracked foxes to see what they were doing. T. L. Smith observed the rising waters of the new dam built by the Alabama Power Company threatening foxes’ dens along the Coosa and Chattooga bottoms, and he appealed for help from fellow readers of Hunter’s Horn magazine. Smith knew the locations of many dens and had already dug out and saved many young foxes, but he needed other hilltoppers with shovels. Thirty years before, Robert Thraves had watched over his local foxes in a similar way. Thraves preached the doctrine that “the fox is the farmer’s friend” to local farmers for miles around and had many of them convinced not to use their steel traps or shotguns. He knew most of his fox families individually, and wrote in Chase magazine: “The hisInt roduc tion: St ra nge Pursuits  }   15

tories of these little families in their struggle for existence, their problems, their troubles, their heartaches, disappointments and thrills, would fill many pages. For example, over at Little Piney Mountain there is today a dog fox risking his life in the struggle to keep alive seven undernourished half-​​grown cubs.” Their mother had been killed by a “gun hunter,” a hateful term when used by hilltoppers, who prided themselves on never carrying a firearm.29 A study of American fox chasing, especially in its troubled latter days, also casts a revealing light on a reality of rural life rather neglected by historians: the system of customary use rights that people called the “open woods,” or, if stock were involved, the “free range.” Very early on, rural lands in the lower and upper South and the more wooded parts of the Midwest were all in private hands, but owners’ rights over their properties were limited by customs allowing other people access to private property for certain traditional purposes.30 Southeast Texas serves as a case in point. During the 1950s, this part of the pine-​​forest South represented not so much an extreme example as it did a place where customary rights, once common elsewhere, had survived unusually late. People fenced their cultivated fields in southeast Texas to keep out stock in 1950, but stock otherwise wandered everywhere, on their land and on the land of others. Nobody built perimeter fences or put up Posted signs. These were unneighborly acts, since they impeded stock movement and human travel. Trespass in open-​​woods times was an alien concept. Stockmen had the customary right to follow their hogs and cattle anywhere they went, without asking anyone’s permission. And with the right to run stock at large went other use rights—rights to “take the near cut” to the river or a road, to gather firewood, to cut bee trees, and various other things, including the right to hunt. The open-​​woods practice had a certain logic to it; other people used your land in various ways, for various purposes, but you used theirs as well. That you had eight hundred acres and they had eighty did not matter. Among this array of customary use rights, the right to run hunting dogs across private land seemed to most a minor issue. Everyone understood that the quarry and the hounds ran where they willed, heedless of property boundaries. A farmer might hope that the fox and hounds would not crash through his cotton field just at cotton-​​picking time, when the lint hung precariously in the open bolls, but he could do nothing about it. Most people regarded running hounds on their land as a matter of small concern. Even local courts often recognized these traditional “hunters’ rights.”31 Gradually, beginning at different times in different places, customary use rights began to be withdrawn, as landowners gingerly exerted more com16  

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plete private property rights over their lands. Exclusion of other men’s stock became the most important modern improvement. The stock law, or fence law, arose as a bitter local political issue at many places across the East and the South from the 1880s to the 1950s. Opponents claimed that much more than the stock law was at stake, and they proved correct. Once a stock law passed, landowners soon began to build perimeter fences and to limit access to their lands for other customary purposes. Now a man ran stock or hunted squirrels or gathered pine knots only on his own land or in the nearby state or national forest. Running hounds, however, was another matter. That use right persisted long after all the others were dead. Fox chases took in great swaths of countryside, and foxhunters (being who they were) long felt that they absolutely had to hunt, and so the fox and hounds crashed through or over the woven-​​wire or barbed-​​wire fences that landowners had put up, though the hunters themselves might follow the chase in pickups on county roads. Matters went on like that for a couple of decades, different decades at different places, but after World War II the state game and fish departments reintroduced deer, the deer spread, and battle was joined between dog hunters and, as foxhunters sometimes termed them, “those who loved deer.” A great many people soon joined the ranks of deer lovers. As a retired game biologist friend once said, “First came the hog wars, then the dog wars, and the dog wars were worse.” Foxhounds invaded private property as the shock troops of the dog wars, and many of them paid the price.32 (I tell the story of what happened in chapter 6, “Coyotes, Deer, and Endgames.”) The conflicts that accompanied the end of the old use rights, what some contemporaries called “closing the woods,” can be followed in fascinating detail in three hilltopper magazines, which collectively suggest a final reason for a social history of American foxhunting. There is a wonderful body of first-​​person primary accounts with which to do it, virtually untouched by historians or social scientists. Red Ranger, named for the hunter’s term for the red fox, began publishing in 1911, Chase in 1920, and Hunter’s Horn in 1921. Chase was the official publication of the National Foxhunters Association, formed in 1893, but—varying somewhat as editors came and went— all the magazines were much the same. They published monthly, with all of their contents except the editorial page coming from unsolicited and uncompensated submissions from their thousands of subscribers. And what submissions! What an outpouring of primary sources from nameless men in forgotten communities at the end of the county roads! A hundred or so foxhunters contributed primary accounts to every magaInt roduc tion: Stra nge Pursuits  }   17

zine. These included columns, personal stories of hunting or hounds, announcements of various sorts, and a great many letters to the editor or just “open” letters to the readerships of the magazines. Some of the contributors’ names occurred again and again, and some people became regular correspondents, often writing about some particular strain of American foxhound or about some part of the country where they lived. Others, including some of the most interesting, appeared only once. The reader gets a sense that some lonely foxhunter, his passion long misunderstood by friends and family, perhaps a little bit of a laughingstock to his neighbors, finally has been goaded into print. Many one-​​time contributors number among the sources used to present the cradle-​​to-​​grave portrait of the “born foxhunter” in the first section of this chapter. Writers are often impassioned, emotional, and confessional. A. E. Hull wrote in his subscription-​​renewal letter (editors published everything): “Here I sit, 82 come June 1, as the rain comes down. I feel about as low as a man can get as I lost my old Tony dog this A.M. I think he was the best wolf dog I ever saw to jump a coyote and put it to running. If there is a heaven for hounds he will be there. He had the least faults of any hound I ever owned. I sure did enjoy Hunter’s Horn this past year.”33 Men say things in the magazines to their fellow fox chasers—to Bob Lee Maddux’s brotherhood of blood and cause—that they probably would not say to anyone else. They admit that they cried when their best hound passed away. They recount humiliations suffered by their hounds after the first coyotes showed up. They tell how sorry they are now that they sold a certain dog and lost it from the personal bloodlines. They invite their readers to come visit them and they give careful directions to their homes. They ask for help in saving young foxes from rising lake waters. They post angry and despairing letters to dog thieves, who they assume to be reading the magazine. Fourteen-​​year-​​old Brent Edwards of Louisiana, for example, wrote of his grandfather’s stolen foxhound J.R.: “Now, I would like to talk to the lowdown, snake-​​in-​​the-​​grass who stole our dog. I hope he got you a lot of money when you sold him. But if you have any sense and keep him, I hope you aren’t starving or mistreating him. He is much too good a dog to be treated that way.”34 They also post astonishing challenges to other hunters to come and run their dogs in a fair race, with winners to take something meaningful. For some reason, elderly Mississippi breeder L. W. Stephens decided in 1956 to pit his champion stud hound Blue Steel against the nationally advertised stud hound of any man willing to come down and challenge him in a 18  

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A hilltopper sounds his blowing horn, 1967 (Courtesy of F. E. Abernethy)

match race, winner take the other man’s dog. Stephens was in effect risking everything he most valued. “Blue Steel is the fruits of 49 years of my own handpicked breeding, the best to the best,” he wrote. “I started this breed of hounds in 1907 by breeding Will Turner’s old Vester to Lelia. Vester was sired by Cardinal, he by Jay Bird that won the first National Derby and was out of Clara that was out of Lottie, and was owned by Maj. Val Young and Capt. Billy Young. Vester was the gamest hound I believe I ever hunted.” Vester had foot problems, but he would hunt on to the end in an all-​​night chase, leaving bloody footprints. Stephens did a lot more calling of the ancestral hound names in his challenge to all comers. The larger point was not the challenge—impassioned stud-​​dog owners often issued such challenges—but the way in which a given stud hound might embody to its owner a long, ghostly line of remembered hounds, passing back through the owner’s personal history. Stephens admitted that if Blue Steel lost the match race, he would pay almost anything to buy him back from his new owner. The living stud incorporated all the Int roduc tion: Stran ge Pursuits  }   19

ghosts; he was more than the fleshly hound of here and now, he mingled honored blood. When he did a certain thing, looked a certain way, he reminded L. W. Stephens of Vester of the bloody footprints.35 Something authentically strange and mysterious lay at the heart of hilltopping, and it came to a focus in the night hunt. Sometimes the magazines printed fiction and nonfiction that dealt even with that, inasmuch as it could be dealt with. In 1970, Red Ranger, the most eccentric and unpredictable of the three magazines, began excerpting selections from Judge Hugh P. Williamson’s unique stories about the great hound Bolivar and his descendants, which had been written years before. The judge had penned a mythic cycle of prose poems, delving into inner mysteries. Williamson set the story of Bolivar somewhere in Callaway County, Missouri, and put the following words about a night hunt in the mouth of an old hunter. Well, the stars moved acrost the heavens, and the moon climbed high. The wind lay. And it seemed like there wasn’t nobody in all the world exceptin the hounds and the men and the fox. The men never seen the hounds or the fox, but the hounds talked back to the men all through the night, their voices soundin like church music; like a violin playin an old, sad song; like a young girl acallin her lover; like a child afeared. Sounds that take a man’s soul out’n his body, and compels him to follow the sound. And then, after a long time, the sound of the hounds faded away, and was gone in the dark, like the sweet voice of a young love that is silenced; like a child that is gone; like a violin that plays no more; like a bell that has stopped ringin; like a hope that has fleeted away and beyond recall. And then the stars and the moon, they faded away and was no longer seen in the sky; and the light of day come on the men, and they stood lookin at the new-​​come day, and their hearts was empty, like a dipper with the bright, clear water poured out on the ground. And then the men lay down on the leaves, in the little holler where they stood, and slept long into the day. The fox, you say? No, they never seen the fox. Wasn’t there a fox, you say? No, there mayn’t never, never been no fox. It may be that none of the things men follers is ever there.36

Foxhunting of the hilltopper variety is nocturnal, it happens in the dark, and much follows from that. As a historian of the rural South before World War II, I first encountered foxhunters while doing oral history interviews 20  

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as part of my research for books on Southern free-​​range stockmen, rural schools, and sawmill towns. Rural schools were often situated in remote locations and were favored meeting places for hunters to build their fires and cast their hounds for fox. Sawmills cut away from their towns until, after a decade or so had passed, the areas close in were grown up in young pines, blackberry thickets, and dense brush—prime fox habitat. Hunters sometimes cast their hounds on Saturday nights right from the steps of commissary stores. The foxhunting material seemed strange every time I encountered it. Elderly men, tired from recalling memories of school and church and cotton field to a historian with a tape recorder, became suddenly energized when they began to remember fox chases of long ago. To my amazement, some of them began to sound the voices of long-​​dead foxhounds. One of these men was retired foxhound breeder Hinkel Shillings, of Shelby County, Texas, who kept a picture of a red fox over his television, drew my attention to it on each of three separate visits, and remarked each time, “Look at that. Isn’t that beautiful?” As a devout pilgrim might gaze upon a religious icon, so did this 92-​​year-​​old hunter gaze upon the fox. Later, I interviewed foxhunting sheriff Aubrey Cole of Jasper County, Texas, and Cole used his eloquence and blowing-​​horn voice to bring a fox chase right into his living room. Walter Cole, his 104-​​year-​​old father, only months from the grave, became so excited listening to his son that he tried to struggle to his feet and cried out, “It’s the endurance of a dog!” Nothing raised fox chasers’ passions so much as that. American foxhounds had been bred never to quit the chase and to run until they died.37 In my years of interviewing rural people, I had never experienced anything like the foxhunters. I never forgot those interviews, and I never quite forgot the incredible fire-​​engine-​​red fox that leaped into a white sandy road on the way to our hunting club just after dark when I was twelve years old. The fox floated ahead of the car for twenty yards or so, a great flowing tail seemingly as large as the fox himself, virtually a second entity; then he levitated over the high bank like something not quite subject to normal gravity. There is a magic about foxes, especially the red ones. There is also a magic about American foxhounds, a breed relentlessly crafted by man to face the super-​​runner and to never quit the race. They are like mortal, flesh-​​and-​​blood beings bred to chase ghosts. Hinkel Shillings had one great foxhound named Dawson Stride at the beginning of his career. He told me he hoped—in fact, expected—to meet him again in heaven and to listen to him run there once again (which clearly required that there be foxes in heaven, too). Dawson Stride had been interred as charter Int roducti on: Stran ge Pursuits  }   21

resident in the National Hall of Fame Cemetery of Foxhounds a few miles away from Hinkel’s home. He had quite a large granite monument, as did a score of other outstanding foxhounds. In truth, Saint Francis’ heretical doctrine of the animal soul seemed to have resurfaced among the foxhunters. One wrote Red Ranger columnist Emmett Adams of Forsythe, Missouri, “I wonder if it is heretical to believe that when at last my tired feet shall tread the other shore, a wildly welcoming swirl of exultant dogs—the splendid dogs that have been my chums here—will bound forward circling and barking around me, to lead me home. I want to believe it.”38 Presumably, none of the ones this man culled would be there. That was another side to the human-​​foxhound relationship, and a student of the phenomenon must not flinch from telling it. From the 1840s on, hunters resolutely culled the foxhounds they bred in a determined attempt to create a dog that could match the red fox, the wonderful runner. Dawson Stride could do this, but many lesser foxhounds lay in a century’s worth of unmarked graves because they could not. Foxhunters loved their hounds like sons and daughters, but they treated them like the stern Roman paterfamilias, resolutely eliminating the incapable and immoral. “Babbling” hounds barked when there was nothing to bark at, “trashing” hounds went off after unworthy game, “cheating” hounds left virtuous track running to cut across and use other illegal means to beat other dogs to the fox. None of these things were tolerated very long by Hinkel Shillings or any other committed hunter, and such faults sometimes drew the death sentence.39 Foxhunting still exists in the United States in a diminished form, though the fox is much more likely to be a coyote these days and the sport has changed. Most hunters quit the chase during the 1970s and 1980s. A minority could not stand to quit and in 2008 continued to hunt within fenced hunting clubs. The fences keep things out—deer, feral hogs, highway traffic, and hound haters with rifles—and they keep things in—coyotes and the chase itself. The chase goes round and round these days, bouncing off fences, when in the wild old times of running outside, the good-​​running fox or coyote might take it forty miles into the next county. Before the “pens,” hunters never knew where races might go; every one was a dangerous and unpredictable tour of the countryside, linked to the quick wild mind of the fox. Listening in the dark of a two-​​thousand-​​acre hunting club, it is easy to imagine the old days. I read W. C. Boone’s strange comment about the necessity for the true fox chaser to be able to hear the angels sing several months after I wrote my field notes from the first night hunt I experienced, and Boone’s words gave me a shock. I had written: “Sounds of running packs 22  

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varied more than I had expected. Sometimes far-​​away packs did sound very much like wild geese. Hot races passing very close by sometimes made sounds that raised hairs on the neck, as dogs gave mouth to noises that I had never heard dogs make. Squealing, crying, undulating shrieks and carols, but still beautiful, as if fallen angels were under torment by demons.”

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Red Fox, Gray Fox, and the American Foxhound

nglishmen began to hunt the elusive red fox on horseback at a time in the thirteenth century when upper classes on the Continent still mostly restricted themselves to ritualized pursuits of the nobler “beasts of venery,” as they were called: the “hart,” or red deer, and the wild boar. Reasons are obscure, but probably the elite game species already were becoming scarce in England, and in certain areas people needed something else to chase. European upper classes, especially the nobility, had been obsessional hunters since Merovingian times (sixth century ad), and by the late Middle Ages procedures of the equestrian hunt with hounds had grown highly elaborated. Large areas of ancient forest remained uncleared, and hunters needed scent hounds that bayed on the track to follow the chase of unseen game. Upper-​​class Europeans vigorously enforced their exclusive rights over deer and boar and the old-​​growth forests where these animals lived, and peasant poaching and trespass often drew death penalties. William of Normandy, who won the English throne in 1066, certainly held to those policies. In the Frankish kingdom and later in medieval France and the German states, a special language of the hunt developed, called the “terms of venery.” The hunting language included a separate set of words to refer to various aspects of each game animal—its head, tail, track, lair, droppings, and so forth. Boar droppings and stag droppings had their own special names, and even the droppings of the red fox, an animal on the dubious outer limits of 25

ritual game, had their own proper term, the “billet.” (And a formal word for its tail, the “brush.”) Kings had hunting experts just to keep up with the correct verbiage. Everything had been elaborated far beyond simple function in a ritualized display of aristocratic power and privilege. A deer hunt in fifteenth-​​ century France, for example, passed through a long series of named stages, beginning with the forester scouting out the whereabouts of the stag on the day before the hunt itself and culminating with the “baying,” when the person of most elite status in the hunting party (or his designate) moved in to kill the deer with sword or lance. Noble huntsmen regarded the sport as direct training for hand-​​to-​​hand combat, and so it was; taking on a big red deer stag or an angry four-​​hundred-​​pound wild boar on foot tested any man’s skill and courage. During the hunt, a special horn-​​signal code came into play. Blowing horns crafted from the horns of cattle and used to call dogs and communicate between hunters had been employed since pre-​​Christian times, but such primitive devices had evolved into elaborate metal horns that wrapped entirely around the players’ bodies. By the fifteenth century, highly skilled musicians played an entire repertoire of the hunt, including hundreds of different calls. Each stage of the hunt had its special music, as did each animal hunted. Separate horn-​​call systems existed for red deer, boar, wolf, and even the lowly hare and fox. As later in frontier America, the horn language both controlled the hounds and communicated information about the hunt to scattered hunters moving around out of sight of each other in the woods, but the European horn system had much more precision. When the dogs jumped the target stag on hunt day, the horn blower, a skilled professional in the hunting retinue of his betters, blew a call that announced the quality of its horns.1 Stags and boars became scarce earlier in England than on the Continent, and by the late thirteenth century documents begin to mention an upper-​​ class hunting of the red fox. So far as we know, English peasants and agricultural renters had no interest in chasing the inedible fox (though they might cheer its death before hounds), and no English hilltoppers existed. Historian Roger Longrigg found several notes about foxhunting dating as early as 1278, and for 1299, during the reign of Edward I, he found a notation in the king’s wardrobe accounts for the costs of maintaining a pack of six foxhounds with a huntsman and two kennel-​​men or “whippers-​​in.” King Edward, or someone close to him, now occasionally hunted foxes. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a long narrative poem written in the 26  

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late 1300s by an unknown poet in a dialect of Middle English, has a detailed description of a red fox chase in which the fox is given symbolic precedence over boar and deer. In the poem, Sir Gawain’s knightly virtues are tested for three days by the temptations of his host’s wife while the host absents himself hunting, and as the host’s hunts become more and more challenging each day, from hart to boar to fox, so do the wife’s daily temptations of Gawain. On the third hunt day, the fox almost gets away and Gawain almost gives in to his seductress. A real sense of the chase hovers over the poet’s descriptions of the foxhunt, and when after an all-​​day hunt the hounds finally catch the fox, hunters rally in from the woods all around at last light, whooping and blowing their horns in tribute to the fox—in “the rich riot there was raised for Reynard’s soul.” The dead boar and dead deer of previous days had not been so celebrated.2 By Tudor times in the 1500s, a form of foxhunting existed in England, with hounds bred especially to chase the fox and even a manual on how to go about it by Sir Thomas Cockaine of Derbyshire. Kings, nobles, and gentry who wished challenging hunting chases on horseback soon had little choice but the fox, since English red deer and wild boar had all but vanished by 1600. Sportsmen threw themselves into the fox chase with a vengeance, and they took their losses. Foxes did not offer hand-​​to-​​hand combat at the baying, as did the vicious wild boar or noble red deer stag, but a hunter might kill himself trying to keep up with fox and hounds on horseback. Beginning a four-​​century tradition, English foxhunters regularly fell off their horses or (usually much worse) had their horses fall with them. Many hunt clubs formed all across England between 1700 and 1750. For example, the Charlton Hunt Club organized in 1737 to hunt the area around the New Forest. Club notes from 1738 typically reported: “They found [jumped a fox] in the East Dean wood and ran in great circles round and round Sussex. There were many falls. Second and third horses were taken. They ran in to the wall of Arundel River where the glorious 23 hounds put an end to the campaign and killed an old bitch fox ten minutes before six.” English hunters usually tried to kill the fox, though they might die themselves in the effort. In 1711 a reporter from the Spectator in London visited Sir Roger de Coverly, a vigorous foxhunting squire of the early days, “whose stable doors are patched with noses of foxes of the knight’s own hunting down. Sir Roger showed me one of them that for distinction sake had a brass nail struck through it, which cost him about 15 hours riding, carried him through half a dozen counties, killed him a brace of geldings, and lost above half his dogs.”3 Foxes and the American Foxhound  }   27

As did many others like him, Sir Roger often retired to the nearest public house after a successful fox chase, sometimes remaining there for a day or two. Serious drinking the night after the hunt remained customary among the hard-​​riding, alcohol-​​consuming squires and yeomen of the English countryside. Gentry who lived off their agricultural rents, as did Sir Roger de Coverly, could, if they wished, spend virtually all of their time foxhunting, and some of them did just that. Some kept kennels in more than one hunting country so fresh hounds would always be available for hunts four or five times a week. Others put small lots of hounds out with various of their renters and blew the horn when they wished them brought in for an outing. One Devonshire man had no kennel, but there were so many packs around that he hunted several times a week with other men’s packs—seventy-​​two of them in all.4 Some women also became involved in the chase—foxhunters’ wives and the wives of their hired “huntsmen,” the men who managed the landowners’ hounds for them. Gentleman fox hunter George Forester of Shropshire never married, but he kept mistresses in cottages scattered all across his extensive estates and fathered many children by them in a fanatical foxhunter’s version of domestic life. One such lady was Phoebe Higgs, who regularly rode to hounds with Forester and took great leaps over obstacles during the chase. Contemporaries thought Phoebe “a veritable Diana.”5 Forester hunted in the late eighteenth century. After 1800 the fox chase in Great Britain grew even more exuberant. It would be difficult to prove a connection, but at the high-​​water mark of British world empire, British foxhunters chased the fox like maniacs in a flamboyant display of power, privilege, and domination over man and nature. It became customary to follow the hounds at higher speeds, taking more chances with the jumps. On nearly every page of Roger Longrigg’s terse insider’s history of British foxhunting is a note like this: “The seventh Earl of Guilford was killed there while hunting hounds.”6 Especially in mining and industrial areas in Yorkshire and the north, workingman hunters called foot people now frequently joined chases unbidden to run with the hounds. Foxhunters often did not like this, but they could not stop them. Nineteenth-​​century foxhunting produced flamboyant characters like famous “master of foxhounds” (MFH) John Mytton of Shropshire. Born into the wealthy gentry, Mytton got kicked out of private school for assaulting his tutor, entered the army, then had to resign over gambling debts. Back at home, he drank wine in the morning, brandy in the afternoon and evening, and spent all his time foxhunting. An insanely daring rider, he became master of foxhounds for his local hunt and soon became 28  

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known all across England. Mytton hunted six days a week, without fail, weather and season be damned. He got into many fights, often while drunk, some with men and some with dogs, the latter of which he fought fairly with his teeth. Mytton’s other eccentricities included eating salted filbert nuts and little else and eschewing socks and underwear. He once rode a bear up to the table of his dining room for a formal dinner, spurred it too hard, and received a severe bite to the thigh.7 Foxhunters included not just landed-​​gentry eccentrics like John Mytton but the greatest men in the land. Some of the royal family foxhunted. Sir Robert Walpole, prime minister from the 1720s into the 1740s, was MFH of the Burton Hunt in Lincolnshire for forty-​​three years. Sir Robert refused to read letters of state or dispatches when he had company for dinner, but he immediately read letters from his huntsman.8 As later in America, some English red foxes ran so well and escaped so often that they became famous and hunters awarded them names—for example, the Bold Dragoon of Devonshire, who returned to his den unscathed from thirty-​​six pursuits. A South Dorset fox also became famous, although for different reasons. This tame fox was kept at the White Hart Inn and had been raised from a cub to run in a wheel that turned a cooking spit. One day it escaped, attacked a goose, and fled before a pack of avenging foxhounds. The hounds chased the kitchen fox in a big circle of thirty miles. Then it returned, jumped the fence into the inn’s garden, ran through the kitchen door, entered the spit wheel, and desperately began to perform its domestic work. When the hounds reached the kitchen, the cook, who had made a pet of the fox, successfully fought them off.9 British equestrian foxhunting required considerable resources and remained a wealthy man’s sport. It took hounds, kennel, horses, stable, and a retinue of hired hands—at a minimum a kennel keeper, a huntsman, and two whippers-​​in (often termed “whips”). While the owner-​​operator of the pack and his friends followed behind, the huntsman rode close to the pack throughout the fox chase, while his “whips” rode off to the sides of the chase and assisted him. By the mid-​​1700s British packs were of two sorts, “private hunts” and “subscription hunts.” Private packs were kept by better-​​off individuals: aristocrats, landed gentry, or prosperous yeoman farmers, the latter owner-​​ operators of their own lands. Various friends and acquaintances of the pack owners came and went from the private hunts, and some sporting-​​life mixing of social classes took place. During one famous hunt, as tradition tells, a member of the royal family got into a scuffle with a local butcher, with all Foxes and the American Foxhound  }   29

later forgiven. Subscription hunts were club hunts, with members combining in country-​​club fashion to finance packs, hunting staff, clubhouses, and leased hunting territories. Many members of the rapidly increasing urban middle classes joined these foxhunting clubs, including lawyers, physicians, business owners, and industrialists. Sometimes their hunting territories were very close to London or other major cities, with “bag foxes,” foxes trapped elsewhere and brought in for release, providing the sport. Peter Beckford, Esq., of Stapleton in Dorsetshire, a private pack owner who wrote a remarkable book about foxhunting, regarded bag foxes with distaste. Stressed, demoralized, and released in unknown territory, they provided poor sport. Beckford wanted his foxes caught fair and square in their native countryside, but he did want them caught. A fox chase in his opinion should be “short, sharp, and decisive,” with a dead fox at the end of it. Furthermore, after the fox had been caught he wanted his hounds to eat it! He encouraged this not to feed his hounds, which he kept very well nourished, but to fully satisfy and reward what he perceived to be their great anger at the fox. No one in England or colonial North America gave a better description of the English-​​style, equestrian, light-​​of-​​day foxhunting, with hound-​​assisting, fox-​​catching infrastructure of huntsman and whippers-​​in, than did Peter Beckford. Eighteenth-​​century American foxhunters like George Washington and his contemporaries hunted much like Beckford, and so in a more primitive way did Larry Birdsong of Georgia, who developed one of the two main strains of the American foxhound in the decade before the Civil War. In his Thoughts on Hunting, published in 1781, Beckford told in great detail how he went about his version of the fox chase, thus well describing the baseline equestrian foxhunting from which American folk foxhunting, hilltopping, a very different enterprise altogether, evolved. Perhaps it was more of a mutation than an evolution, so different were the two forms of the fox chase—literally as distinct as “daylight and dark.”10 Born in 1740 as a member of the landed gentry, Peter Beckford owned property whose rents supported a lifestyle entirely dedicated to hunting the fox and probably extensive enough for him to do much of his hunting on his own lands. Many countrymen hunted like Beckford, but he differed greatly in one respect from most of his class. He had been very well educated, had lived in Italy, and was a linguist of some note, fluent in Italian, French, and Latin and knowing much Greek. Beckford kept many hounds in his kennels, more than one hundred of them, at a time when the English foxhound as a breed was still under development. He owned a good but very experimental 30  

{  Gray Ghosts and R ed Rang ers

pack of hounds, a mix of older, slower, multipurpose English trailing dogs interbred with pointers and greyhounds, the latter designed to speed things up to better match the red fox. Beckford probably had more interest in dog breeding than any other aspect of foxhunting, and he had the resources to do things right. He wrote in his book (speaking to a hypothetical younger hunter), “I would advise you, in breeding, to be as little prejudiced as possible in favor of your own sort; but send your best bitches to the best dogs, be they where they may. Those who breed only a few hounds may by chance have a good pack; while those who breed a great many (if, at the same time, they understand the business) reduce it to a certainty.”11 In keeping with that philosophy, Beckford’s kennel saw many a puppy whelped and many a young hound eliminated for poor performance. During the years between around 1765 and 1783, Peter Beckford fielded his experimental pack to hunt red foxes several times a week. He cast his hounds at first light, accompanied by a personal hunting staff of huntsman and whippers-​​in who interacted with the hounds and helped them hunt while Beckford and his friends followed more sedately behind. Such a hunting time gave hounds the best advantage over the fox, Beckford believed. Scenting conditions were good in the early morning, and the fox had usually just retired with a full stomach from a night’s foraging. Ideally, Beckford wanted his pack to catch the fox within two hours, since habitual success “makes his hounds; the whole art of fox-​​hunting being to keep the hounds well in blood.” Some English foxhunters of Beckford’s generation wanted longer chases or even cared little if their hounds lost the fox, but not Peter Beckford. He wanted “short, sharp, and decisive” chases; he wanted success. “I once heard an old sportsman say, that he thought a fox, to show sport, should run four hours at least; and I suppose he did not care how slow his hounds went after him. This idea, however, is not conceived in the true spirit of fox-​​hunting—which is not to walk down a fox, or starve him to death; but to keep close to him, and kill him as soon as you can.”12 American hilltoppers of the next century, such as the famous Walker family of Kentucky, greatly valued night-​​long chases that went on for many hours and rigorously tested the gameness of their hounds, but not Peter Beckford. “Long days do great hurt to a pack of fox-​​hounds,” he observed, recalling one all-​​day hunt that passed into night—a horror, in his opinion. “I also remember, after it was quite dark, to have heard a better view-​​halloo from an owl, than I ever heard from a sportsman in my life, though I hope that I shall never hear such another.” (The owl, it seems, had seen the elusive fox go by.)13 Foxes and the American Foxhound  }   31

Red foxes, British or American, were not easy game to catch—in fact, they were enormously difficult for any hounds to catch—but Beckford often demonstrated that it could be done—with the right pack, with good scenting conditions, in a more open English landscape, and with much assistance to the hounds from human helpers in the form of huntsman, whips, and hunters on horseback. As a general principle, huntsman and whips managed the hounds to get them “up” on the fox, to get them close and on hot scent. Hunters stealthily approached the fox-​​harboring “covert” (brush) in early morning to “jump” the fox from his bed and get the hounds hot on his trail. After that, the huntsman rode like a fiend to keep the pack in sight. If they “made a check,” lost the trail, he let them try to work things out for a time, then took charge and cast them in the most likely direction for the fox to have gone. If one of the whips, ranging farther afield during the chase, sighted the fox and sounded a “view-​​halloo,” announcing his sighting, the huntsman practiced the “lift and mob.” He took the pack off the cold or lost trail and galloped with them to recast them on the fresher scent just behind the fox. The huntsman also did a lift and recast in other circumstances—for example, if the fox had run across a rocky hillside or a plowed field, where little scent was left, or if it had passed through a herd of sheep to confuse the dogs, or if it had gone through water. In each case, he pulled the dogs off the scent and moved them to where he judged the scent was likely to be fresher and better, then recast them. The English red fox faced not just a pack of hounds but a pack-​​man unit, a fox-​​catching machine composed of dogs and men. But even then such hunts often did not catch the red fox. Peter Beckford emphasized his successes, not his failures, though he admitted he had many of the latter. Beckford’s hunting country in Dorset must have had its versions of Devon’s Bold Dragoon, the uncatchable fox that a man who loathed long chases (let alone absolute defeats) would have tried to avoid. Peter Beckford sold his hounds and returned to Italy to live in 1783. By about 1800 the sort of dog-​​breeding experimentation Beckford had engaged in had ended, and a new breed named the English foxhound had been developed. It was a pack hound, designed to be hunted in exactly the same way as Beckford had gone about it. Varying a good bit with the part of the country, somewhat different in Ireland, the English foxhound was a sturdy hound of large to medium size, often black, white, and tan in color, fifty to sixty pounds in body weight, standing twenty-​​four or twenty-​​five inches at the shoulder. It had a “cold nose” (it followed scent trails well), preferred to hunt in a tight pack, had excellent speed and endurance, especially in the 32  

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more open British countryside, and above all it was what Beckford would have called “biddable,” or manageable. It cooperated well with its human assistants of huntsmen and whips, could be controlled by horn signals, and would readily leave cold trail for hotter trail in the technique of lift and mob. Rather often it had indifferent “mouth,” what dog men called voice, but did not need to make more noise, since hunters in the British tradition followed the fox chase mostly by sight. However, long before Peter Beckford, long before the English foxhound reached its final form, another game had been afoot in England’s frontier colonies of North America. This game involved two older versions of English scent hounds, Peter Beckford’s point of departure for his foxhound breeding, the “southern hound” from the south of England and the “Talbot hound” from the north. In medieval times such dogs had been called “lymers.” In many ways they were similar, staghounds and “harriers” (hare hounds) by breeding and use in the hunt. They were long-​​eared, skinny-​​tailed, “hound-​​dog”-looking hounds, with fine noses, big bawling voices, endless endurance, and not much speed of foot. They were of all colors, though the southern hound tended to be blue-​​ticked and the Talbot hound black and tan. Both hounds seem to have had Continental origins, doubtless deriving from medieval strains of hunting hound. The southern hound came to England from Gascony in southwestern France, while the Talbot hound came from Normandy. Neither of them could contest speed with a red fox, although they provided a good point of departure for a dog that might. Definitive descriptions are lacking, but these ancestral hounds of seventeenth-​​century Britain and the colonial wilderness seem to have resembled nothing so much as modern “coon hound” breeds, the bluetick and the black-​​and-​​tan.14 Doubtless other men brought some stocks of southern and Talbot hounds to the colonies, but most histories first mention Robert Brooke in 1650. Colonel Robert Brooke, who arrived in Prince George’s County, Maryland, in that year, was an example of a sporting-​​life cavalier gentleman departing England in disgust after parliamentary victory in the English Civil War. Brooke came to Lord Baltimore’s colony with his wife, ten children, twenty-​​eight servants, and a large pack of hounds, almost certainly a variety of the old southern hound. Brooke died in 1655 and his family relocated to Montgomery County, Maryland, but his eight sons and their sons put the family hound strain to good use, hunting the native gray fox on horseback in daytime and on foot at night. If so, they were not only the first British-​​style equestrian foxhunters in the colonies but also the first hilltoppers. Nothing is certain, but the Brookes may have begun to hunt at night because the gray Foxes and the American Foxhound  }   33

fox runs longer and better then (it does), because dogs follow scent trails better then, to avoid the hotter American climate (which overheats both hounds and foxhunters), because most of their neighbors also hunted small game with dogs at night, and perhaps because the Brooke males needed to work their fields by day.15 As many observers attested for two centuries, dogs of all sorts abounded on that frontier. Dogs had accompanied many settlers to the New World, and Native Americans already had dogs. Every backcountry farmstead had a group of them, often seen lolling around in the dust by day, with their uses more practical than recreational. From 1650 to the American Revolution, the eastern colonies remained divided into two worlds—the coastal towns, culturally and economically oriented seaward toward Europe, and the “backcountry,” “backwoods,” or frontier, rapidly spreading inland through wooded North America. Frontier farmers in the big woods needed dogs, and they had them—dogs of uncertain origin and indifferent breed, though in time the old British hound breeds mixed and merged with them. In a reversal of north and south, the English southern hound became the common hound breed of the northern colonies, where it was known as the Pennsylvania or Eastern Shore hound, while the Talbot hound of northern England became common in southern Virginia down to the Carolinas and was called the Virginia hound. Hounds or curs, frontier farmers needed dogs around to help with the stock, to fight off and help eliminate the big predators that still plagued their stock operations (wolves, bears, and pumas), and to serve as an early-​​ warning system for strangers on the road. Most of North America east of the Mississippi began as a great forest. As settlers laboriously cleared portions of that forest for cultivated fields, dogs served several functions, but perhaps none was more important than that of woodland stock handling. From Pennsylvania to Florida, frontiersmen fenced their cultivated fields with split-​​rail or stake-​​and-​​rider fencing to “fence out” stock, and let their hogs and cattle run free on the open range, which in the beginning mostly consisted of old-​​growth forest. Only stock dogs, using their acute sense of smell, could locate semi-​​feral hogs and cattle in the big woods and allow the farmer-​​stockmen to catch them, brand and mark them, and move them about. Dogs were an important tool—perhaps the essential tool—in what might be termed the “big woods adaptation” of European settlers of eastern North America. Backcountry people seemed of two minds about how to deal with their need for dogs in frontier circumstances. Some families kept individu34  

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ally specialized dogs for every purpose, even for killing snakes. Others— most of them—felt they could not afford that and kept multipurpose dogs that closely attended to cues about what they were supposed to be doing at the moment. The family stock dog turned to home defense at nightfall— unless somebody took him hunting.16 After dark, every family’s garden, corn patch, and chicken roost became targets for a variety of small varmints that only dogs could successfully deter. This deterrence naturally evolved into sport, as backcountry Americans became nocturnal small-​​game hunters to a degree not characteristic of their European ancestors. Since humans see poorly after dark and have an all but nonexistent sense of smell, they used dogs to help them. Opossums, raccoons, bobcats, minks, and the native gray fox all came foraging around the farm by night, and so did the white-​​tailed deer, which for a long time was so common that most regarded it as crop-​​destroying vermin as well as a source of venison. Night hunting for deer, with pitch-​​pine torches and dogs to trail the wounded quarry, became common, as did the hunting of possums and raccoons. Many hounds and part-​​hounds would run such small climbing animals up trees, then remain beneath them, barking “treed” until their owners arrived. Frontier farmers did this sort of night hunting for recreation, as well as to put meat in the pot, and they became accustomed to the use of trailing hounds by night. Sometimes their dogs coursed the gray fox, which though considered inedible provided good sport. As British historian Roger Longrigg correctly noted, one of the roots of American hilltopping can be found in the custom of night-​​hunting of varmints and small game in the backwoods.17 Eastward of the backcountry, prosperity had increased until by the early 1700s some better-​​off landowners, still oriented toward England and the English sporting life, began to hunt the native American gray fox in daylight and on horseback, very much in the manner of Peter Beckford. Affluent tobacco farmers on the Eastern Shore of Maryland did this by 1700, using a form of the Southern hound that they now called Eastern Shore hound. ( Just across the colony boundary, it had the more common and accepted name of Pennsylvania hound.) The big, slow, noisy, good-​​nosed hounds matched up well with the gray foxes. Slower than reds, the grays twisted and turned in the brush, briars, wooded swamps, and cultivated fields of the flat Eastern Shore, giving the former hare hounds a sporting chase. When hard-​​ pressed by hounds, gray foxes often climbed trees to safety, something that must have given the first English immigrant red-​​fox hunter who saw it a very great shock. Red foxes “went to earth” to escape dogs, went into a rock den Foxes and the American Foxhound  }   35

or a hole in the ground, or they simply chose to outrun the hounds. Nostalgic about their fleet red foxes, by 1730 the Eastern Shore hunters began importing British foxes for release, and—since their Eastern Shore/Pennsylvania hounds could not catch them—they soon began cross-​​breeding their hounds with other sorts of dog in an effort to speed them up, much as Peter Beckford did a decade or so later.18 At about the same time, west of Chesapeake Bay in Maryland and northern Virginia, other American landed gentry took up the chase with private packs of Pennsylvania hounds to hunt the only equestrian game that was abroad (after the last local wolf perished and deer became scarce), the gray fox. Doubtless some transplanted Englishmen regarded this as a poor fox, but it was the only fox they had. Thomas, Sixth Lord Fairfax, inherited a huge estate in Virginia from his mother, came to visit in 1746 (staying with a foxhunting cousin), returned to England for a time, then moved to Virginia for good in 1749 and began to hunt in earnest. Lord Fairfax was one of those people for whom the chase was a full-​​time obsession, and age and increasing obesity did not keep him from it. By 1751 or so, he had met a young relative by marriage, George Washington, who did some survey work for him and joined him in the foxhunt. Washington, a fine horseman, loved the hunting, valued his association with Lord Fairfax, and continued to hunt with Fairfax and other Virginia and Maryland gentry after inheriting Mount Vernon in 1752. George Washington, however, wanted his own pack of foxhounds, and in 1767 he got them. That was Washington’s coming-​​out year as a foxhunter in his own right. The decade of putting his estate in order and increasing his prosperity had passed. In 1767 he kicked things off in a grand way by ordering a complete hunting kit from England, which included, among other items: “A Riding Frock of a handsome Drab colour’d with plain dble Gilt Buttons, a Riding Waistcoat of Superfine Scarlet Cloth, and gold Lace with Buttons like those of the coat, a gentleman’s Hun’g cap, Covred with black Velvet, to fit a pretty large head.” Also ordered were “1 pr Dble Campaign Boots, 1 pr of Silver Spurs of the new’re Fash’n, a Whip, pretty stout and strong, cap’d with Silver, and my name and the y’r engraved thereon.” The hunting rig was completed by “1 large loud Hunting Horn, cap’d and secured in the strongest manner.”19 Meanwhile, waiting for his fine hunting outfit to arrive from overseas, George Washington had been building his own pack of foxhounds from the packs of Fairfax and his other hunting friends. They seem to have been Pennsylvania hounds with a leaven of other sorts to make them go faster. 36  

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As Washington’s journals show, they often went fast enough to catch gray foxes. He began hunting with great seriousness later in 1767. Lord Fairfax visited him in November of that year, and according to Washington’s stepson and admirer, G. W. Custis, the seventy-​​six-​​year-​​old Fairfax rode to hounds with the younger Washington for eight days straight, catching four foxes. George Washington always took the field at daylight, as did his English contemporary Peter Beckford, superbly mounted, “in true sporting costume of blue coat, scarlet waistcoat, buckskin breeches, top boots, velvet cap and whip,” along with all his guests and his black huntsman, Will Lee. Custis recalled: “The habit was to hunt three times a week, weather permitting; breakfast was served, on those mornings, at candle light, the General always breaking his fast with an Indian corn cake and a bowl of milk; and ere the cock had ‘done salutation to the morn,’ the whole cavalcade would often have left the house, and the fox frequently be unkenneled before sunrise.” Washington, his stepson noted, “rode, as he did everything else, with ease, elegance and with power.” Cleared roads had been cut through the woods of Mount Vernon for others to ride, but Washington always rode directly after his hounds “at full speed, through brake or tangled wood, in a style at which modern huntsman would stand aghast.” In a society where everybody rode, and gentlemen valued and fine-​​tuned their riding skills, the equestrian Washington stood out as something special. He had only one order for his slave huntsman, “Billy” Lee: “Stay with the hounds,” and he followed it himself.20 Foxhunting in the British manner flourished in the North American colonies, and a hundred private packs formed from Pennsylvania to the Carolinas in the decade before and after George Washington began his pack at Mount Vernon. In 1766 the first American subscription pack organized at Philadelphia, the Glouster Fox-​​Hunting Club. The elite of the town hastened to become members of the new club and (after 1774) to don its handsome “livery” (hunting uniform) of dark-​​brown coat, buff waistcoat and breeches, and black velvet cap. Various other subscription hunts began before the Revolutionary War. Even New York City produced a hunting club just after the War of 1812. And the hunting fad moved south; Southern gentlemen had leisure time and newfound wealth from cotton (after Whitney’s gin), and many early-​​nineteenth-​​century slave plantations developed their own foxhound packs, some of which did double duty as runaway slave catchers. American foxhunting, foxhunters, and foxhound packs were about to change, however; during the winter of 1779–1780, the red fox, the wonderFoxes and the American Foxhound  }   37

ful runner, crossed the ice of Chesapeake Bay and headed south and west, entering more open landscapes, suitable for speedy flight, where purebred Pennsylvania and Virginia hounds could not catch him. By the winter of 1795–1796, reds had reached Calvert County, Maryland, the home of Robert Brooke Taney, a direct descendant of the Robert Brooke who is credited with bringing the first foxhound pack to the American colonies. Taney (later to become chief justice of the United States Supreme Court) had just graduated from Dickinson College and had come home to his family’s plantation for a winter of riding to hounds behind the family pack. The winter passed pleasantly enough for young Taney, though scarcely a fox was caught. His family’s hounds could not cope with red foxes. It was the custom to invite some other gentleman who also kept fox-​​ hounds to come with his pack on a particular day, and they hunted with two packs united. Other gentlemen, who were known to be fond of the sport, were also invited, so as to make a party of eight or ten persons, and sometimes more. The hunting usually lasted a week. The party always rose before day, breakfasted by candle-​​light—most commonly on spareribs (or bacon) and hominy—drank pretty freely of eggnog, and then mounted and were in cover, where they expected to find a fox, before sunrise. The foxes in the country were mostly the red, and of course, there was much hard riding over rough ground, and the chase was apt to be a long one. We rarely returned home until late in the day. By the end of the week the hunters and dogs were pretty tired, and the party separated.21

Robert Taney did not exactly complain (except for mentioning “much hard riding over rough ground”), but as the red fox extended its range farther south and west during the next half century, other foxhunters did. Colonel F. G. Skinner, whom a foxhound scholar described as “the greatest authority on hound breeding before the Civil War,” wrote: “Whenever the native gray was driven out, fox hunting was a labor instead of a pleasure, for the red devils, with far more speed and bottom than the natives, could easily outfoot the hounds, and would make a steady run of four, five, ten and even twenty-​​four hours and escape after all; instead of doubling within a convenient distance of the starting point as does the gray, they will often run on a bee line for thirty or forty miles.”22 The story of American foxhunting is a tale of two foxes. Most Americans before the Civil War grew up in rural circumstances and were vaguely aware 38  

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of the secretive, nocturnal gray fox, Urocyon cinereoargenteus. They rarely saw it in daylight, and only tracks in the sandy roads suggested how common it was—sometimes ten to fifteen foxes to the square mile. The foxhunters of course knew a great deal more about gray foxes, and fur trappers perhaps knew even more than they did. Gray fox pelts always were worth money. Grays were almost as large as reds (which few easterners had seen before the Civil War), though they looked smaller. Eight to thirteen pounds was the norm. They had shorter legs and shorter fur, grizzled gray on the top and vivid orange-​​red on neck, legs, underside of tail, and base of ears. The gray fox’s magnificent tail compensated for its slightly smaller stature; it was bigger than the red fox’s tail, huge, gray, and triangular in shape when viewed from the back. A gray fox passing at high speed appeared at first glance like two very furry animals running nose to tail. Gray foxes were secretive and lived in deep woods and brush and came around human habitations somewhat uncommonly. Housewives suspected them for missing yard chickens and for occasional bloodbaths in the henhouses at night, though minks, weasels, and raccoons normally were the real culprits. The farm boys that tracked them in the sand perhaps got some sense of their real diet, which was enormously varied but ran strongly to insects (especially grasshoppers), rodents, and various wild fruits. Gray foxes loved blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, mulberries—in fact, any sort of berry—but they also ate mushrooms, acorns, crayfish, rodents of a dozen species, bird eggs and baby birds, carrion, and occasionally ran down a cottontail or a swamp rabbit. Grays’ food habits were opportunistic and seasonal. Whatever there was a lot of at the time, they ate. When the wild black cherry trees bore copious fruit, they ate nothing but black cherries; if the muskrat marsh went dry, they ate muskrats. They ate insects in spring and summer, fruits and acorns in fall, and rodents and rabbits in winter. Two of the gray fox’s common names suggested much about its basic nature: cat fox and tree fox. Like the red fox, grays lived solitary, secretive lives like cats, hunted alone like cats (listening intently, then pouncing on mice in the high grass), and socialized with other foxes only at breeding time. Their skeletons looked like those of little dogs, but they behaved more like cats and in fact somewhat resembled cats, so much so that a twentieth-​​century editor of Chase once erroneously placed them in the “cat family” in one of his editorials. Early-​​nineteenth-​​century foxhunters thought that grays ran before hounds like cats as well. The native bobcat gave a twisting and turning chase, relying on frequent changes of direction and tight briars and thickets to slow and confuse and wear down the faster and more enduring dogs. Sometimes Foxes and the American Foxhound  }   39

North American gray fox (Courtesy of Don C. Johnson)

it “tapped a tree,” running up a slanting tree trunk, then jumping out to break its scent trail. Finally, it treed for good. Gray foxes ran before hounds in much the same way, though perhaps with a good bit more staying power and endurance. Grays shunned the open, where hounds had a big speed advantage, and twisted and turned in brush and thickets, usually staying within known territories of a mile or so in any direction. They made the most of their small size, much smaller than any hound, and subjected their pursuers to repeated trips through tight thickets, bramble patches, and woven-​​wire fences, which small foxes could pass through but large foxhounds had to crash over with prodigious leaps. This “strainer” tactic of gray foxes wore hounds out and after a while left them so covered with bramble scratches that white dogs looked red. It was one of the reasons many foxhunters preferred to run some other kind of fox, once it became available. Finally, tired of running, the grays performed their last feline trick, living up to the name tree fox. Grays readily ran up slanting trees, but they could also climb any vertical trunk of the right size by hugging the trunk with their forelegs and scrabbling with their hind legs, using feet with specialized, semi-​​retractable claws unlike those of other fox species. A gray fox chase usually ended with a fox in a tree, not a fox in a hole, and this must have seemed normal to many North American foxhunters before the Civil War. Tree foxes also climbed trees for other purposes than escape. They climbed trees to rob birds’ nests, to rest on big limbs, and to use them as lookout 40  

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posts. Grays sometimes even denned and gave birth to their cubs in recycled crows’ and hawks’ nests, as high as thirty feet from the ground. Sometimes they climbed up to a hollow well above the ground and denned in that.23 With little doubt, grays also occasionally climbed trees to get away from an annoying new enemy, recently arrived in their woods—the red fox, Vulpes vulpes. Red foxes shared many characteristics with gray foxes. They were small, big-​​tailed, furry canids of a solitary nature, creatures that lived and hunted more like cats than dogs, opportunistic omnivores that ate much the same wild array of rodents, insects, and fruits that the gray fox did. But there was something special about them. Red foxes had “attitude,” and besides their attitude, they possessed physical capacities beyond what seemed necessary for their life in the wild—at least until a pack of fanatical foxhounds got after them. American fox chasers became fascinated by red foxes—obsessed with them, almost as obsessed as the strange dog that they bred to pursue them on its own. Red foxes had many tricks that they played with their scent trails, and they could run for brief bursts at racehorse speeds and all night and into the next day at their energy-​​saving “fox trot.” Hinkel Shillings once told me, “Dogs aren’t really supposed to be able to catch a red fox.” And Texas foxhunter and game biologist Joe Stevens wrote admiringly of his favorite animal: Legend would lead one to believe that the red fox is a large animal; however, he is relatively small, normally weighing from 8 to 12 pounds. His color, especially in the winter, is breathtaking. Above, his golden-​​ yellow coat glows like flame, and underneath, his fur is snowy white. His piercing, dark eyes are widely set in a rusty, dull yellow face grizzled with white. Fine jet-​​black fur, like stylish silk gloves, extends up to the elbow on his forelegs and to the outer thigh on the hind legs. His strong, streamlined body is adapted for running. Apparently enjoying every minute of a chase, he can easily run in front of an onrushing pack of baying foxhounds all night, and is capable of sudden bursts of speed up to 45 miles per hour.24

If gray foxes dealt with hounds by twisting and turning in heavy cover, red foxes far more often chose to take hounds out in the open on pastures and roads and challenge them to a flat-​​out race of speed and endurance. Hunters called this kind of fox a “dog killer” as well as a “red ranger,” and for good reason. A competition between a well-​​nourished, healthy, adult red Foxes and the American Foxhound  }   41

Red fox, the “red ranger” (Courtesy of Dan Walters)

fox and a foxhound too game to quit the chase could result in a death from exhaustion. Red foxes had extraordinary physical capacities. A twentieth-​​century biologist observed a hunting fox perform fifteen-​​foot horizontal leaps from a standing start to catch mice in weeds, and he also saw another thing that only foxhunters like Joe Stevens would have no trouble believing—a red fox contesting speed with jets taking off from the Minneapolis airport. As the 42  

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red fox spread across the eastern half of the United States during the nineteenth century, hunters saw it do many strange things in keeping with its quirky nature. They insisted that some foxes liked to be run and would come close to their homes at night and bark, as if to say, “Turn the dogs loose!” They claimed they saw foxes sit on rocks or stumps during chases, waiting for dogs to catch up, then go on their way. Some men reported foxes taking time out from chases to catch a few mice for a snack. And over and over again they reported red foxes that repeatedly passed by the inviting entrances to their dens during the circuits of the chase before finally going in. Before J. David Henry researched his dissertation about the red fox, he was waiting for his plane to take off at the snowy Minneapolis airport one day when he became aware of a small reddish animal frisking around on the ground outside his plane window. It was a fox, and as the plane began to take off, the fox went into action. At that moment the fox leaped forward and began to gallop down the runway. It ran not with the labored movements of a sprinting dog but as effortlessly as a leaf caught in the wind. The fox raced away from the plane, tail floating straight behind it, neck and head held proudly upward. It seemed almost airborne, its black teardrop paws ricocheting off the white icy earth. The plane gained momentum; the snow was driven straight across the ground now, and yet the animal kept it up—running faster and faster, cutting the storm like a wing tip.

The fox still sprinted at top speed when the accelerating plane passed it by. As the plane turned back over the airport, Henry saw the fox as a red dot far below, trotting back to the start of the runway to meet the next plane readying for takeoff.25 Men and man-​​made hounds may change, but red foxes remain the same. The foxes that crossed the ice of Chesapeake Bay in 1779 were the same creature as the one later observed running wind sprints with jet planes. The same species is found on four continents, the largest range of any wild canid. They often live close to man in human-​​altered landscapes. They sometimes seem attracted to man and his doings, a hanger-​​on around the human edges of things. Red foxes hunt rodents down the borders of cultivated fields after dark, and they may den under the barn. European peasants had great respect for red foxes and often chose to follow their trails across the countryside. Germans believed that if a fox track in the snow crossed a frozen creek or pond, the ice was certain to bear the weight of a man; foxes knew what Foxes and the American Foxhound  }   43

they were doing. “Reynard,” the red fox was called, which translates from the French as something like “unconquerable through his cleverness.” An Ontario hunter once observed a hound trying to pursue a fox across an open field with about two feet of snow on the ground. The thin crust on the snow supported the fox but not the hound, which repeatedly broke through. The fox immediately understood the situation. He began to wait for the laboring dog to catch up, trot on some distance ahead, then wait again. He seemed amused. After the hound finally gave up and began to struggle back home, the fox accompanied him, trotting around him in circles. Biologist Ernest P. Walker remarked: “These animals have a keen sense of sight, smell, and hearing; and, at times, they exhibit what almost seems a sense of humor.”26 Besides a playful attitude and remarkable physical capacities, red foxes are tricky. Legends and folkloric tales depict them that way, but so do a thousand eyewitness accounts of foxhunters, men with sharp eyes and as great an interest in foxes as any field biologist. As a teenager in nineteenth-​​ century Tennessee, B. Rule Stout was plowing the field one day when a red fox pursued by his uncle’s hounds came into view. The fox ran along inside the field where Stout had been plowing. Then it jumped onto the fence at the far side of the field, ran along the fence for some distance, turned, backtracked down the fence for a hundred yards, then jumped from the fence into a nearby pasture and lay still until the hounds had come and gone. Then it resumed its backtracking and went out of sight. The hounds never figured this out. On another day Stout saw this same fox, or one that looked just like it, lose hounds by running into a herd of sheep and lying down. The sheep completely circled the fox, stamping their feet and getting closer and closer. After a few minutes the fox trotted off, but the hounds could not pick up its trail for all the sheep scent. Another time the Tennessee man observed a hotly pursued fox run out into a freshly plowed field (which retains little scent), run right to the point where plowing had stopped recently in a big furrow, then jump as far to the right as it could to a grassy low place, where it lay flat and still. Almost immediately the hounds were there, but they lost the fox’s scent at the furrow, and when they circled around to try to pick it up, the fox lay frozen inside the circle. From there the dogs searched in ever-​​ widening circles until they went out of sight, and the fox got up and ran for the nearby woods. B. Rule Stout also observed “switching foxes,” foxes that take turns running before the hounds, this time a yellowish fox and a red fox, so the switching was obvious. Stout presumed they were mates. From his position on a small hill he could see the whole thing. The foxes’ chosen place for switching off had thick weeds just above the trail, and they would jump 44  

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in and out of these weeds at each switch. One fox would lead the hounds on a fast circle of several miles, then the next. He recalled: “That pair killed one of the best hounds I ever expected to own, Little Ned. She came in and lay down that night and died.”27 Dead dogs, run and tricked to death by the red fox, and—much more commonly—dogs that just abandoned the chase, quit and came back, became recurrent experiences for American foxhunters after 1800, as the red ranger spread south and west across Virginia, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Carolinas. Often the uncatchable foxes received human assistance in this spread, since foxhunters seemed gluttons for punishment. Many men preferred canine deaths in line of duty to the quitting; already, by 1800, nothing bothered a real foxhunter like a quitting hound. Red foxes made many a hound quit. Most rural dwellers paid scant attention to the arrival of the small red fox in their countrysides, though farmers might look with displeasure at yet another threat to their barnyard fowl. However, such people were not foxhunters, who experienced the new kind of fox as an extreme hunting challenge that somehow must be solved. Before the farmers saw their first red fox, local hunters usually knew they were out there and that their hounds could not catch them or even “put them in the ground,” as foxhunters said— honorably force them to take to den. Peter Beckford’s high standards of fox catching had already been adjusted for more difficult American running circumstances before the elusive red fox showed up. Hunters might ride horseback in the chase to try to stay close enough to the hounds to see what was going on, but scenting conditions often were worse than in England, American brush and woods were thicker, and American hunts often lacked servants to act as huntsmen and whips— human helpers and directors of the pack. Hounds hunted much more on their own in North America, even in equestrian hunts in broad daylight, and they caught foxes—even slowish gray ones—much less frequently. In night hunts the hounds were, of course, entirely on their own, and some men, even before the Civil War, were beginning to hunt foxes at night. Peter Beckford wanted “short, sharp, and decisive” fox chases, resulting in dead foxes. American hunters had fewer foxes, valued them more, often did not want to catch them, and after the red fox began to move in they found that they could not catch them—many times could not even come close to doing so. American hunters had already lowered the standard for foxhunting success to that of “accounting” for foxes: treeing them, denning them, or catching them, with the former outcomes being much more common, but at Foxes and the American Foxhound  }   45

first they could not account for the red fox. It got away every time, or their gray-​​fox dogs just refused to run it. Local hunters often recalled the occasion of the first red-​​fox chase in their neighborhood as a memorable event and not usually a pleasant one. In H. E. C. Bryant’s part of North Carolina, the first red triggered a hunting emergency resulting in a shameful humiliation for all concerned. The red fox ran all night, ran into the next day, and forced hunters—truly fearing for their dogs’ lives—to desperately shoot the fox to save their hounds.28 Hunters in North Carolina and elsewhere set about to try to solve their hunting problem. It did not matter if they liked their older, private strains of family foxhounds, passed down from their great-​​grandfathers, well enough. If those hounds could not chase the red fox, they would not do. Kentuckian Hayden C. Trigg expressed the feelings of many men like him: From 1845 to 1860, I owned a pack of those grand old long-​​eared, rat-​​ tail, deep-​​toned, black-​​and-​​tan Virginia foxhounds. In those happy, bygone days I could on a moonlight night ride to the covert side, throw my leg over the pommel of my saddle and listen for hours to the magnificent music made by the ever-​​to-​​be-​​remembered dogs. But, alas, everything must have an end. In 1860 the red fox made his first advent into my section and the coming of the red fox made a great change in the chase. The most important thing was to get a dog that could successfully walk with him. With me it required years of work, patience, considerable expense, and a world of trouble to gather the desired pack.29

The strange story of the American foxhound, a new breed of dog, began with the red fox’s expansion south and west in the half century before the Civil War. A hunter usually received advance warning of the red fox’s “invasion,” then in time it reached known hunters in the next county over, then it was in your hunting country and it was your dog that quit the chase. To understand how much this bothered foxhunters, one almost has to be one of them, but with little doubt hundreds, perhaps thousands, such men began to devote great energy and resources to try to breed their Pennsylvania hound or Virginia hound packs into something that could run the red fox. In the beginning, nobody tried to make a new breed or strain of hound; they just wanted to devise a red-​​fox hound for their personal use. In time, over many hound generations and after much out-​​crossing and in-​​breeding and culling of dogs, a few men became successful at this, as defined by the super-​​fox standard abroad in the local running country. Their hounds could 46  

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run with the red fox, the red ranger, and other hunters in their admiration began to label the hound with the name of the man who had brought it into existence. In time many of these named strains of foxhound, or proto-​​ breeds, passed away or dropped back into the genetic fund of things, but others—not necessarily any better—persisted. By around 1870 a new breed of hunting hound existed in several strain variations that could—sometimes, at enormous effort, and by taking many casualties—match wits, endurance, and speed of foot with the red fox. The lost strains of nineteenth-​​century foxhound are as interesting as anything in the story of the development of the new breed. Often only their names and origin legends survive, although some may have been super-​​dogs, better than anything hunters have today. The old names ring like horn calls in dark woods: Birdsong, Buckfield, Byron, Bywaters, Whitlock, Cook, Sugar Loaf, Wild Goose, Arkansas Traveler, and all the rest. Newspaperman H. E. C. Bryant of Washington, D.C., often pursued the history of exotic and extinct strains of foxhound, and he wrote of the Rans Triplett Fox Drivers (also called Blue Feather Tails) of North Carolina, very successful blue-​​ticked dogs that had coats of coarse hair and flag tails, almost like Irish setters. According to the story, a South Carolina man passing through to North Carolina had one of his team of oxen die on the road, and—very reluctantly—traded several of his strange-​​looking hounds for a replacement ox. This bloodline passed into the hands of “Uncle Rans” Triplett, who supposedly “accounted” for thirty-​​one red foxes in succession with them in the winter of 1881. Bryant also wrote of the “Whitlock Shaggies” of Boone County, Kentucky, red-​​spotted foxhounds with shaggy coats that had long hair even on their feet. Such hounds supposedly came to Kentucky from Maryland, where the seminal stud hound named Eagle first distinguished himself by escaping from a hitherto inescapable dog pen made of solid perpendicular boards ten feet high—this to join a passing fox race, where Eagle caught the fox. Naturally, someone then bred Eagle to several hundred “gyps” (female hounds) and started a new kind of foxhound that lasted for some decades before dying out.30 All of the wild-​​hair nineteenth-​​century strains ultimately disappeared, though in some cases we know the details of how they mixed and merged into one or more of the four primary existing named strains of the breed of American foxhound: the July, Walker, Goodman, and Trigg. Sugar Loaf hounds, for example, were developed by an eccentric Irish gristmill owner named Joe Plummer, who lived in backcountry Maryland. He often hunted in the nearby Sugar Loaf Mountains, hence the name. Plummer’s hounds Foxes and the American Foxhound  }   47

were very different from other foxhounds: brindle in color, often “glass eyed,” vicious in disposition, and very hard-​​driving hunters. They wore other men’s dogs out—if not on the first day, then on the days after that. One visitor who often hunted with Plummer called them “the whalebone hounds” because of their toughness. Plummer hunted with them in any weather. He tried to keep other hunters from getting a stock of his Sugar Loafs, but ultimately they got out and survived until, apparently, merging into the July strain. One of the primary breeders and proponents of the July strain, George J. Garrett, mixed some of the last Sugar Loaf hounds into his personal July pack, but they are still lost and gone, immortalized only in the words of Garrett, who evoked them well: “They were pop-​​eyed and cock-​​eared with short broad heads and fox muzzles and thickly coated hounds—many of them had one glass eye. They were small but heavily boned and vicious after a fox—would run with the bristles up, and no hound living could show front over them after a long or short race.”31 Joe Plummer remained secretive about his breeding of the Sugar Loaf hound, but the strain certainly had some imported Irish foxhound in it, as did the July hound strain into which it mixed and merged. Origin of the American foxhound and its principal surviving strains or proto-​​breeds is a murky and complicated topic, but certain things seem fairly clear and may be stated at the beginning in a series of categorical assertions. Two old British breeds of hound passed over to North America, southern hound and Talbot hound, which became known in their new home as Pennsylvania (or Eastern Shore) hound and Virginia hound, respectively. Both breeds were multipurpose hounds, staghounds and harriers in Britain, white-​​tailed-​​deer hounds and gray-​​fox dogs in America, and neither was fast enough to effectively chase the red fox. The new American foxhound primarily developed from a baseline stock of Virginia hound, principally by crossing the older breed with up-​​to-​​date, fully evolved English foxhounds imported from Ireland and Scotland during the first half of the nineteenth century. The Irish/Virginia version of the American foxhound developed first and came to be called the July, followed a decade or so later by the Scottish/Virginia version, known as the Walker. The Walker included a mystery ingredient that derived from a stolen stud hound of unknown breeding called Tennessee Lead. The Goodman and Trigg strains of American foxhound developed after that, or alongside that, constructed mostly from complicated crossings and mixings of July and Walker bloodlines. Thus, all strains of American foxhound are closely related variants of a single breed of dog, no matter that proponents of each strain bitterly contend with each other about their relative virtues. 48  

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Walker foxhounds owned by Toby Spurlock, Woodville, Texas (Courtesy of Jeffry Abt)

Finally, Walkers predominated by the late nineteenth century and in 2008 made up most of the dogs now known as the American foxhound.32 Fascinating complexities underlie the origin stories of Julys and Walkers, and in each case involve wealthy zealots who threw great energies into breeding foxhounds. Peter Beckford’s observation that men with the resources to raise many dogs will get better packs faster proved to be true. Maryland hunters got the red fox first and sought foreign blood first. Various imports were tried, some remembered and some forgotten, but the most famous and successful was that of the Irish hounds Mountain and Muse, imFoxes and the American Foxhound  }   49

ported around 1814 by Bolton Jackson, an Irishman who had come to Baltimore in 1810. The hounds, a variant of the English foxhound, came from the Duke of Leeds, whose wife was a Marylander. Mountain and Muse quickly passed through several hands, ending up with Benjamin Ogle, Jr., of Bel Air, Maryland, who bred a whole pack from them, including the famous dog Sophy, who whelped an important stud hound called Captain later owned by Dr. Thomas Henry of Virginia. These are the bare facts, but a person does not have to be a foxhunter to feel the excitement of these Maryland pioneers. They had hit the jackpot. When they mixed Irish blood with their Virginia hound stock, they got a dog that effectively pursued the red fox. These Irish hounds, as they were first called, had great speed, drive, and zeal to get to the fox. When the fox played a trick or changed direction, and the hounds “made a lose” (lost the trail), they did not backtrack to slowly puzzle out where they had gone wrong, as pure Virginia hounds would have done; instead they ran ahead, speedily casting about like bird dogs, guessing where the fox had gone, trying to strike fresh fox scent and get up on the red ranger. The Irish hounds did not even sound like the older breed. Instead of making the long, bawling, melodious cries of Virginia hounds, they voiced sharp chopping notes that saved breath and seemed to facilitate increased speed. At first some hunters did not like this diminution in the volume of hound music, but it soon came to “sound like success,” as Georgian Larry Birdsong said. At a distance, some thought Irish hounds sounded like a flock of wild geese, and up close like popcorn popping over a hot fire. They ran like mad things after the fox. In the dark, they sometimes crashed into trees. Foxhunters loved them!33 George Larry F. Birdsong of Thomaston, Georgia, played a large role in the perfection of the Irish-​​influenced strain of American foxhound, the dog that became known as the July. Birdsong was a Southern Beckford—a wealthy plantation owner, well educated, able to devote all his time to the sporting life. He hunted foxes on horseback, at speed, and in daylight. Everything Birdsong had was of highest quality—guns, dogs, and everything else. His hunting horn had been carved from an elephant’s tusk. Birdsong could not wait for the red fox to reach his part of Georgia, so he imported foxes from New York State, only to find that his pack of Virginia hounds could not catch them. Birdsong wanted to catch foxes fully as much as Beckford had. He advertised for a red-​​fox dog in the Richmond, Virginia, paper and received a letter from Dr. Thomas Y. Henry of Virginia, who owned a crack pack of Irish hounds sired by Captain and rich in the blood of Mountain and Muse. Larry Birdsong drove a wagon several hundred miles to get his 50  

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first two young Irish dogs from the Virginia doctor; he named them Patrick and Henry. Birdsong suffered from tuberculosis, as did Dr. Thomas Henry. Henry soon relocated to Florida for his health but quickly found that alligators and bobcats decimated his prized pack of Irish hounds (by then Birdsong and other men called them “Henry hounds”). He offered them for free to his friend Birdsong if he would come get them, and the rich Georgian and his son made another long hound-​​gathering trip, returning with all of Henry’s survivors. Birdsong worked at refining his pack in the decade before the Civil War, and around 1859 he added a key stud dog named July that had derived from another importation of Irish hounds to Maryland around 1830. A Georgian named Miles G. Harris had obtained this strange reddish, fox-​​like hound from Nimrod Gosnell of Maryland, named him for his July 1, 1858, date of arrival, then became dissatisfied with his wild and crazy ways. Larry Birdsong viewed July differently; he saw him as the stud dog necessary for final perfection of the foxhound strain that he called Henry hounds and other men were beginning to call Birdsong hounds. He bought him from Harris. Birdsong died young of tuberculosis, in 1869, and after that— perhaps unjustly—his strain of hounds took the name of the super-​​stud dog, July. July looked like nothing so much as a giant red fox. A man who had seen him in life recalled, “He was a medium-​​sized dog, weighing about 48 or 50 pounds, close made, with a very short ear to a point, head shaped like a fox’s head, broad forehead and short nose, long hair with thick under hair, just like the red fox fur.” A heavy “brush” tail, straight legs, and round fox-​​like feet completed the picture. It seemed that American hunters had created a foxhound shaped in the red fox’s own image.34 Meanwhile, a second great hound-​​building effort had been under way in Kentucky. Foreign blood in this case came from the other side of the Irish Channel—from Scotland. During the early 1850s, a wealthy Madison County, Kentucky, hunter named General George Washington Maupin (his full given name) began to have the usual experience; something was out there in the countryside that his Virginia hounds could not catch—in fact, could not even follow. Red foxes were arriving, and “Wash” Maupin quickly notified his foxhunting friends in nearby Gerrard County, John William “Billy” Walker and Jason Walker. Billy Walker also kept a pack of hounds and often hunted with his friend Wash Maupin, who had married his cousin. Billy Walker’s wife had endowed him with a fine plantation and four stepchildren, then he and his wife had produced four more sons, giant boys who in time became the most famous foxhunters in the United States. Nobody’s hounds would run the red fox except one hound of Wash Maupin’s, Foxes and the American Foxhound  }   51

a smallish black dog they called Tennessee Lead that Maupin had bought in 1852 from a stock trader named Tom Harris. Perhaps the hound had been stolen—Maupin really did not know. Impressed by its great speed, Harris claimed he had picked it up collarless from a deer chase over the Tennessee line and decided to take it back to Kentucky and find it a good home. It found one with Maupin; even in 1852 Maupin knew the red fox was coming to Madison County, and he bought the speedy hound in anticipation.35 Tennessee Lead did not look like anything very special; his merits were behavioral. The historian of the Walkers described him as “a medium sized black and tan hound with brown dots over each eye. He had a short, clear yelping mouth.” However, in 1855 he successfully ran a Madison County red fox to ground all by himself. Until then, as local hunters joked, they had not known if red foxes denned in the ground, climbed trees, or perhaps just vanished into the air. Tennessee Lead accomplished this on his own since the rest of Maupin’s pack had been left in his dust some miles back. Wash Maupin and Billy and Jason Walker immediately undertook step one of trying to create a red-​​fox hound: they bred Tennessee Lead to every one of their gyps that came into heat. The offspring ran faster and better, but still not well enough, and the foxhunters persisted. Maupin and the two Walkers were wealthy landed gentry, men with resources, determination, and wives that suffered them to be away foxhunting several nights a week. Already they were night hunters, hilltoppers, although after all-​​night chases listening around the fire they mounted their horses at first light and rode out to see how their hounds looked after running the fox for twelve hours—to see who was up front and who had quit. They all had several sons, and the sons helped. Madison and Gerrard counties were wonderful running country. Kentuckians called it knob country, a rolling landscape of timbered bottoms and strange, treeless hills (the “knobs”) nestled up against the eastern edge of the Cumberland Mountains. Paint Creek divided Madison County from Gerrard, Maupin from Walker, down this epicenter of American foxhunting. According to historian Bob Lee Maddux: Every ridge, knob and creek had its name which served the men who used them and traveled them and hunted among them much as streets and numbers serve city dwellers today. There was Brindle Ridge, Chestnut Ridge, Red Bud, the Falls Creek of Dick’s River, the Long Ridge, Briery, the Mixed Spring, Two Tree Knob, Burnt House Ridge—all of 52  

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these served to make intelligent conversation when a race was being described to any unfortunate hunter who could not go along that night.36

In time, Walkers and Maupins even developed names for every den in the knobs country where red foxes customarily went to ground, but it took them a decade to develop foxhounds good enough to hole such foxes and find out where they went. Tennessee Lead, the mystery stud, gave them a good start. Early on, they got some Irish blood for their packs from the hounds of a man named Ben Robinson. Then, in 1857, a Pennsylvanian named William Fleming came down to hunt with the Kentucky men. His hounds were a variation on the Virginia hound, but in some ways better than those of the Kentucky hunters. He shared his bloodlines with them, breeding two of his gyps to Tennessee Lead. Furthermore, Fleming had a suggestion. A world traveler and importer of fine merchandise from Great Britain, he thought that Maupin and the Walkers might improve their hounds by the importation of English foxhounds accustomed to running the red fox. He arranged for the purchase of two dogs from the Duke of Buccleuch’s pack, and in time two handsome black, white, and tan English foxhounds, Rifler and Marth (the latter a pregnant gyp), arrived in Kentucky. Not just Maupins and Walkers greeted the stagecoach in which they arrived but also a crowd of other foxhunters, men who were well aware of what their wealthier neighbors were trying to accomplish. Marth soon whelped five pups, of which four were males, every one of which proved to be an excellent hound, and at that point the basic mix of hound genes—of bloodlines—was in hand. Maupin and the Walkers would work on this basic mix of six parts native Virginia hound, three parts English foxhound, and one part Tennessee Lead for about a decade, but by 1868 a strain of American foxhound had been developed. Wash Maupin died not long after the Civil War. Into the 1890s, the Kentucky Walkers called their dogs Maupin hounds, but long before then members of Jason Walker’s family had carried the family strain of hounds into East Texas, where locals naturally called them Walker hounds, the name that finally stuck.37 The Walker hound was completed—except that the Walkers did not think it was. The four big sons of William Walker (the smallest of them was six-​​two) rode away to join the Confederate cavalry during the Civil War, and then they rode home and resumed foxhunting, alone or with each other, at least three nights a week. They continued this practice until around World War I—partly for recreation, mostly in a single-​​minded, obsessional quest Foxes and the American Foxhound  }   53

to build a family strain of foxhound that absolutely would not quit, that was absolutely “game.” Gerrard County countryside seemingly favored the local red foxes, which rather often ran all night and into the next day, taking hounds that pursued them to the outer limits of endurance and will. This suited the Walker brothers fine; they had little wish to catch foxes, which were their means to the end of building a foxhound that would not quit the chase. The Walkers were capable of taking a pack out to run all night, then taking it out the next night to do the same, then assessing those hounds still standing at first light on the second morning to see who should get to breed. A few hounds died in the hunt, many were culled, those that were simply good were given away. Only the very best remained in the Walkers’ dog pens. Later men might like to characterize themselves as “hard hunters” because they did things like this, but the Walker brothers were the prototypes. The Kentucky red fox, the super-​​runner, built the Walker hound, but the four brothers held it to this sternest of tests—like Daniel in the fiery furnace— for half a century. The result was a very strange sort of dog indeed. The Walker brothers passed through the furnace along with their hounds, although upon occasion it might more resemble the French army’s retreat from Moscow. When Ed Walker once described one of his multi-​​day foxhunts of December 1904 for a sporting publication, the sixty-​​year-​​old told in a matter-​​of-​​fact way of riding out twenty miles with fresh hounds to hunt all night Saturday, then hunting all night the following Friday, Saturday, Monday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday again. The description of what this old Civil War veteran did, in the cold and snow and mud, is tiring even to read, let alone endure. Ed Walker traveled hundreds of miles, his horse went lame, his hounds left bloody footprints in the snow, and at the end his long-​​ suffering wife became very angry at him. Yet this was a typical Walker family hunt. After Ed Walker’s death in 1910, a hunting friend recalled that in all the hundreds of hunts he had accompanied Ed on, he had never once heard him say, “Let’s go home.”38 The Walker brothers—Stephen, Edwin H., John Wade, and Arch K., cared little what their hounds looked like, their color or conformation; they cared only for how they performed in the chase. Consequently, as Ed Walker’s son Woods Walker once remarked, if you had gazed into a Walker family dog pen around 1890 you would have seen hounds that looked anything but uniform, the antithesis of handsome, matched, equestrian-​​hunt “pack hounds.” Some Walker dogs even looked rather nondescript—but then you took them out and realized what they could do. 54  

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Writing in 1949, Woods Walker saw Walker dog history as a succession of outstanding stud dogs down through time. This was not sexist; hunters fully recognized that males and females had equal impact on their offspring and that gyps could be as good foxhounds as males, but gyps could produce only a few litters in their reproductive lifetimes, while stud dogs could father several hundred litters and place a distinctive mark on the whole strain. In Woods’ history he called the hallowed stud-​​dog names of Tennessee Lead, Spotted Top, Scott, Red Sam, Red Scott, Troop, Ed Walker, Ticker, Joe Carr, Rock, Walker’s Don, Raider, Frank, Old Scrape, Bake, Jay Bird, Black Joe, and on and on, describing each hound in strangely personal and intimate terms. He wrote of one seminal stud: Joe Carr No. 302 by Ed Walker [the hound] out of Little Bourbon, was whelped 1888, was bluetick in color, above medium in size, extra good and strong conformation, fine carriage, coarse hair and impressed one as having perfect confidence in himself. He was a wide independent hunter and good trailer, very fast, absolutely game and required lots of hunting, big heavy coarse mouth. He was once lost at Brunswick trials and showed his strength of character by, a week later, walking unannounced, into a Presbyterian church, where a meeting was being held, up center aisle to front of church, where a gentleman caught him, and looking at his collar, found Mr. Kinney’s name thereon and led him out of the church and tied him until the meeting was over and then sent him to Mr. Kinney. This church was 150 miles from where Joe Carr was lost.39

Woods Walker’s portrait of Joe Carr points at some of the ways in which the American foxhound in general and the Walker dog in particular differed from the English foxhound. Most of the differences were behavioral. In both a good and a bad way, Walkers did have much “strength of character.” American foxhounds were smaller, lighter, and longer-​​legged than English ones, but that was the least of it. English foxhounds were pack hounds used in the formal equestrian daytime hunt, and they had been bred for physical uniformity, good looks, willingness to hunt together as a pack, obedience to the huntsmen, and good nose, speed, endurance, and—last and least—mouth. American foxhounds were very different—much more different than they looked. Mouth was very important for hilltopper foxhounds, since hilltoppers like the Walker brothers followed the hunt mostly by ear. Hounds should “give a lot of mouth,” as hunters said, and the more distinctive the hound’s voice, the better its owner liked it. Only by identiFoxes and the American Foxhound  }   55

fying your dog’s mouth could you tell how it was doing in the race, and the American hilltopper hunt was a dog race, a race to take the lead after the fox. In truth, American foxhounds turned most of the English foxhound virtues quite on their heads. American hounds were out there on their own in the dark, far from any human assistance beyond a whoop of encouragement. Hunters like the Walkers had bred them to be independent, competitive with each other, somewhat indifferent to pack loyalties, individualistic to a fault, and game to the point of death, or something rather close to it. To a British foxhunter’s eye—for example, to that of hunter-​​historian Roger Longrigg—American foxhounds appeared an undisciplined rabble, a bunch of wild Plains warriors when they should have been disciplined Prussian soldiers. However, American foxhounds were adapted for running on their own in the dark in American circumstances, where it was very difficult to match wits, speed, and endurance with a red fox. American foxhunters had selected for gameness until they created something strange, a man-​​made canid utterly obsessed with the hunting of foxes. Fanatical human foxhunters had made hounds in their own image. Individual foxhounds were almost never a one-​​to-​​one equal in speed and endurance with a red fox, though they somewhat compensated for this deficit in gameness—in motivation and staying power. Mostly, they compensated in numbers. Stories of their gameness, especially of Walker-​​dog gameness, abound, boggle the imagination and challenge credulity, yet most seem to be true. Numerous hunters told of three-​​legged foxhounds that still participated in fox chases (though I will leave out the stories of the two-​​legged hounds that did). J. W. Kilgo’s two-​​year old Walker Hi-​​Ball got his leg caught in a wire fence (as did so many others), remained hung four days, and when found had his leg nearly severed. Kilgo made a vain attempt to treat the leg but finally gave up, laid Hi-​​Ball on the chopping block, and cut the bone with one stroke of an axe. Kilgo left the bandaged dog free, not imagining it might join that night’s fox chase, but it did, running all night on three legs and being there at the denning of the fox. Likewise, Rexie Maxwell’s Walker dog Raider, at Somerville, Alabama, broke his leg in a race and had only partly healed. Maxwell left him tied with a piece of rope, but after the pack jumped a red fox, Raider got loose and joined the race. “Old Raider come in with the other hounds with about three feet of rope hanging to him. The bone in his leg had worked out about three inches through the muscles of his leg, but he stuck the race through.” American foxhounds wanted to hunt foxes so badly that when a hot chase came by where they were penned, they exerted 56  

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enormous efforts to escape. A. B. Rhodes of Jasper, Texas, had a hound named Brady that would not stay in his pen unless he was hunted at least two times a week. Brady would contrive to break out—somehow. Tired of this, Rhodes installed electric wires at the top and bottom of the pen fences, but that still did not stop Brady. “He would jump up on the fence, and when the current began to hit him he began to holler and just kept climbing and went on hunting.” In Arkansas, Emmett Adams’ star foxhound Jock, who became known as Blind Jock after a bout of distemper, continued to hunt after his blindness, though “he would run headlong after fox, and was torn and cut from contact with fences, trees, briers, etc.” E. G. Ogden’s pregnant Walker gyp Queen, just about to whelp, had been tied up before a race but soon got loose. Ogden heard Queen join the race, stay in an hour or so, take out for a few minutes, then go back in. She did this several times during the night. Queen was having puppies during the race, as necessary. Local boys found five puppies scattered down the line of the night’s race after daylight the next day, although no one knew how many Queen had actually had.40 Finally, consider the last years of outstanding stud dog Champ Clark, one of the hounds added to Woods Walker’s long collective biography of historic Walker studs. Champ Clark distinguished himself in local races, then in field trials, then at stud. He sired hundreds of litters of Walker pups. When Champ Clark was an old dog, his owner finally gave him complete freedom to roam his home farm and to do whatever he wished, and what he wished to do in his retirement was run foxes. Champ Clark remained the terror of his neighborhood for well over ten years, putting in to every local race that he heard go by, going out night after night, often to grab the lead and hole the fox. He became incredibly battered and tattered as the years passed— blinded in one eye, nearly deaf, his proud voice reduced to a croak by a stick run down his throat in the dark. But still he ran the fox.41 Gradually it became accepted that there was such a thing as an American foxhound. July 4, 1876, was the first date on which an American foxhound was entered in a dog show. In 1888 the American Kennel Club organized, with several foxhound breeders among its charter members. The following year, the Brunswick Maine Foxhound Club held its first field trial under AKC rules. This went on for four days and proved a great success. Field trials for foxhounds had been tried in Kentucky just after the Civil War, with first prize a silver dog collar inscribed “The Fastest Foxhound in the State.” This had aroused great interest from all the early dog breeders, but no further meets dared to be held until 1888. Kentucky foxhunters were mostly Civil War veterans fresh from combat, and bloodshed at the Foxes and the American Foxhound  }   57

American Foxhound of the Walker strain, with proud owner (Courtesy of F. E. Abernethy)

field trial had been avoided with difficulty. As Bob Lee Maddux explained, “These hard riding, hard drinking gentlemen were willing to take it up where their hounds had quit and (some of them) prove that if he was not a good hound he did have a good master that would fight for him with gun and knife.” The American Kennel Club would not recognize the American foxhound as a separate breed until 1910 (previously English foxhounds and American foxhounds had been lumped into “foxhound”), but American foxhound men had for long carried on as if their hounds were an authentic breed. The National Fox Hunters Association organized in 1893 at Waverly, Mississippi, with representatives from several warring strains of American foxhound present. Three of the strains had founding fathers in attendance, H. C. Trigg for the Trigg strain of foxhound, W. S. Walker for the Walker, and Willis Goodman for the Goodman. The foxhound men elected officers, devised and agreed on “running rules and bylaws,” and planned a first 58  

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national field trial to be held the next year at Olympia Springs, Bath County, Kentucky. They also made arrangements to draw up the first “standard” for the American foxhound, the first detailed physical description of an ideal hound. Then all participants had a drink, went outside, and launched a fox race; every man had brought a hound or two along for the occasion.42 An experienced journalist with the suspicious name of John Fox, Jr., covered the first National Field Trial at the old spa town in Kentucky in 1894, and he did a wonderful job in his piece for Scribner’s Magazine. John Fox was his real name. He had been raised near Paris, Kentucky, and educated at Harvard University. In 1903, he published the first of his several best-​​selling novels about Appalachia, The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come. (Later would come The Trail of the Lonesome Pine.)43 Although a native Kentuckian, John Fox seems to have been somewhat astonished at the foxhunters. Rather early on, a younger man took him aside and warned him to watch out for the older hunters: “They are cranks. All of them.” Later events revealed the informant to be as much a crank as anybody else. The reporter got into a long conversation with an elderly Kentucky judge (certainly one of the cranks) and made the mistake of mentioning a kind of utilitarian Yankee gun hunting that he knew about. Yankees started the fox with a slow hound or two, then moved into position to shoot it when it circled, then took its pelt. “The judge” dismissed these practices

Men and hounds at the first hunt of the Texas Fox and Wolf Hunters Association, 1892 (Courtesy of Jack Stanly)

Foxes and the American Foxhound  }   59

with utter contempt, asserting that the Kentucky foxhound and the Kentucky method of foxhunting were the very best. “And the music is the thing!” said he. “Many an old Virginian would give a dog away because his tongue is not in harmony with the rest. The chorus should be a chord. I shall never hear sweeter music, unless by the grace of heaven I hear some day the choiring of angels.”44 Just warming up, the old judge then launched forth on the red fox and the Kentucky foxhound, the dog best suited to run it. He suggested an almost symbiotic relationship between the two. The wonderful red fox had called into being the wonderful hound. As is the fox, so in time is the dog; that is the theory. . . . The English dog has always been, and is now, inadequate for the American red fox. By selection, by breeding winner with winner, we have got a satisfactory dog, and the more satisfactory he is, the more he is like the fox, having become smaller in size, finer in bone, and more compact in shape. The hunted molds the hunter; the American red fox is undoubtedly superior to the English red fox in speed, endurance, and stratagem, and he has made the American dog superior. The principle was illustrated when old Lead came over to Cumberland; for he was rather small and compact, his hair was long and his brush heavy, though his coat was coal-​​black except for a little tan around the face and eyes. The Virginia red fox had already fashioned Lead.45

John Fox found a strangely mixed crowd of hunters in attendance at the old spa hotel in Olympia Springs. There were foxhunters from Maine, the Virginias, Ohio, and England. Some hunt-​​club Kentuckians were present “with bang-​​tailed horses and top-​​boots,” while other Kentuckians “disdained any accoutrements on horseback they didn’t wear on foot.” The four Walker brothers fell into this informal hilltopper mode of dress—huge men wearing yellow oilskin mackintoshes and superbly mounted on big half-​​thoroughbreds. The horses needed to be big. The shortest of the Walkers towered over six-​​two, and their combined weight topped a thousand pounds. People informed the reporter that the Walkers were the most famous of all Kentucky foxhunters and were rich and influential in their home county of Gerrard. A Walker told Fox that he and his three brothers owned most things in common, but not their dogs. No Walker’s dogs would come to the horn of any other Walker. They were very disinclined to sell any of their foxhounds. 60  

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The field trial languished from dry scenting conditions, and most of the real action went on hilltopper style, after dark. The Walker brothers took the reporter out foxhunting, and he described his experiences in a wonderful portrait of hilltopping as it existed in the last decade of the nineteenth century. The Walkers stood around fires and listened to the race just like latter-​​ day foxhunters, but every so often they jumped on their horses and rode like the CSA cavalrymen they once had been. The Englishman wants his pack uniform in color, size, tongue, and speed: a hound that is too fast must be counted out. The Kentuckian wants his hound to leave the rest behind if he can. He has no whipper-​​ in, no Master of Hounds. Each man cries on his own dog. To hunt for the pleasure of the ride is his last thought. The fun is in the actual chase, in knowing the ways of the fox, in knowing the hounds individually, and the tongue of each, in the competition of one man’s dog with another, and of favorites in the same pack. It is not often the hounds are followed steadily. The stake-​​and-​​ridered fences everywhere, and the barbed wire in the Blue Grass would make following impossible, even if it were desirable. Instead, hunters ride from ridge to ridge to wait, to listen and to see. The Walker brothers hunt chiefly at night. The fox is then making his circuit for food, and scent is better. Less stock is moving around to be frightened, or among which the fox can confuse the hounds. The music has a mysterious sweetness, hounds hunt better, it seems less a waste of time, and it is more picturesque. At night hounds trot at the horses’ heels until a fire is built on some ridge. Then they go out to hunt, while their owners tie the horses in the brush and sit around the fire telling stories, until some steady old hound gives tongue. “There’s old Rock! Whoop-​​ee! Go to it, old boy.” Only he doesn’t say “old boy” exactly. It reaches old Rock if he is three miles away, and the crowd listens. “There’s Ranger! Go it, Alice old girl! Lead’s ahead.” Then they listen to the music. Sometimes the fox takes an unsuspected turn, and they mount and ride for another ridge; and the reckless, daredevil race they make through the woods in the dark is, to an outsider, pure insanity. The idea prevails that the more reckless one is, the better is his chance to get through alive, and it all seems to hold good. The Walkers hunt at least three nights out of the week all the year around. . . . Rarely is the fox caught and, provided he has the fun of the chase, the Kentucky foxhunter is glad that it has gone scot-​​free. Foxes and the American Foxhound  }   61

John Fox noted that the Walkers rode “in the Southern way of riding,” which might seem slovenly but masked a masterful horsemanship. During the hunt, Fox tried to follow one of the Walker brothers in a breakneck charge uphill through thick woods and brush to see the fox and hounds pass. The man rode incredibly. He weighed over two hundred, and was six-​​four. A hole through the woods that was big enough for him was, I thought, big enough for me, and I had made up my mind to follow him half an hour, anyway. My memory of that ride is a trifle confused. I saw the big yellow oilskin and the thick gray hair ahead of me, whisking around trees and stumps, and over rocks and roots. I heard a great crashing of branches and a clatter of stones.46

Organizers canceled the National after only three days because of the dryness and poor scenting conditions, but on the last night the clever Fox stationed himself among the Walkers and other Kentucky hilltoppers gathered in the old spa hotel. He had noticed how little alcohol they had consumed during the hunts. Now, however, the tops came off the bottles of Kentucky bourbon and the glasses filled. Conversation swung back and forth between the two poles of foxhunter thought and story, red foxes and red-​​fox dogs. Great chases were rerun, and the old hotel echoed to the voices of simulated foxhounds. Then conversation turned to the red fox, and the reporter began to fill his notebook with fox lore. Rough ground is more favorable to the fox, easy ground to the dog. A fox will try to avoid getting his brush wet, since it becomes heavy and slows him down. Conversely, he will sometimes swim streams, knowing that dogs are afraid of alligators. Red foxes hate gray foxes and will try to kill them if they can. Some foxes may actually enjoy the chase and will climb a stump or fence to wait and watch and listen to the dogs come up. Some foxes double back to check on the dogs and see where they are. Foxes regularly run by their holes to prolong the chase. Then one man told of a strange thing someone had told him he had seen, and all the drunken hilltoppers in the Olympia Springs Hotel swore they believed it. A red fox, sore pressed, had turned, bristled up, and “run back, squealing piteously, into the very jaws of the pack.” Some suggested this had been a bluff, but one man spoke for most when he said, “No, he knew that his end had come, and he went to meet it with his colors flying, like the dead-​​game little sport that he is.”47 62  

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C ha pt e r 3



O



Listening in the Dark

ne winter evening in 1937, Bob Lee Maddux of Tennessee once again loaded his hounds and drove to a remote hilltop to hunt all night by himself. Many hunters sometimes hunted by themselves; a minority hunted alone nearly all the time. “Alone” was perhaps not quite the proper word to use, since hunters had their hounds with them and maintained some kind of man-​​dog contact throughout the hunt, losing connection only when the fox made one of its long circles beyond the range of human hearing. At most traditional casting sites the fox chase ranged across a landscape known in intimate detail by hunters, hounds, and foxes, and men had devised over time and repeated hunts an intricate set of place-​​names to allow human communication about the course of the hunt. These included not just the numerous names for hills, creeks, and roads marked on the topographic maps, but names for a great many other things relevant to foxes pursued by hounds—refuge dens, springs, leaning trees allowing passage over creeks, briar thickets, cultivated fields, and even particular holes in old woven-​​wire fences. As the hounds struck hot fox scent, the hunt began to unfold far out in the dark, and men reconstructed its story from the direction and intensity of the sounds of the chase and the nuances of hound voices that they knew as well as they knew those of their own children. That explained the experience within the paradigm of conventional reality, in any case. Sometimes hunters hinted at something more complicated, an 63

intense conversion of auditory information into visual. Hugh E. Hayes listened to a fox chase one night from a subzero mountaintop in West Virginia, while four inches of new snow fell in windless silence, and he recalled: “It was so still you could hear a pin drop, and I could hear the town clock in Elizabeth, the county seat, as it tolled the hours several miles away. It was almost as though I was in the uppermost balcony overlooking a mighty drama played out by fox and competing hounds. And as most night hunters feel, it was as visual as if it had occurred at high noon in a blazing sun.”1 Hunters offered rather obscure explanations for why they liked to hunt alone at night. One man told part of the truth when he said, “The answer is simple; even my hounds need an occasional chance at the front end. So do I.”2 Since virtuous foxhounds ceased barking after being left behind, slower dogs often remained silent in the race, giving their owners little satisfaction. Solo night hunting offered a respite from competitive social hunting and allowed a man to hear only his own dogs bark. He also could listen more intently and follow the race better in the absence of all conversation, and he could lie down on a blanket or sheepskin at a dull point in the action and take a little refresher nap if he wanted to, something he might not dare to do in a social outing. Hunter culture varied from group to group, but many men looked askance at “bedroll hunters” who could not stay awake. Quitter hounds gave up and came back to the fire; quitting hunters went to sleep, and an old saying implied a mystic connection between the two: “If you go to bed, your hounds will go to bed with you.”3 Solo hunts with a small pack of hounds also greatly reduced the possibility that the dogs would catch the fox, and many hunters—more than might readily admit to it—wished to avoid that outcome. Beyond these practical reasons for fox chasing alone at night, there were others very seldom discussed. Some men clearly loved the solitude of the night, the silent hours to reflect about the past, and the chance to imaginatively project themselves into the chase without human interference. Some preferred not to build fires so as to avoid even their slight noise, and that might be easier to do if they went out alone. Also, if a man had a secret taste for altered states of consciousness, staying up all night alone listening to a fox race might be a good way to indulge it. (And if one night did not culminate the vision quest, a second sleepless night might.) Many strange thoughts came to mind in the small hours of the night, and some hunters became fond of such thoughts. Perhaps because of this, a good many solo night hunters mentioned ghosts or alluded to unusual experiences of one sort or another. Hubert 64  

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Shipley never heard a pack of hounds come back into hearing at night without imagining—at the first faint edge of sound—the ghost voice of his dead gyp Round Hill Ready, the best dog he had ever owned, “a rather small, blocky built hound, as red as blood and as fast as the wind.” After his return to the Smoky Mountains, a passing fox chase roused Frank Smith from his bed late at night, and he got up and left his house trailer to listen to them for a long time in the dark. They sounded to him like the ghosts of dead hounds and dead men. “Those are the ghosts of Julia and Deana and Walker and One-​​Eye and others out there running with the pack,” he wrote. “The spirits of my Uncle Pony and Preacher Seabolt came over and sat down on the grass and listened with me.” Although he was quite elderly, H. E. Hart took his hounds out to run in northeast Texas yet again in 1976. After his usual all-​​ night race, Hart sat on the tailgate of his truck very early the next morning blowing his horn to get his dogs back, when, as he recalled, “I suddenly had the feeling someone was looking over my shoulder. I have had this feeling before, but this day it was much stronger.” The day was cold and the feeling made it seem even colder. Hart’s hounds straggled in and he loaded up, but, said he, “As I started the truck and got ready to drive off, I couldn’t quite get rid of the feeling that I had some company there on the hill just three miles to the east of Ore City, Texas.” Hart asserted no connection and did not use the word “ghost,” but immediately afterward, with no transition, he began a recollection of his grandfather John J. Spratt, an ardent foxhunter who had lived close to the casting site. Spratt had died at ninety-​​seven after willing his blowing horn and “old flat-​​brimmed black hat” to his true inheritor, the eleven-​​year-​​old boy who was the first and only fellow foxhunter to have emerged in Spratt’s family in three generations, this same H. E. Hart.4 Night hunting alone lay at the mystical core of American hilltopping— an experience so strange that few seriously tried to describe what it was like. One of these few was an obscure grocery store owner from Tennessee named Bob Lee Maddux. Maddux sometimes hunted alone, but more often he went out with some of an informal group of local hunters that used his store in Cookeville as a meeting place. Local hunters always had some such informal gathering spot to meet and plan hunts and tell windy stories usually discouraged around the hunting fire, where everyone kept their voices low and strained to hear faint sounds coming from the dark. Almost always, a fellow foxhunter, a member of the “brotherhood of blood and cause,” as Maddux termed it, owned or worked or otherwise perpetually hung out at the gathering place of local hunters, whether it be restaurant, harness shop, blacksmith’s forge, mercantile store, or customary bench or two around the Liste ning i n the Dark  }   65

courthouse square. In Cookeville, Tennessee, and in fact for all of Putnam County, it was Maddux’s grocery. He explained: Our store is supposed to exist for commercial reasons, but on these cold days the idea is so camouflaged by the gatherings of fox hunters around the stove that any intelligent traveling man would be justified in believing that he was looking at a scene taken from the showing of “Bugle Ann.” There it is that all the races are run again, lost hounds are located, stolen ones restored to their rightful owners, and, when conversation gets dull, a lot of winter crops are made. . . . I have been persuaded that if it were not for these gathering places that the business of fox hunting would soon be a lost art.5

Bob Lee Maddux began to contribute an occasional piece on foxhunting to the magazines during the 1930s, and almost immediately readers took note. Maddux wrote infrequently, and his subjects varied little from those of other unpaid contributors, but when Maddux wrote he struck right to the heart. In 1937 he described “A One Man Race.” He began: Having driven the twenty-​​five miles, I decided to go all alone. So, turned the hounds out, lit the lantern and began to climb to the top of the ridge with my sheepskin over my shoulder. The moon was due to rise early, but I was out on top when it began to peep over the Sheppardsville ridge across the creek, and my fire was going so good that I turned the lantern down and just waited. . . . This is on top of a very high knob, overlooking the creek valleys on each side and way down toward the river. By merely taking the trouble to walk a few yards my hearing distance was practically unlimited for a fox race.

After a while Maddux’s dog struck a fox’s trail, and he began to tell the story of the chase across a landscape he knew as well as the lines in his palm. Mattie found the fox in Grishom’s lot, where sheep bells jingling in front of the hounds caused me to be glad the puppy was after a molly-​​ cottontail on the other side of the ridge. . . . The fox got to fooling around on the river bluff like he didn’t have to run unless he wanted to. Some hound would punch him off the ledges into the low gaps where the other dogs would fall on him like a free ride on a merry-​​go-​​round, only to have him double around among the cedars and back to the bluff again. 66  

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Along about third cigarette time, counting from moon rise, the hounds made the fox leave the bluff. The first I heard of them was as they rose over Grishom’s Knob and came down the ridge toward me. Milky Way and Farmer Brown topped up on front, came down the ridge haul road like they were yoked together and both singing out of the same song book. The others were right in behind them, and Mattie picked up the bother [brief loss of scent] at the mile-​​long rock fence which runs from the ridge toward the bottoms along Little Indian. . . . The fox got off the rock fence at the foot of the hill where Myrtle got it. I could tell he was a long ways ahead from the way they were feeling for him out front, and he was still out there. They went on up the creek, bothered around in McDonald’s cane thickets, came over into Ditty’s cedar lot, back into the cane again, where Farmer Brown and Mattie punched him out. He came up into the Dedman low gap where Mountain went to work and I knew he would have to run. . . . I hoped they would go on off up Martin’s creek, but the fox had another route in mind. He doubled back down along the creek, crossed through the Mule Lot, went out of hearing over Grishom’s Knob, toward the river. . . . The pack got in before they crossed the creek at the meeting house and began that long climb out onto the Trinity ridge. They made a check [brief halt] at a wire fence, up near the top, Farmer Brown got over first. Then the fox tucked a cud of slippery elm bark into his cheek, balanced his tongue on his teeth so that both ends could work, set the speedometer at forty-​​five and rolled up the haul road toward the highway with the pack right at his heels. The fox had headed for Rock Spring Valley, the Buck fields, the Dark hollow along Caney Fork, and when he would be back I didn’t know, but I did know that he would come back—old Mattie would see to that. I built the fire to something more becoming the kind of race that was going on out of my hearing. Brush fires are all right for a tight running gray, but when an old red fellow gets to going down haul roads for two or three miles at a stretch, then its time to hunt for heavier timber. I sat there for hours with nothing to do but punch together the two ends of the poles as they would burn in two. And just think.6

And so, as the night hours passed, Bob Lee Maddux thought—mostly of dead men he had known: of Hewett Peguese and his curious relationships with his stud hound Lem Motlow; of Maddux’s neighbor and friend Dr. Vernon Swift, “a small bowlegged fiddle-​​playing Irishman who is a comLi stening i n th e Da rk  }   67

bination gardener, horse swapper, hound trader, and veterinarian” and the night Vernon got drunk on the way home from Livingston’s First Monday trade fair and rode a blind mare off a cliff, and so on. “There are lots of folks to think about along in the small hours of the morning. Occasionally I get up and walk around, take a little out of the Thermos bottle, or back up to the fire and defrost my backbone.” Night races after long-​​running red foxes went on for several hours, often circling far beyond the reach of the human ear, but eventually somewhere out in the darkness the speeding fox turned toward home. Maddux kept his ear cocked for the sound of the fox chase’s reentry into his auditory universe, he waited, and he thought some more. Then: About the time the valley begins to fill with white fog and a rooster crows for the rising of the morning star I begin to walk away from the fire and expect them. On one of these trips I hear a house dog that heard the hounds, and then, I heard the faint, far-​​off rumble that might be them. Then I heard them for sure. They were coming through the Thompson thicket, for that wide scream of Milky Way could not be imitated. Then, I couldn’t hear ’em. Then, I heard ’em plain. They were coming over the Bartlett ridge and would soon be down in the Farmer pastures, coming right down my ridge. Each time they would drop out of hearing they would soon rise to be more distinct and individual mouths would pop out when fences would cause the check or a sharp ridge had to be crossed. Old Mattie’s clear caulking, Mountain Ridge with his distinct chop, Farmer Brown’s slippery-​​elm, and the roar of them all. They broke over the ridge and into a broad blue grass lot which was turned into a speedway, and as they came around the point it sounded like a three-​​ alarm fire.

Certain of Maddux’s younger hounds, nearly spent, left the race as it passed close to his camp, came in to him, then collapsed in exhaustion. Others pursued the red fox out of hearing again. As Maddux concluded, “The old hounds were fading out of hearing toward the river. They began coming to me after daylight. I stayed ’til they all got to the horn, for it’s easier to find a hound when he’s looking for you.”7 Even hunters who often hunted alone also participated in a local group of the brotherhood, as in the case of the men who congregated at Bob Lee Maddux’s grocery store. Foxhunters often felt themselves to be a misunderstood minority in the general rural population, usually surrounded by 68  

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blood relatives and neighbors who had no wish whatsoever to hear about last night’s fox race. So they sought out each other’s company to have such conversations, and they often hunted together, launching collective packs of hounds after the fox. The blessing or curse of being a “born foxhunter” fell mysteriously hither and thither upon rural Americans, so local hunting groups often assembled a strangely dissimilar body of young and old, rich and poor, educated and illiterate, townsmen and backwoodsmen, and even black and white. Members of the local brotherhood seemed to be able to identify another of their kind at first sight. If such a newcomer showed up at a hunt, someone often asked, “How many dogs you got?” and, if the man seemed hound-​​deficient, arrangements could be made to get him some. People commonly gave away puppies, and the gift or loan of a pregnant gyp could provide an instant pack. Social groups of local hunters differed from similar groups only a community or a county away, with each having its own traditions and customary ways of doing things. Some local groups favored one or another strain of American foxhound. Some insisted that only fully registered “paper” hounds were appropriate, while others made fun of such formalities, repeating the old saw, “A hound don’t run on paper, it runs in the woods.” Where local circumstances allowed a choice of game, local groups might specialize in running either red or gray foxes. The two species lived in somewhat different landscapes, so hunters could seek out either the gray ghost or the red ranger as they chose. Finally, local hunting groups differed rather profoundly along a continuum between—at the two extremes—“fox chasing” and “hard hunting,” to use the hunters’ own terminology for the two dissenting camps of hilltopping. Fox chasers favored hound music, fellowship around the fire, lessened competition between men and hounds, and a live fox safely denned at the end of a long, melodious chase. Hard hunters wished for their hounds to win both the race with the fox and the race with other men’s hounds, and they did not care too much about how the dogs accomplished this. If the fox proved too slow and too dumb to climb a tree or go in a hole, so be it. The dissenting approaches of “chasers” and “hunters” had been around since the obscure origins of American hilltopping before the Civil War, but in the late nineteenth century, before the coming of the automobile, all foxhunters had operated differently. A correspondent to Red Ranger who termed himself the “Old Professor” noted several such matters in his reminiscence about the unnamed north Louisiana community in which he grew up, probably during the 1890s. Hunters in his town owned what might be called first-​​generation foxhounds—the offspring of the newly deListen in g i n th e Da rk  }   69

veloped Walker strain of American foxhound crossed on local “potlickers,” foxhunters’ derogatory term for the older underlying hound stocks present since settlement times—“coon hounds,” the local variant of the old Virginia hound, whatever. Nevertheless, the mixed breeds were good fox dogs. In the correspondent’s time, fox men did not kennel, chain, or put collars on such hounds. They roamed free as the wind. By day they could be found sleeping in the dusty streets and alleys of his small crossroads community; by night they hunted foxes on their own as they wished. The foxhounds loathed the mongrel “cur dogs” that often accompanied farmers’ wagons into town to the gin or mercantile store, and would rise from the dust to run them home at high speed. Then, “late in the afternoons, you could hear the hunters ‘horning’ them in at feeding time. Their feed consisted of baked cornbread with a few scraps from the meat market.” Periodically, the town’s hunters went hilltopping. Hounds were horned in, men saddled up, then the dogs watched closely to see which of the community’s two customary casting places, each several miles away, would be the epicenter for that night’s hunt. No sooner did hunters choose a direction and begin to ride out than the dogs raced to the site and started to hunt foxes. Usually they had one running by the time the hunters got there.8 Mixed-​​breed hounds left to run loose, horn signals, homemade dog food, and horseback travel to casting sites were all part of the old days, although some of these old-​​time practices lingered into the middle twentieth century. Before 1911, when Red Ranger began its program of American foxhound registration, hunters cared little for such paper-​​hound formalities and often chased foxes with whatever local version of hound dog that ran them well. In truth, almost any sort of hound could successfully hunt the slower gray fox (although the red fox was quite another matter). The relatively short-​​eared Walkers and Julys often did not even look right to old-​​timers, who believed that if a dog’s ears did not measure to the tip of his nose, it was not “full hound.” Kentucky hunter W. F. Roquemore grew to adulthood with full hounds, and still touted them in 1979, noting: “I have owned hounds since I was fifteen. The first hounds I owned would run anything and catch or tree it. I have caught otter with them, caught beaver in eight feet of water. Otters are vicious fighters. I have caught red and gray fox, lots of them.” Roquemore’s boyhood contemporaries usually went out at night and ran whatever their hounds chanced on first—possums, foxes, bobcats, “beaver in eight feet of water,” whatever. Such old-​​line hounds always barked treed (a special kind of bark) when a quarry climbed a tree or ducked into a hole; full-​​ 70  

{  Gray Ghosts and R ed Rangers

blooded foxhounds almost never did. As did most other hunters who wrote to the magazines, H. E. C. Bryant ended up with pens of registered American foxhounds, but he waxed nostalgic about the multipurpose, mixed-​​breed hounds of his 1890s boyhood in North Carolina. For example, a dog named Poe would hunt “anything that left a scent on the ground.” Bryant and his brother sometimes tracked guinea fowl and house cats about the place with this hound, just for fun. Poe took his cue from the circumstances to know what the boys wished him to hunt. Bryant recalled, “If we took a gun and went to the field in daytime, he would hunt rabbits. If we carried an ax and a lantern at night, he treed possums. In the summer, if we went to a stream and urged him to hunt, he sought a mink track; we killed 16 with him one season. If we rode a horse and carried a horn, Poe hunted foxes.”9 Other hunters also noted that their hounds recognized that foxhunting was afoot from their first sighting of the hunting horn hanging at their master’s side. If hilltopping had an icon, it was the horn, carefully crafted with pocketknife and bits of broken glass from the raw material. Hunters selected a likely cow or goat horn, cut it off at the tip at about the diameter of a penny, carefully hollowed out and shaped the blowing hole and mouthpiece with a knife (testing all the while), then scraped the body of the horn smooth and thin with pieces of broken glass. More often than not, they might discard the finished horn as not good enough and try again. Two horns skillfully made by the same man, looking almost identical, often had very different functional qualities. The differences derived from mysterious variations in the raw materials, most horn builders thought, perhaps involving the life histories of the animals that had provided them. East Texan Aubrey Cole claimed that in his youth Jasper County horn makers sometimes sought out the left horns of free-​​range cattle that had starved to death in the woods or had otherwise died tragically. Mournful death imparted a mournful sound, or so some believed.10 Really good blowing horns were hard to come by and to a degree accidental, and once a man had one he valued it highly and made sure to pass it down to the true foxhunter among his sons and grandsons—if there was one. Hinkel Shillings inherited a blowing horn from a grandfather he never knew. Until Hinkel had it engraved with the likeness of his champion Walker stud hound, Dawson Stride, this small old horn did not look special, but it had a strange, piercing tenor sound that made it much in demand for sounding the traditional “three long blows” at foxhunters’ funerals. Hinkel won many horn-​​blowing contests at foxhound field trials with this horn over Li ste ning i n the Da rk  }   71

Hunter sounds blowing horn, 1967 (Courtesy of F. E. Abernethy)

half a century. Someone sounded it at Hinkel’s services, and—since Hinkel had no true successors—the horn blower hung it around the dead man’s neck and mourners buried it with him. Hunters wanted two things in a blowing horn—a loud and penetrating tone that carried for miles, much farther than the human voice, and a unique sound, identifying the horn’s owner. Hunters wished for hounds to recognize and come to their horn call and only theirs. They strove for uniqueness in their horn calls both by the peculiarities in the horn itself, creating an individual sound, and by how they blew it. Ideally, when dogs or men heard a certain horn call, they knew immediately the man that made it. “Now you hear my horn!” an obsolete nineteenth-​​century saying affirmed. It meant, “Now you know who this is! Now you truly realize who you’re dealing with.” The search for a unique sound led to the occasional use of things other than cow or goat horns. Some hunters used conch shells, their spiral tips shaped into a mouthpiece, while others recycled military bugles with “US” or “CSA” (or even “BSA” for Boy Scouts of America) on their sides. Some 72  

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got their hands on modern versions of the traditional French-​​horn-​​shaped brass hunting horns of George Washington and the red-​​coated huntsmen and blew them. Into the 1970s, twentieth-​​century hunters still needed hunting horns to accomplish the most anxiety-​​provoking task of the foxhunt, getting their wild and fox-​​crazed American foxhounds to come back to the casting site or dog pen. Short of breath, some men rigged special honking horns on their pickup trucks to do the same thing. However, even into Great Depression times, blowing horns served other functions around the farmstead as well, most of which had to do with communication between people. Generations of farm women blew the “dinner horn” at noon for family members to come in from the field. Before the crank telephone arrived, foxhunters might communicate with prearranged signals to set up evening hunts. A man waking up with his roof on fire or his wife stricken with illness in the night blew the three long blows that universally across rural America meant “I’m in trouble. Help! Come to me.” Some men never went into the woods to look for stock or to hunt squirrels without their emergency signaling device hanging at their side. They carried matches in their horns, or (with fingers over blowing holes) drank from them at springs. Horns served as beacons in night hunts or other night excursions, with one person left in camp to blow repetitive homing signals beginning at some agreed-​​upon time; men far out in the woods “homed” on the horn, just like foxhounds. Repeated use of the horn led to horn virtuosity, and people recalled listening to neighbors play long, strange blowing-​​horn concerts in the late afternoons.11 Hunters sometimes divided foxhound history into two eras, “farm-​​ raised” times and “pen-​​raised” times, with pen raising necessitated more by the coming of the dog-​​killing automobile than anything else. As in the north Louisiana town of the “Old Professor,” farm-​​raised hounds roamed at large by night and day and were called in by the horn only for daily feeding and for hunting excursions with their owners. Old-​​timers sometimes claimed that American foxhounds came to call better in early days, and perhaps they did; around 1900 the sound of their owner’s horn signaled the two things they loved the most, organized foxhunts and food. No wonder they might home to the horn. Preparation of dog food constituted a laborious daily chore for hunters in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and most men made their own. Stores for a long time sold no commercial dog food, and after it did become available many dog owners believed they could not afford it. Foxhunters’ wives put up with many things, including their husband’s abListe ning i n the Da rk  }   73

sences from home two or three nights a week, but after preparing three human meals a day on a hot woodstove, most refused to cook dog food. Consequently, men who cooked nothing else cooked food for their hounds— usually either a dog chow based around corn bread or cornmeal mush with additives. Crumbled “dog bread” in buttermilk sufficed for many, to which might be added a flavoring of table scraps, meat scraps, or “cracklings” (a by-​​ product of hog lard processing). Foxhounds received low-​​protein diets for carnivores, and many a well-​​ nourished fox escaped them because of it. After hunters began to feed modern dog chows, foxhounds’ average shoulder heights increased more than an inch, and the standard for the breed had to be revised. In the old days, hunters fed hounds in keeping with personal theories of hound nutrition, and some men nourished their hounds on mixed garden vegetables boiled with cornmeal, or Irish potato soup, or corn mush flavored with any fox the hounds managed to catch. N. Cheek, who grew up south of San Antonio, remembered hearing the black-​​and-​​tan pack of an old “cedar-​​chopper hermit,” who lived about four miles from his family’s ranch, launch itself three times a week after something, it really did not matter what. In keeping with the hermit’s dog-​​feeding philosophy, whatever unfortunate creature his hounds ran down became part of their dog mush.12 Hounds raised outside might be fed straight corn mush or corn bread and expected to provide their own protein supplements. When Carl Rucker visited a noted July breeder at Haisel, Alabama, in 1922 to buy a hound, he asked what meat the man fed his hounds. The breeder said, “When they want meat they go out and catch rabbits.” Rucker laughed, but then the breeder provided a demonstration. He called a hound, walked across a likely field near his home with his guest, and when a rabbit jumped, the dog ran it down in a minute and immediately gobbled it nose to tail, just like that. No cottontail matched up for long with a hungry American foxhound. Hounds left to scavenge for themselves outside the pen also ate carrion, and they cared little what it was. After an all-​​night hunt, one of a South Carolina hunter’s underfed hounds came to his horn bearing a tasty prize, the decayed right arm of a murdered bootlegger. Some hounds fed themselves better than others. Texan A. E. Bush recalled an early hunt with another man’s hounds in which the hound music periodically ceased while the hungry dogs devoured whatever snake or toad or bit of carrion they had chanced upon. Some hound owners were just frugal; others seemed to believe that hungry hounds hunted foxes better. Oscar Wilde’s famous characterization of fox74  

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hunting as “the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable” did not apply to hounds. Hinkel Shillings once took part in a very unpleasant foxhunt in which a neighbor’s ravenous dog ate all of the first two gray foxes the pack caught and tasty bits of the third.13 By the 1950s the old ways of dog feeding were being replaced by a multitude of commercial dog foods from companies that often took out lurid full-​​page ads in the magazines, sometimes with celebrities like baseball star Mickey Mantle attesting to their benefits. Foxhunters grudgingly shifted to “bought” dog food, except in the numerous locales where commercial chicken houses, or chicken-​​processing plants, had become part of the local environment. The latter provided an endless supply of free chicken heads and feet, perfect additives for dog mush, while the chicken houses yielded a limitless crop of dead pullets, usually available just for the trouble of picking them up. As late as the 1970s, Shelby County, Texas, breeder Hinkel Shillings made his own dog food. His usual recipe was: boil water in a cast-​​ iron pot over a wood fire in the backyard; add twelve or fifteen whole pullets (uncleaned, feathers and all) and cook thoroughly; stir vigorously with an old broomstick to “break ’em up”; then add a heaping bucket of cornmeal, withdraw the fire, and allow the dog mush time to “set up.” This fed fifteen or so hounds for two days.14 Shillings’ father did not buy his first car until 1931, so Hinkel grew up in the foot- and horse-​​travel era of hilltopping. As in the case of the Old Professor’s unnamed north Louisiana community where mixed-​​breed foxhounds slept in the dusty street all day, hunters commonly walked, rode horses, or drove wagons to the handful of good hunting sites reachable within two or three hours’ traveling time. Farmers, who walked for miles in the course of their daily field work, were pre-​​adapted for long recreational hikes to and from the local hunting grounds. Many men wrote the foxhunting magazines with recollections similar to those of Nolan Cochran of Arkansas, who reported: “I have been hunting since 1927, that was back in the good ole days when there was mostly dirt roads, very few cars and net wire fences. We either had to go in a wagon, ride horseback or walk. I guess I have walked as far hunting as most anyone, carrying an old kerosene lantern with one side of the globe painted green to prevent blinding the one walking behind.” Seven or eight miles out, more miles walking at night to keep the chase within hearing, and a long walk back home after daylight typified Cochran’s foxhunts. Hunting friends Raymond Gilstrap and Chester Barlow lived near Sigler, Oklahoma, during the Great Liste ning i n th e Da rk  }   75

Depression. Gilstrap starved in the country, while Barlow had a job in a coal mine working for one dollar a day, but they still met two times a week at Morgan Mountain for a fox chase. This required four miles of foot travel for Gilstrap, five miles for Barlow. The two men had almost no money. Gilstrap showed up on the designated days with a pound of “fifteen-​​cent bologna,” Barlow with a bucket of milk with corn bread crumbled in it. That served as rations for men and dogs for two days, although, as Barlow noted, “Many a time Raymond and I would walk to a corn patch in the Fall and shell five or six ears of corn for our hounds.” As in this case, the trouble of walking or riding to a hunt location, plus the usual delays of horn blowing and waiting for hounds to come back the next day, often encouraged two- or even three-​​ night hunts. The “foxhunter’s widow,” as joking neighbors sometimes called her, learned to expect her man back only when she saw him coming down the road. T. A. Jamieson of Walnut, Mississippi, often hunted with a friend named W. A. Bell before World War II. Jamieson and Bell rode out with their hounds for miles, rode all night long, then usually stayed all the next day and the next night as well. As Jamieson admitted, he and his friend “have always been considered all night men. We didn’t have a certain time to come home.”15 In the time before automobiles, two-​​night excursions were the norm, and occasionally the local hunting group gathered their resources and stayed out for days longer, often an entire week. Men often termed such protracted affairs “camp hunts.” Around 1903, Ancil Barber, age thirteen, and his younger brother Roder walked six miles to their first Arkansas camp hunt as raw novices, arriving about noon with four borrowed hounds on a plow line and a dime’s worth of crackers as food for dog and man. The adult hunters contemplated the Barber brothers for a while, then one man took Ancil aside and informed him of a potential danger in the camp. One man had been bitten by a rabid dog years before, and when he became overheated he tended to relapse into insanity, so the boys needed to watch out. About dark the hunters built a fire, and, sure enough, the afflicted man began to pursue the young hunters on all fours. However, the brothers had thoughtfully filled their pockets with throwing-​​sized rocks and when they began to treat him for his disease he got well fast. The rest of the camp hunt went very well for the Barber brothers, although they were very tired and hungry by the time they got home. Ancil survived many more hunters’ “hoorahs” at similar camp hunts and chased the fox into his eighties. The more hunters in camp, the more likely a hoorah. Slipping salt pork to a man’s hound so it would quit the hunt and hang out by the nearest water source all night was 76  

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one joke. Another was the whole camp’s secret agreement to deny hearing a man’s hound in the chase.16 Automobiles ultimately changed everything for foxhunting, and for the worse, but in the first decades hunters experienced mostly the good effects. Elderly men, women, and children now could participate, and the chase became a little more of a family affair. Hunters went out in even worse weather, traveled to a wider range of places to hunt, often came home the next day, and began to arrive at work on time more often. Local hunting groups increased in size, as did the collective packs they launched into the chase. Focused on the fox, a few frenetic foxhounds straggled into the path of Model T’s and other early cars and paid the price, but until after World War II in most rural places the roads were dirt, cars traveled relatively slowly, and such accidents occurred infrequently. Only after the war did hard-​​surface roads and sixty-​​miles-​​per-​​hour speed limits begin the real carnage. Hounds on a hot trail paid little attention to anything but fox scent, and red foxes in particular often ran on roads. Many a foxhunter began the automobile era with a Ford Model T. The tall, skinny wheels rode high over deep ruts and mud, and hunters successfully maneuvered them into places that their successors reached only with four-​​wheel-​​drive pickups. Hunters took Model T’s into all conditions at all seasons of the year. Precautions had to be taken, since foxhunters often went out when no other sportsman was abroad, not even duck hunters. On very cold winter nights, the owner might drain his radiator water into a can, put it close to the hunting fire all night so that it did not freeze, then pour it back in the Model T before driving home the next day. Mary Humes’ father typified many; no sooner did he get his first automobile in 1920 than he put it to work as a support vehicle for foxhunting. Some of his hunting friends had owned cars for years and had developed “cage-​​ like affairs out of wood and chicken wire to carry on truck beds or attach to luggage carriers of passenger cars” as hound carriers. The most affluent even had homemade dog trailers. Mr. Humes, however, did what most new car owners did at first: he carried his hounds in his car. “At first, everyone just crammed their dogs into the back seat of the car and set out,” Mary Humes recalled, oblivious to their flea-​​scratching and snarling, and to their panting, red tongues dripping over your shoulder. Needless to say, the exciting odor of fresh paint, rubber and gasoline that hung over our new car was soon polluted with the pungent, cohesive odor of dogs. We learned early on List en in g i n the Dark  }   77

to brush our best clothes industriously on alighting from its shiny magnificence, to rid ourselves of the shed dog hairs that were forever nestling in every nook and cranny of the back seat.

Others did much the same as Humes’ father. V. R. Sprague began foxhunting as a boy near Clarksdale, Missouri, with a fanatical local fox man and Model T owner named Glade Warrack. Warrack often came by Sprague’s house to pick the boy up to go hunting with all fifteen of his foxhounds jammed into the Model T “like sardines in a can.”17 Local foxhunting groups and the actual practice of their sport differed a great deal from place to place, and some of the differences had environmental origins. Much depended on the local “running country,” as hunters called it, and the running country determined the kind of fox that ran there. Gray and red foxes lived in many different landscapes, but reds did not flourish in the swamps and thickets of the far southeastern states, and grays did not like it when the country became too open. Red foxes preferred a broken, diversified, upland landscape, a mix of pastures, cultivated fields, and woodlands like that of Bob Lee Maddux’s Putnam County, Tennessee, where hunters could build a fire on a strategic hill and listen to the race all night long—if the fox did not decide to leave for the next county. Upland country often had good listening points to hear the race but limited roads to follow it. As Maddux did, you might just have to sit there and wait for the race to return. In Tennessee, West Virginia, and the Missouri and Arkansas Ozarks, hunters often just made an educated guess about where the fox would be jumped and where it would go, took up a position on a high hill (the sport was called hilltopping, after all), built a fire, and stayed put all night. Ozark hunters sometimes said that their running countries were so up and down they had no good idea if their hounds were fast or slow. Exaggerating a little, perhaps, some claimed their rural roads had no passing zones—none; it was no passing on hills and no passing on curves, and that was all there were; the solid paint stripe forbidding cars to pass never ceased. However, other parts of the red-​​fox zone featured flatter landscapes and numerous county roads, where even during the Model T era hunters began the practice of motoring from place to place to keep the race in constant hearing. Flatlands or hills, pine forests or briar thickets, swamps or rocks or bluegrass pastures, local hunting groups patriotically touted their running countries, and every story of a chase published in the magazines evoked the mythic hunting territory in a long succession of local place-​​names. Writers often claimed that more great races had been run in such-​​and-​​such place 78  

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than anywhere else in the country. Likewise, they asserted that their local running country was so “bad” (good) that chasing a fox in it culled inferior hounds naturally, without resort to human intervention, and the local strain of red or gray foxes was so “bad” (good) that the foxes helped to do the same. Thus the running country included “dog killing foxes,” “dog killing country,” and “dog killing hounds” to run with should readers accept the gracious invitation and come down with their poor canines to take on the local hunting group in a race. Writers almost always issued the challenge, and they meant it. Some running countries differed radically from the upland landscapes where the Walkers and others had created the American foxhound, and hunting groups in those places struggled to alter the breed to adjust to local circumstances. In lowland Georgia and Florida, foxhounds hunted grays through brush and briar thickets so tight that dogs and fox exhausted themselves within two or three square miles of landscape, races never went out of hearing, and hounds came in with most of the hair worn off ears and tails. Foxhounds bred and accustomed to wide-​​open running just did not work in such places, and had to be rebred and retrained—virtually reinvented. South Texas north of the Rio Grande and south of San Antonio, the famous Texas Brush Country that J. Frank Dobie often wrote about, presented perhaps the greatest array of environmental challenges for the American foxhound. Hounds there needed to be bred for ferocity and perhaps fatalism. After Hinkel Shillings began his foxhound business, he shipped a good many of his high-​​bred Walkers to certain South Texas hunters— suspiciously many, he began to think after a while. Something seemed to be happening to them. Hinkel finally refused to sell any more sons and daughters of his champion Walker studs into the Brush Country hellhole, which had a high rate of attrition for running hounds. Not only did South Texas have terrible brush to contend with, but most of the brush had thorns. Hounds returned from every race full of thorns and sometimes died from “cactus fever,” caused by too many of them. And besides the endless thorns, awful heat, and numerous rattlesnakes, the Brush Country of 1930 had coyotes, gray wolves, javelinas, feral hogs, bobcats, pumas, ocelots, jaguarundis, and an occasional jaguar! Furtive foxes did roam the brush lands, but usually hounds encountered something else first. More or less by necessity, South Texas hound men turned to coyote chasing. In whatever running country, local foxhunting groups assembled people from every walk of local life. Bank presidents stood around the hunting fires with sharecroppers, sheriffs with moonshiners, college-​​educated men with Li st en in g i n the Da rk  }   79

illiterates, preachers with inveterate sinners. This was neutral ground, and what a man did during the day did not matter much. In rough clothing, strategically overdressed for the night, horns hanging at their sides, everybody looked much the same, and everyone understood they had shared a deep bond with all the others. The status of “foxhunter” seemed to fall randomly among the rural population, like a curse or blessing from on high, and after it had fallen the chosen ones gathered together. Before the coming of the automobile, foxhunter social groups tended to be smaller and more localized, as in the case of the group of poor hill farmers who gathered to hunt together in Harriette Arnow’s novel of the Cumberlands, Hunter’s Horn. Described from reality, such hunting groups typified the poor-​​boy hunters of unproductive soils and economic downturns. Each man had a general-​​purpose hound or two, no more, to contribute to the collective pack. These dogs ran red foxes as best they could on nights when they were not in use to hunt coons or possums for human consumption. Meanwhile, well aware of their more backward rural brethren, prosperous townsmen in the county seat, often just a few miles away, kept personal packs of registered foxhounds. When such urbanites hunted with each other, they fielded larger collective packs chosen from all their hounds. Several times a year in Arnow’s fictional county and in many real ones, country poor boys and better-​​off townsmen got together for joint hunts. Rich or poor, foxhunters differed only in money, not in zeal for the chase. In Arnow’s novel, Nunn Ballew literally starved his poor family to purchase two registered American foxhounds from a breeder in a nearby town. Impoverished rent farmer Arthur M. Barnes of Hearne, Texas, seemed to have done much the same thing when he bought a fine young Walker gyp named Lou from the county attorney. Barnes previously had owned an excellent unregistered hound for which another poor man and obsessed foxhunter had offered a yoke of oxen worth at least $150. Barnes had thought it over, then tearfully refused, noting, “I hope the good Lord will forgive me, for my family could use the money—but this hound and I understand each other.” Many businessmen, lawyers, veterinarians, dentists, and other professionals appearing in the pages of Hunter’s Horn, Chase, and Red Ranger clearly built their lives around foxhunting while making a living on the side. Without a doubt, some of them felt the same pangs as Arthur Barnes. Only truly wealthy members of the brotherhood, like Oswald Snyder Carlton of southeast Texas, guiltlessly indulged themselves in land, hunting lodges, kennels, high-​​blooded foxhounds, and good-​​running red foxes imported from the Midwest—just what every foxhunter would have done, given enough 80  

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money. “Uncle Snyder,” who died in 1934, owned and ran the Great Southern Life Insurance Company for many years. Snyder’s foxhunting empire of “Camp Rozzum” included sixty thousand acres of cut-​​over timberland (great country for foxes), a lodge, screened kennel houses, a kennel bakery to make the dog food, stables, an infirmary, and so on. The area immediately around the lodge remained a no-​​hunt zone, and Snyder’s feisty Minnesota red foxes came up to bark challenges at his penned hounds every evening. Otherwise, Uncle Snyder, who served as patron for his extremely fortunate local foxhunting group, did just like all the other hunters—he stayed up all night, hunted several times a week, and allowed no fires to be built, since they interfered with listening to the race. Many a poor sharecropper did the same.18 A charter member of the Texas Fox and Wolf Hunters Association, Snyder Carlton hunted at Camp Rozzum for thirty years and died in his camp in 1934. His friends greatly grieved his passing. Men informally associated in local hunting groups often spent most of the night together two or three times a week for many years, and they usually became extraordinarily close. Hunters published long, grieving, heartfelt obituaries for their special “hunting buddies” in the magazines, and sometimes they ceased foxhunting temporarily or even permanently after an old friend died. Wade Stewart of Hazlehurst, Mississippi, typically wrote of the death of his friend W. R. Templeton, “It hurts, and I can’t seem to shake it off.”19 What foxhunters’ wives may have thought about all this male bonding far away from home and family may be imagined. Some clearly resented it, as did the woman who repeatedly asked her husband to take her along on a night hunt until he finally did so. After two or three hours of brush-​​busting on foot to stay in hearing of the race, the wife grew weary and demanded her husband take her back to the car. Not wishing to leave the chase, he seated her comfortably on a fallen log instead, the better to listen to the hound music, and vowed to return to get her in a few minutes. However, in the excitement of the hunt he soon forgot about the promise. He and his friends hunted on for several hours until the fox treed, and only then did a hunting buddy remind the man that he needed to retrieve his wife. The other hunters did not wish to, but at his insistence they accompanied the fearful husband in an expedition to recover the furious spouse. Typically, hunters’ wives never joined the brotherhood of hunting buddies, but they did sometimes get drawn into the chores of taking care of hounds. Mrs. G. C. Childers’ husband often absented himself in his work for Sun Oil Company, leaving his wife at home to keep watch over the dog pens and even to retrieve lost L isten in g i n the Da rk  }   81

hounds from the woods. She often pitched in to help her husband with his weekly hound washing, a particularly unpleasant task. “I wonder how many fox hunters wives do what I do,” she wrote Hunter’s Horn. “Maybe they do even more, but the Lord pity them if they do.”20 A local hunting group often developed its own peculiar variant of foxhunting belief and practice, and one aspect of these cultural differences had to do with newcomers to the group. The group might encourage newcomers and casual visitors, or they might not. They might play practical jokes on them, and rather commonly they might subject them to an all-​​night chase, since the most basic test of hilltopping was the ability to stay up all night. Staying up all night functioned as the key trial to see if a man was a quitter. Alford Boshell of Alabama had importuned his local group of hunters to let him join them for some time, and had gone so far as providing himself with four Walker hounds “of the finest breeding line,” but still the hunters, who knew Boshell from the daytime world at the nearby sawmill, had their doubts about him. They finally agreed to take Alford hunting with them on a cold winter night. Walking down the road toward the place where they planned to cast the hounds, hunters saw that the would-​​ be foxhunter seemed ill-​​prepared—underdressed for the cold night and inadequately supplied with provisions. Alford had skipped supper and had shown up for the hunt with only a pocketful of peanuts. Subtly offended and in an un-​​Christian mood, Rev. Marvin F. Worley, Sr., informal leader of the foxhunter group, resolved to put their visitor through the wringer. As his son noted, “Dad and Fred decided to break Alford or really make a fox hunter out of him.” First, they mooched all of his peanuts, then they kept him going all night long, always on the move as it got colder and colder, refusing to build a fire for hours. Alford got tired, hungry, and cold, and finally he looked so bad the hunters made a small fire “and Alford curled up around it like a sick dog.” At first light they started home on a beeline across frozen fields. “Alford couldn’t even talk. His feet were frozen and so was his whole body.” About a mile from his house, “Alford told Dad, ‘Marvin, you want my hounds?’ Dad said, ‘Why, Alford?’ He said, ‘I’m quitting, this is my last hunt.’ He did quit and never went again. There is one thing we know for sure. It takes a real fox hunter to hunt fox in all kinds of weather and not be a quitter.”21 “Quitter” was a dirty word for foxhunters, perhaps the dirtiest word of all. Hounds often got culled for quitting, and even a casual guest that could not stay up all night might be labeled quitter and never asked back. The first 82  

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visit to a long-​​established local group of foxhunters often impressed the visitor as one of the strangest experiences of his life, especially if he knew nothing of foxhunter practice. Foxhunters stayed up all night, they conversed little if any, since that interfered with listening to the hunt, and they did not drink alcohol. A man used to normal sporting life diversions of rural males—coon hunts, social deer hunts, fishing camps, rooster fights, and other such things—might get a big shock from the foxhunters, who, as B. S. Jones of Florida reported, behaved “like a bunch of preachers.” Jones visited an Alabama foxhunter friend around 1950 and stayed out all night with his hunting group. The friend may have regretted the invitation, since Jones had trouble adjusting. Over and over again, he tried to make the hunters explain to him what was going on in the hunt. The hounds chased the group’s favorite good-​​running fox, old White Flanks, a fox certain to put up an all-​​night chase and then pop in his den just at dawn. Some sort of ritual seemed to be under way, and Jones wished to have it explained to him. After a while, however, the hunters said no more to their guest, only smiling at him when he asked what was going on. Smiles made no noise. Ever so often they silently walked over and got another Coke from a seemingly limitless supply in the ice of a galvanized tub in the back of a pickup; otherwise, they just stood around and listened. Perhaps to get away from his guest, the host at some point walked a ways out into a cornfield to listen, but Jones followed him and asked another question. The man at first ignored him, listened intently to the distant hounds, then told his guest, “Mr. Jones, I’m just as close to Heaven as I can ever hope to be.” This by way of saying in the most polite way possible, “Leave me alone!” Finally, Jones became so frustrated and bored that he walked across the cornfield and down an old road cut into a creek valley. Just as his feet began to slip on the steep and muddy road, wily old White Flanks, perhaps for his own amusement, perhaps to confuse the dogs, led all the hounds up the road cut and over Jones. Startled, the Florida man fell down on his back in the mud while the dogs passed above “like jet fighters coming in to land, their landing gear down, and their ears outstretched like the stubby wings on a jet fighter.” Then the hound voices boomed away from him. He walked back to the fire with his back covered with red mud to find that the foxhunters understood exactly what had just happened. Not that they said much. Finally, twelve hours after the race began, just at first light, Jones accompanied the hunters for the final act of their ritual chase with White Flanks, the viewing of the old fox entering his den. The hunters knew just where it was, L isten in g i n the Da rk  }   83

of course. They stood silently by like preachers observing a holy event while White Flanks passed his den one last time, made a last two-​​mile circle, then casually went in.22 An unnamed Louisiana doctor told Louis R. Nardini about a foxhunting group he went out with somewhere around the Verdu community near Natchitoches. The occasion had begun with the presumed medical crisis of an old man named Ned. The doctor found Ned languishing with acute lung congestion, but when a fox race broke out on the next ridge, Ned jumped from his bed, coughed up a huge wad of phlegm, ordered his hounds loosed to join the chase, and—the doctor in tow—rushed to the hunters’ fire. Then, perhaps in embarrassment at his sudden recovery, Ned gave the astonished visitor what B. S. Jones’ host had refused to do, a blow-​​by-​​blow account of the fox chase based only on the sounds coming into the campfire area. Local hunters called this good-​​running fox Old Sassy Pants and had run him for over five years, and Ned knew nearly everything that would happen in the ritual of the chase. Ned explained, as the doctor recalled: There, listen now, he is running along Gum Creek. He will come to that old overhanging ironwood tree that almost meets with a leaning magnolia. That fox will jump to that magnolia and then come down the other side of the creek. There, I told you Old Sassy Pants has made his crossing. Now them dogs is debating which one will swim that cold creek to smell out the other side. I will lay odds on Loud Mouth Jessy or Clarissa to pick up that trail again first.

And so Clarissa did. Ned then predicted that the fox would lead the hounds through Fuller’s Mule Lot and a certain mule would bray, and so forth; he knew fox, hounds, and the local landscape so very well, and had listened to this ritual race so many times, that he not only told the story of the race as it happened, but predicted what would happen next. The doctor became as amazed at Ned’s interpretations of sounds coming from the dark as he had been earlier when the old man practically rose from his deathbed.23 Many local hunting groups included someone with Ned’s acuity of hearing and close knowledge of foxes, hounds, and landscape, but some thought them as much a curse as a blessing. Hilltopping remained a game played entirely by ear, and hunters distinguished themselves from the general population by their abilities to hear what was going on during the chase, but this did not mean that they were all equally good at it. The population had “super-​​hearers” in it, as the United States Navy recognized and tested for at 84  

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its boot camps all during the Cold War. High scorers on the Navy’s hearing test often found themselves routed into the specialty of “sonarman.” Hunter Hewitt Meriwether had long been fascinated with some men’s abilities to hear things in the race, and he often tried to get them to talk about it. Members of the hunting group with ordinary hearing abilities sometimes turned a little reticent around such people. No one standing around the hunting fire usually commented about what he heard, so what did these wonderful listeners discern? Did they hear other men’s dogs engaged in such deadly sins as trashing, babbling, cutting, or running back trail, things the owner himself could not hear? One older man known to Meriwether had the reputation of hearing everything, and the man liked to ask other hunters what they thought was going on, what their dogs were doing, as a kind of game. They answered him reluctantly, because they believed that he did know. Most men could identify the voices of their own hounds, though this was not always easy, since some hounds sounded much alike, but it took a better ear to tell how the various hounds actually were doing in the race. Was your hound “carrying the mail,” taking the lead in the chase, or was he just following the leaders from behind and baying mindlessly along? Some people could tell, many could not. And it did not help that every dog had at least two voices, one when cold trailing and one when running hot trail. In fact, a given hound might have as many as four “mouths.” Also, a hound’s voice subtly changed when it got behind, or became very exhausted, or came within sight of the running fox. Given all this auditory complexity, a hunter who began to lose some of his hearing became deeply concerned. An older friend of Emmett Adams, Claud “Doc” Ebert, at first turned to an “ear trumpet” made from a bison horn hung around his neck along with his blowing horn. Then he used a doctor’s stethoscope rigged up to a large wind-​​ up phonograph horn to try to follow the pack and favored a three-​​legged hound named Steve that he thought he could hear better than his other hounds. Finally, Adams’ friend Doc made use of a small squirrel dog named See See. Doc held See See in his lap, and by the direction she faced he discerned the direction of the race. None of these desperate measures worked to perfection, and as his hearing further deteriorated Adams’ friend finally could not hear a hound even as close as a hundred yards away. He was always asking, “Where are they, boys?” One night a hunter standing behind this man cleared his throat, “and Doc jumped up and said, ‘Listen boys, there’s old Scar.’ ”24 At the other extreme from poor Doc Ebert were the super-​​hearers. Mrs. Shirley Collier of Garrison, Kentucky, told of a local man of long exListen in g i n the Dark  }   85

perience “who knows every hound’s voice he ever heard and can identify hounds’ mouths better than their owners can.” “Buck” of Roanoke, Virginia, correctly identified the voices of two hounds owned by a friend after not having heard them for several years. (They had been stolen elsewhere and sold locally.) Loma Vernon Perry grew too ill with heart disease to accompany her husband on the hunt, but he often cast close to their house while Mrs. Perry listened. After her husband returned, she would give him a play-​​by-​​play of everything that had happened in the race, down to the last detail.25 Finally, here is a summary of what B. Rule Stout said that he detected in a night race in Tennessee in 1946. Stout had several decades of fox-​​chasing experience and a fine ear. As the hounds came back over a ridge into hearing, soon after the race began, he heard that they had split into four packs chasing four foxes. He could hear that Fourspot, a hound that sometimes caught foxes, was not going to catch any this night; Fourspot was not running as well as usual. He heard that one pack was a fifty-​​fifty race between the leader gyps Gale and Rose for seven hours, then Gale gradually wore Rose down and began holding the lead more and more. He heard one fox run close to another race and one hound split off the first race to change foxes. He heard Blue Streak hold the lead in her race all night long. About 7 a.m. the next morning, he heard two races run together and the hounds in one pack drop their fox and join in the other race, Gale’s race. He heard three of the new dogs challenge Gale for the lead of her race they had just joined. After eleven hours, he heard hounds dropping out with each circle of one of the foxes. He heard that fox go into his den at 12 noon, just ahead of the last three hounds in that race. He heard a dog on the way back to camp jump a new fox, and he identified by location and the way the fox ran that it was a certain red vixen that always gave a bad two-​​hour run. He heard a group of farmers’ curs pile in and tear up this race.26 B. Rule Stout heard all this, but he probably said little about it to his companions in the local hunting group. Commenting on the events of the race, with its winners and losers, not only violated the rule of silence around the hunting fire but tended to cause trouble. Since hunters followed a nocturnal fox chase only by ear, nobody could actually prove what went on out there 86  

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Tyler County, Texas, fox chasers listen to the race, 1960s (Courtesy of F. E. Abernethy)

in the dark, and some hunters were well known for always hearing their hounds running at the front. Consequently, most thought it prudent to let such men hear what they wanted to hear and to go unchallenged. In modern terms, events of a hilltopper fox race always had a certain amount of “deniability”—that is, until a man’s quitter hound actually came in and sought him out around the hunters’ fire. Listening in the dark became especially touchy where strain loyalties were involved, and sometimes hunters found that they could not hold their tongues. The American foxhound constituted a single breed, and the four principal strains or races of this foxhound, Walker, July, Trigg, and Goodman, were all mixed up with each other in their origins and down through time—even in their dubious paper genealogies printed in the magazines. Foxhunters reacted in two different ways to the strain question. Some swore vehemently by a single strain of foxhound, kept only that strain in their kenLi ste ning i n the Dark  }   87

nels, and had great difficulty hearing any other kind of hound running at the front of the pack. Conversely, such a man at some point might switch strains, like a zealous Protestant who has found what he thinks is a truer church. Other hunters, however, doubtless the majority, concerned themselves mainly with performance and cared little for this dubious strain purity and loyalty. They mixed and merged foxhound strains as they pleased to get a better pack. In truth, red foxes ran so well that any dog that matched up with them—whatever it was, whatever it looked like—tended to get a place in the hunt. Local hunting groups, however, perhaps to reduce discord, tended to more or less adhere to a single strain of foxhound, usually the predominant one, the Walker, and the pages of the magazines sometimes registered the comments of Trigg, July, and Goodman owners complaining about Walker racism. A man with some of these less-​​common foxhounds might or might not be fully accepted into the local hunting group. At Marshall, Illinois, around 1950, every hunter but Fred Mundorf ran Walkers; Mundorf championed Triggs. Marshall hunters often hung out at the local blacksmith shop in such numbers that the blacksmith could hardly swing his hammer. Mundorf felt a bit ostracized in these bull sessions, and he suffered even more in the weekly hunts, when none of the Walker men seemed capable of hearing a Trigg do anything good. Such was the nature of the invisible nighttime foxhunt that Mundorf could do little about this, could prove nothing, and had to keep his mouth shut about the doings of his wonderful Triggs.27 Relations between Walker and July owners could be even worse. Around 1932 Frank Full of Leroy, West Virginia, dared to introduce a young July gyp into his Walker pack, scandalizing all the Walker men in his hunting group. “This was the first July any of us had ever seen,” Full recalled. “We had heard they were no good.” However, in this case the converse proved true, and the wonderful gyp began to outperform Walkers right and left. Full’s erstwhile hunting buddies did not rush out and get July hounds. They went into a sulk at this violation of the Walker-​​hound paradigm and tried to avoid Frank and his wonder dog, which they detested. They hated his July, and “when she was running they would not stay where I was when we were out together and even changed their hunting grounds.” Thirty years later, Richard Gray and his speedy July hound Cyclone also hunted among Walker men, and Gray claimed that some of them hated Cyclone and hated him. One night Cyclone quit during a race, something never before seen, and came in to Gray with a bleeding leg. As it turned out, a Walker owner and erstwhile hunting buddy had waylaid Cyclone at a road crossing in order to get his hounds 88  

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ahead. Doubtless he had expected to escape undetected. But Gray recalled, “I tracked Cyclone back to this man’s pickup by the blood. I told this man he might stick that knife in me but he was going to keep it out of my hounds. We have never hunted together since that time.”28 Such inter-​​strain tensions and conflicts characterized only some hunting groups. Many others had much more ecumenical attitudes toward the several fox dog religions, and their members said that they ran “mostly” hounds—mostly one kind or another. Practical hunters saw good dogs and bad dogs in every strain and felt free to mix and merge in every way possible to get a better pack of foxhounds more closely adjusted for the foxes in their running country. The three hilltopping magazines touted paper hounds and pure strains and made a good bit of their income from registering dogs in their three respective versions of an American foxhound studbook, and by the late 1920s most foxhunters went along with the paper-​​hound idea. However, there was much grousing, which all the editors cheerily published right along with the registrations. For half a century, hunters repeatedly wrote in to complain that the mixed-​​blood or unregistered hounds of their youth had often hunted better than their fully up-​​to-​​date and registered ones. They caustically noted that red foxes, with no registration whatsoever, repeatedly ran whole packs of pedigreed foxhounds into near exhaustion. And their favorite story, reported over and over in one form or another in personal accounts and in the occasional fiction, remained that of the unregistered or perhaps even mongrel super-​​dog, originally held in utter contempt by local adherents of registered foxhounds, that outperformed all the local blue bloods in the ultimate test of chasing red foxes. Often this poor unregistered creature existed only as an also-​​ran in local fox races until one mysterious night when it revealed its true potential. Emmett Adams of Forsythe, Missouri, for example, told the true story of Little Bill, the small, unprepossessing, and unregistered hound owned by a local general hunter, who used him on lowly rabbits and coons as well as fox. Little Bill did not look good, and he sounded as bad as he looked, causing some men to call him Squeaker. Some hunters did not even like to have this runty “half hound” in the collective pack. However, one night during a social hunt in the Haworth Bend along the Arkansas River, something happened to Little Bill. The hunters heard it, but of course did not see it. Little Bill somehow got excited, his voice changed, and he took the lead after the red fox. After that he always ran in the lead, becoming the most “cussed and discussed” foxhound in Taney County. Nobody knew just how he did it; some speculated that he cheated in some way, but he always ran to the front. L ist eni ng i n the Dark  }   89

Little Bill’s nickname changed to “Blue Streak” or “Wind Splitter.” Hunters noted that hounds that ran with Little Bill often came in the next day with eye problems, and some thought it was from Little Bill kicking dirt in their eyes from ahead. For seven long years Little Bill did this. His owner refused to sell him, but after the man’s accidental death, Little Bill changed hands among the local hunting group several times, at ever-​​increasing prices.29 In three-​​quarters of a century of Chase, Hunter’s Horn, and Red Ranger, hunters told the stories of a great many “Little Bill’s.” Not only were they a favorite tale of foxhunters, they were part of the reality of fox chasing; great hound athletes might show up from almost anywhere, and if a dog effectively ran a red fox, hunters wanted it. “Paper hounds,” conversely, replete in bloodlines of the great and the near-​​great, sometimes turned out to be total duds. After close reading of a few thousand accounts of hilltopper practice, a person might end up rather puzzled regarding certain basic customs of the chase. Local hunting groups all were listening in the dark, but they did not seem to be doing the same thing from place to place. Hunters themselves sometimes labeled these different kinds of hilltoppers, or rather polar opposites at the two ends of a continuum, as “fox chasers” and “hard hunters,” often in the process of criticizing the opposite camp. Every local hunting group operated along this chaser-​​hunter continuum, mostly somewhere toward the middle. And every locale included a few individuals who so zealously fox-​​chased or hard-​​hunted that they refused to hunt as the local group did and went out mostly alone. Fox chasers liked and admired the fleet-​​footed game. “I have been a fox chaser from a very small boy,” Jim McHolmes of Sardis, Tennessee, wrote. “The first chase I remember, I rode behind my dad. That has been many moons ago, for I am no boy now. I’ve been a fox-​​protector and a dog-​​lover from my first chase. I yet have my first fox to kill, although my hounds have killed several against my will. I know fox from A to Z because I have studied fox from a boy.”30 The extreme fox chasers like McHolmes wanted first and foremost not to harm the fox. To the chasers a dead fox was a bad outcome, even a tragic outcome, depending on the fox, since the deceased never ran again. Sometimes they labeled hunters that did not feel as they did as “fox killers.” Of course, accidents could happen—the fox might be sick or make a bad mistake—but they did not try to catch it, they managed their hounds in the hunt not to catch it (for example, by pulling them off the chase at a road crossing when they thought the fox was getting tired), and in fact they often 90  

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bred hounds too slow to catch it. Fox chasers liked foxes, observed foxes, and often emerged as the ardent field naturalists among the local hilltopper clan. They were the ones more likely to purchase foxes for raising and release, to prepare fox dens, and to feed foxes—in effect, to practice game management of foxes. A rather large number of fox men actually did these things. Fox chasers favored the bloodless ritual hunt such as the Alabama run of the fox named White Flanks described by B. S. Jones. They loved a good-​​running fox that tested their dogs all night, goaded them into the greatest volume of hound music for the longest period, and then went safely to ground at the end of the race, ready to run again the next week. They valued and protected such foxes, and outsiders often needed a group’s permission to come into its running country and pursue one. Fox chasers like the Alabama hunters wanted hounds that stuck to the track and did not go scouting around to get up on the fox to put it off its usual procedures, let alone to actually catch it. They wanted track runners that honored each other and ran as a pack, making the maximum amount of hound music. More-​​competitive packs, dominated by one overachiever, perhaps Little Bill, might feature only one hound voice, with the others running glumly behind. Fox chasers were very likely to get rid of such a hound—as the fox men said, to “cull from the front.” Likewise they might cull any hound that made special efforts to catch the fox. All hilltoppers valued hound voice or mouth, but fox chasers valued it most, especially if it was aesthetic or special in some way, as in the case of the gyp called Bugle Ann of MacKinlay Kantor’s novella. Since their dogs hunted as a pack, with no man’s hounds running much to the fore, chasers’ hunts also softened (but did not entirely eliminate) the hard edges of competition among men and featured more laid-​​back attitudes and good fellowship around the hunting fire. In 1956, Herschel Rawlings expressed the fox chasers’ point of view with these words, couched mostly in a description of an ideal hound: In my book if the hound had what it takes he would hit the brush after the fox, not be in the road trying to get it where it crosses ahead of the hound that is taking the roughs. A hound that will follow the fox regardless of where it goes and drive it hard, whether it be slow or fast is a foxhound. All foxhounds can’t be speed demons. Yet, what gets me, fellows will argue that a road runner and a cutting, slashing hound is a good foxhound, that it is using fox sense. Brother, that isn’t my name for it! Give me the good honest, dead-​​game hound, the hound that will Li ste ning i n the Da rk  }   91

drive a fox hard and pack. The music is what I go for, without that I wouldn’t fox hunt. I hope I will never want a hound that will run road and cut on my hounds or my brother fox hunters’ hounds just to outrun him. Give me that good pack race with lots of singing and everyone goes home happy.31

Extreme hard hunters had a different agenda. A “good pack race with a lot of singing” was not their goal—they wanted to hear solo performances voiced by their dogs. They itched for competition between their hounds and those of other men, and they wanted to win at all costs. They were the reason some called the sport “fox racing” or “dog racing.” Tom Masters reported a 1915 Kentucky hunt in which the owner of a super foxhound named Champ Clark drove up after the race was already underway and told the other hunters, “Boys, the race is about over, here goes old Champ Clark.” The other men laughed at this brag, but then old Champ Clark turned it into reality. He caught up with their hounds, then after a while got far ahead of them in chasing the fox. After about an hour the other hounds hushed, and only Champ Clark could be heard baying. As silent and demoralized as their hounds, the hunters quietly began to leave the camp, not even waiting to recover their dogs. They came back and got them the next day. Champ Clark had completely ruined the evening.32 Hard hunters rarely had such a fantasy play itself out in real life, but they clearly loved to read about it in the magazines. They of course envisioned themselves in the role of Champ Clark’s owner. Articles on this theme often appeared, and chasers and hunters wrote to the magazines in response and argued back and forth on the issue of competition. Hard hunters often accused their opponents of hypocrisy. Clifton Martin noted that he often heard men say: “‘I like a pack hound,’ and will leave the main truth out. They ought to just come out and be honest about it and say, ‘I want him to pack to the front end more than the other fellow’s hounds.’” He admitted he felt this way himself and agreed with a friend who once remarked, “If mine gets behind, if he has to climb a tree and jump out to get back where he ought to be, that is what I want him to do.” The friend meant that whatever cheating sin of cutting or scouting or road-​​running his dog needed to do to get back in the race, he wanted him to do it. Some hard hunters were quite up front about this; for example, Hunter’s Horn often featured stud-​​dog ads from the Cut-​​Across July Kennels, Bastrop County, Texas. Such attitudes deeply offended Bascom Mullins of Elk Horn, Kentucky, who complained: “We don’t get together much or hunt anymore. We have many braggarts. It seems as if 92  

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most are similar to the jockeys riding race horses, everyone wants to be out there to run the other man down.” But in another article on the same page of this issue of Hunter’s Horn, Rod Holland of Shannon County, Missouri, jested, “I may have to take out a liability policy on my dog as he is throwing mud, rocks, and sticks in the faces of these other fellows’ dogs, and some people will take you to court if your dog hurts their dog.” Bragging on his dog was just part of the competitive game to Holland, however much people like Mullins might not care for it.33 The hilltop fox chase incorporated two competitions, that between hounds and fox and that between individual hunters operating through their hounds, and hard hunters wanted their dogs to win both competitions. They wanted the fox accounted for—denned or caught—and sometimes sided with their hounds in preference for the second option. Unlike the fox chasers, more-​​competitive hunters tried to breed foxhounds able and willing to catch the fox, and—like Peter Beckford—they often believed that hounds ran better and competed better if they sometimes succeeded. A huge difference of hilltopper opinion about the wisdom and the morality of catching foxes showed up in the pages of the magazines. A phrase from a 1938 manuscript by C. J. Harris, “shooed the fox out of the tree,” appeared in the magazine as “shot the fox out of the tree,” and this typo provoked phone calls, letters, personal confrontations, and physical threats for Harris. Herbert Baldridge recalled that if someone in Carter County, Kentucky, dared to kill a red fox, local hunters became “real angry and sometimes they would do something bad to that fellow.” However, S. P. Cooper of Henderson, North Carolina, blithely informed the readers of Chase in 1931 that he and his friends had caught sixty-​​three foxes in the season of 1929–1930 and fifty-​​three in the season of 1930–1931, including the last seventeen consecutive hunts. Unfortunately, the next issue of the 1931 Chase was not available to check for responses to this, but the fox-​​murdering Cooper, who mostly jumped gray foxes out of trees for his dogs to kill, probably received hostile comments. Nor would he have been physically safe in Herbert Baldridge’s Carter County, Kentucky. Hunters simply disagreed on the issue regarding death of the fox, and—judging from their soul-​​searchings—even the ones that formally came down on one side or another remained conflicted. Hard hunters wanted a good-​​running fox to escape to run again, and fox chasers had to accept that every ritual pursuit placed a fox in deadly danger.34 Fox chasers had made up their minds, but the necessity and/or appropriateness of the death of the fox seemed an unresolved problem for the more-​​ competitive hard hunters. Many of them liked the fox also, although they Listen in g i n th e Da rk  }   93

certainly preferred for their hounds to at least account for it honorably by denning or treeing it. They appreciated the value of special foxes like White Flanks and tried to leave them to run again on other nights. However, many hounds passionately wished to get their teeth into the elusive, maddening little canid that had never been caught by a pack of hounds before and so often ran playful, taunting races in front of them, passing by numerous safe refuges as it went along. Hard hunters might have bred slower, less bloodthirsty hounds to avoid fox death almost altogether, as the fox chasers did, but this went very much against their competitive spirit. They wanted most of all to best other hunters in the fox race, and slow, noisy, tight-​​packing, track-​​running foxhounds could not accomplish this. As noted before, most local foxhunting groups occupied neither extreme position on the chaser-​​hunter continuum but fell somewhere in the middle. Speaking for many other hunters, probably most of them, lifelong adherent of the chase H. E. C. Bryant well expressed the characteristic middle-​​ground position on the issue of the death of the fox. Fox men had a basic problem, perhaps even a theological one: they sought success in the hunt, they loved the ritual chase, they loved (and identified with) both their hounds and the fox, but the former wanted to bite the latter to death. “Killing a fox has never been my ambition,” Bryant wrote, with all the usual ambivalence, and I doubt if that has influenced many hound lovers. My heart has always gone out to the tired, failing fox in its contest with a pack of relentless dogs, and if he escaped to a den I was glad. Hunters believe that their hound must be blooded to make them eager. No doubt they are correct in that, but I get a lot of pleasure and a real thrill out of a race between ambitious hounds, just as the frequenter of the race track does between horses. The dog contest is sufficient to maintain my interest in the sport. I am satisfied if the pack drives a red fox to earth after a spirited chase. I cannot excuse my dogs for a loss; therefore, it must be death or a hole in the ground. If a fox resorts to a den he is whipped, just as certainly as is the man who, in a fight cries, “hold, enough.” 35

Hunters had to withstand another kind of death as well, even more constant and painful—the death of hounds. Most met line-​​of-​​duty ends in the perilous hunt, but others died by human hands. Chasers and hard hunters differed on this as well, but all fox men felt they had to sometimes cull foxhounds from their packs and from the holy bloodlines. Everyone felt some level of obligation to cull (kill) foxhounds for the deadly sins of babbling 94  

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(barking when there was nothing to bark at), trashing (going off after unworthy game), or quitting (the worst of all foxhound sins). A man was not supposed to sell such hounds or even to allow them to survive; he was supposed to kill them before they polluted the noble breed with their offspring. Chasers and hard hunters disagreed on the relative evil involved in several versions of what hunters regarded as cheating on other hounds—cutting, scouting, road running, and the like. All such dogs departed the rightful scent trail and the virtuous pack to try to get closer to the fox. American foxhounds were intelligent and opportunistic, and a dog rather commonly learned to anticipate a fox’s change of direction and leave the pack to cut across and pick up the hotter trail just behind it. Some hounds even learned to leave the scent trail and the pack when they heard crows making a certain noise. Flocks of crows often swooped low to harass running foxes whenever they spotted them. Moralistic chasers hated “cheating hounds” that did things like this, but competitive hard hunters often approved of their “fox sense” and ability to get ahead in the race. Foxhunters lived with hound culling and hound disappearance and had to harden themselves to these things to participate in the sport. Culling decisions began even at whelping, when chasers and hunters found themselves confronted, sometimes, with fifteen pups for far fewer teats on the mother dog. Fox men often thought they could not keep all the puppies, even in a normal-​​sized litter, and they made life-​​and-​​death decisions about them based on a variety of folk beliefs. Some closely watched the pups crawl around for a while, then decided. Some “culled from the hind tits,” choosing to keep the pups that won the fight to gain teats toward the mother’s head, which had more milk. Some culled for color, for the shape of the puppies’ feet, or for physical conformation. Furthermore, foxhounds constantly culled themselves, so to speak, in the dangerous fox chase. Hardly a hunt went by but one or more dogs failed to come to the hunter’s horn and became classified as lost. Most of these hounds eventually came back, some of them did not, and the latter usually had met some sort of death that their owners might never learn about. American foxhounds had been bred for independence, speed, and reckless gameness in the hunt, not for taking good care of themselves, and they took many casualties. Long before the deadly motorcar showed up, foxhounds died of exhaustion, heatstroke, poisoning, gunshot wounds, woven-​​wire fencing, steel traps, physical injuries in the hunt (even falling into old wells), and a great many other things. Chasers culled foxhounds for their sins less frequently than did the hard hunters, who prided themselves on rigorous purging of the bloodlines. In Li stening i n the Dark  }   95

fact, the term “hard hunter” occurred most often in the magazines in association with moralistic criticisms of inadequate culling in the past and bragging accounts of drastic cullings in the present. Hard hunters sometimes departed their local hunting group to put their hounds to stern, multi-​​night hunting tests, with only the best performers and survivors in their packs getting to breed. A. B. Barren wrote of his ideal hound, “I want them to be good hunters, good trailers, to have plenty of speed and drive, and they must not ‘curl up.’” A dog curled up after it quit and came in from the hunt; it turned around a time or two to “make its doodle-​​bug hole” in the ancient canine way, then curled up in this dog bed in the leaves. Foxhunters hated to see this, to a degree that was impossible for non-​​hunters to understand. R. L. Hays of Virginia reported that a local hunting group he visited often used an old well to dispose of the bodies of the many hounds they culled in the hunt— doubtless for quitting and curling up. Iowa hunter F. O. Hubbartt bragged of his local hunting group, which clearly had a high hard-​​hunter quotient, in typical rhetoric: “We have a cure for babbling up here, Simply lay a hand ax or something equally effective between the eyes of the sire or dam (depending on guilty one) before cross is made.”36 Hubbartt implies, of course, that softer hunters often had failed to do their duty with sinning hounds of previous generations, hence the failures of the present, which his hatchet-​​ wielding brethren had to rectify. Other hard hunters wrote about hunting all night and into the next day, the better to cull hounds by death from exhaustion and to make incipient quitters show their true colors. In the northwest Alabama hills, Granville Faires and his hunting group used certain uncatchable red foxes to accomplish this. Faires bragged on one race that had gone on for over fourteen hours so “at the end there was not enough hounds finished it to make a stew of.” This special fox not only could not be caught, he “had never been put in a hole,” never denned. He let the dogs look at him most of the time during the chase to lure them on, but he beat them all. Some of Faires’ hounds did not eat for two days after a race with this super-​​fox, and Faires’ neighbor actually had four of his hounds die. “Two of them died in the yard and he killed the other two, they could not get up.” Nor was Faires in any way apologetic about this local tradition of hard hunting unto death to cull foxhounds. He pontificated: This is the best way to pick breeding hounds. Pick one that can sit on the business end of a fox race from eight to twelve hours twice a week. 96  

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And if he will do it past two years old, breed to him or her. If any man thinks the kind of hounds I mention in this story are easy to breed, try it. Or, if you have a line of hounds that will do this, I want your blood.37

From time to time men like Granville Faires recalled the ultimate hard-​​ hunter story, which seems to have been true. In 1913, five prominent Kentucky men put together ten of their best hounds for a match race against ten hounds in Virginia. For some reason, before they left they took a vow to drown any hound of the ten that committed the worst fault of all, quitting the chase. Nine hounds did quit, all but a male named Hub Stride, and true to their vow, on the way home the hunters wired the nine hounds together fifteen inches apart, tied the wire to a big rock, and pushed rock and hounds off a cable ferry while crossing a river. J. D. Chenault, one of the five hunters, was the one that threw the rock. Only Hub Stride had survived the ordeal, but then he became a great stud hound and sired more than five hundred litters. Very occasionally, all this holier-​​than-​​thou moralizing about hound culling and accounts of dog abuse became too obnoxious for some long-​​suffering readers of the magazines, and they wrote in. One anonymous hunter contributed an article titled “Do We Expect Too Much Endurance?” He asserted that we do, and he especially took issue with the claims about twelveor fifteen-​​hour races several days in a row. He knew no foxhounds that could do that, and he accused the hard hunters that wrote about such things of lying. “There’s a limit to the physical ability of hounds as well as members of the human race,” reasoned the critic. “If the hunters who tell such yarns are only capable of walking ten miles, why not say they are quitters. If not, let someone take a bull whip and drive them an additional ten miles.” He had read about the Hub Stride incident, the nine hounds culled from a river ferry on the way back to Kentucky, “drowning the dogs that had gave their all, and I am of the opinion that it should have been the hunters put overboard.”38 American foxhounds often culled themselves honorably in the line of duty, and had any of the nine quitter hounds died of exhaustion in their all-​​ night Virginia hunt, the owners doubtless would have liked it much better. Such hounds certainly had lost their race with the red fox and the other men’s dogs, but nobody could say they were not game. “Game” was the fox man’s word for “zeal until death,” the key concept in hilltopping. During the late nineteenth century, American breeders turned the disciplined English foxhound into a very different breed of dog—extremely vocal in the chase, Li stenin g i n the Dark  }   97

independent and individualistic to a fault, reckless, intensely competitive with other hounds, and utterly obsessed with the fox. Unfortunately, none of these things made them easy to control or very good at coming back after the hunt ended. American hilltoppers became very skilled in their use of the icon of the hunt, the blowing horn, because they got a lot of practice sounding it. American foxhounds identified their masters’ unique horn signals very well, but that did not mean that they always came to them. Getting the hounds back often took more time and energy than the hunt itself; hunters might spend days doing it. And the specter of ultimate loss—disappearance, death, or disablement—hung over every hunt, creating a constant anxiety. Every time a hunter sent his valued hound into the night woods, he knew he might never see it again, or never see it as it was before that hunt. Hinkel Shillings did this for years with his champion Walker stud dog Dawson Stride, and every time he returned to his home, either his wife, Maudie, or his daughter Rose invariably asked him, “Are the dogs all okay?” Finally the morning came when Shillings had to say, “No, Dawson Stride’s got his head busted up.”39 “Lost dogs,” lost in all the ways dogs can be lost, was the price American hilltoppers paid for breeding such a peculiar hound and practicing such a peculiar sport. In 1966, Texas hunter D. C. Rudasill reported an average outcome from a hunt with his hunting buddies one week before. Fourteen of thirty-​​five hounds had failed to come to horn after a fox race near Cleveland. Hunters had spent much time over several days driving around looking for them and had located eleven of the lost fourteen hanging around “near some of the Lake Houston beer joints and fish camps fifteen miles away.” Three hounds remained lost at the time of his writing and seemed likely to stay that way. No one had seen them or knew what had happened to them.40 Hundreds of hunting accounts in the magazines tell similar stories. Probably some of these wayward Texas hounds had heard the horns calling but just had not been ready to come in yet. Stud-​​dog ads often claimed that such-​​and-​​such a stud was a “good homer,” but only a few hounds actually came home well. American foxhounds had been bred for extreme foxhunting zeal, not for coming to call, and some hunters clearly admired dogs so game that they ignored their horn summons and continued to hunt. Hunters culled few hounds for bad homing, though occasionally they might become disgusted and sell them. Some game dogs had so gamely exhausted themselves in the hunt that they needed to lie around and rest up for a while to enable themselves to come in. Others still felt able to run, so when they crossed another hot fox trail on the way back they got on it, thus obeying 98  

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Walker foxhounds owned by Toby Spurlock, Woodville, Texas (Courtesy of Jeffry Abt)

a more compelling foxhound call to duty than their masters’ horns. Then, after that fox, they might run yet another one, and so on. Bob Clark of North Little Rock typically reported, “I have been doing a little dog hunting this week. Leader has been gone nearly three weeks.” Leader had failed to come in from a hunt with his owner and remained out, hunting on his own. Clark lived several miles from his kennel, so when the indefatigable Leader periodically checked in from one of his self-​​initiated fox chases, he found the master still not there and left to hunt some more. “Maybe me and him will meet at the pen one of these days,” Clark specuListe ning i n the Dark  }   99

lated. A few years later, Clark wrote of a friend with a similar “fine, game Walker” which the man sold because it was “too much hound” for him to own. “Royce said he was too much hound for him. He would turn him loose one night and he might not come back for two or three days. He wasn’t just laying out, you could go in daytime and hear him still out. When he does get enough he will come back to the casting grounds.”41 “My best hound ever” stories appeared as a standard piece in the foxhound magazines, but the wonderful dogs therein described rarely had distinguished themselves for their homing skills—in fact, rather often just the opposite. Illinois hunter W. C. Sweat described “Wild Joe Pickett” as “one of the toughest foxhounds, and with more sense than any foxhound I have ever had the experience of knowing in my fifty years of hunting.” However, although Wild Joe had “sense” and knew how to come back to the place where he was cast, he often did not choose to do so. Joe always tried hard to pick up a second race on his own, and he did this so commonly that Sweat, since he had no choice, often left Joe running in the woods when he took his other dogs home, expecting him to come home eventually. And eventually he did: “Joe has been out for as long as seven weeks at a time, 80 miles from home, but he would always make it back home safely.” Recently, however, Joe had had a little bad luck. Cast on August 31, 1959, Joe had not shown up even by the end of his usual several-​​week running period. Sweat looked all over for him, asked all the people who knew Wild Joe if they had seen him, walked wire fences to see if he had been caught, and so on, with no luck. Eventually he gave up. But Wild Joe finally returned to the casting site on February 23, 1960—skinny, with badly healed leg breaks on the right front and right hind legs. At the time of Sweat’s admiring portrait of Wild Joe Pickett, Joe resided safely at home, never to run again but being used at stud to breed foxhounds as wayward as himself.42 American foxhounds like Wild Joe Pickett doubtless felt some attachment to their owners, regular dog food, and the comforts of the kennel, but these things often added up as second-​​best to their passion for the fox chase. Some of them took things a step further than Wild Joe and never came back home. They hung out, wild and uncatchable, in the vicinity of traditional casting sites, obsessively running foxes. Such dogs subsisted on rabbits, carrion, and garbage, chased foxes independently all they wished, and commonly joined into almost every human-​​initiated fox race begun at that place. The speedy gyp that local hunters called Ghost dominated many races in the vicinity of Cullman, Alabama, during the middle 1970s, and an even more formidable feral foxhound variously known as Wildman, Phantom, 100  

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or White Ghost did the same around Waynesboro, Tennessee, in the late 1940s. Some people actually thought that Phantom was a dog ghost; nobody ever saw him—they just heard him go by in the night woods, running on his own or leading some hunter’s pack. A few men thought about catching Phantom, but, as one of them conjectured, what if your hand passed right through him when you reached down for him at a road crossing? Sometimes hunters knew the origins of such feral hounds. Emmett Adams of Forsythe, Missouri, wrote in 1967 that he had seen Rainbow’s End go by again, running a fox as usual. Rainbow now had a wild mate. “The last I heard of Rainbow he was headed back north toward Brownie Mountain from whence he and the fox came. We haven’t made any serious efforts lately to catch this hound, and it looks as though he will make it four years on his own come May 18. There is no doubt but what he has been eating good. I never saw him look better.”43 Men launched American foxhounds into the chase, but that ended human input for a while—perhaps a very long while. Sometimes even the penned foxhounds launched themselves. They were not a docile breed of dog; mankind had planted in them a great obsession. Hinkel Shillings in 1956 told of a recent great kennel breakout by all the foxhounds within hearing. First, Dick Middleton’s kennel of Walkers a few miles down the road smelled a fox go by and escaped; then all of Hinkel’s brother Johnnie Shillings’ dogs “broke kennel,” taking with them the seventy-​​five or so hounds Johnnie boarded for other men. All hundred foxhounds then joined together into a superpack and ran wild, baying like crazy things, chasing foxes all night up on Bone Hill. Since Hinkel could do nothing about all these temporarily lost dogs, he saddled his horse and rode over to listen to the hound music.44 H. E. C. Bryant and Emmett Adams gave interesting retrospectives regarding what they could recall about the many foxhounds they had lost during long hunting careers. Dogs temporarily lost were almost the norm, occurring in nearly every nocturnal foxhunt. “Temporary” usually meant “back in a week.” Each man had permanently lost well over a hundred dogs, and only in the minority of cases did Bryant or Adams find out what had happened to them. For example, one day Bryant heard a hound named Ike giving mouth with other hounds chasing a gray fox. Ike’s voice suddenly ceased, then almost immediately the other dogs came up and treed the fox very near Bryant. Ike had disappeared in a small area of woods where there were no hazards—no old wells, no fences, nothing dangerous to hounds— and had gone silent only a few hundred yards from Bryant. He was far too shy to allow any thief to catch him, Bryant believed. He searched for Ike for Li st en in g i n th e Da rk  }   101

several weeks but never saw him or heard him again. Ike had passed into that mysterious “black hole” in the woods that at times seemed to gobble up foxhounds. H. E. C. Bryant had definite knowledge or reasonable conjectures about what had happened to others of his hounds. His childhood dog Badger probably had been shot by an eccentric female neighbor that many suspected of being a dog murderer. After she moved to another state, a friend of Bryant’s found more than a dozen hound collars hanging trophy-​​like in her outhouse. Bryant’s young foxhound Missie loved to try to dig a red fox out of his den. Bryant had pulled her out of one collapsed fox den in which she became caught. She disappeared a week later, and he conjectured that she probably had another fox den fall in on her, became trapped, and perished. King disappeared in a hunt, then ten months later, a man on Bryant’s farm saw him tied behind a remote cabin. The woman there made excuses about why she had King. Later, King disappeared again, and Bryant guessed that the lady had gotten her dog back. Bryant’s gyp Flora dropped out of the hunt within a mile of her kennel. Bryant went to a nearby high hill, blew his horn as loud as he could, and heard Flora howling at a house below. He went there and a little girl, under ten years old, led Flora out on a string, smiling and saying, “I saved her for you. She was lost.” A hound of Bryant’s named Sam dropped out of a hot fox race one night, and twenty-​​two days later some squirrel hunters heard him whining in an old abandoned gold mine. They roped him out, thirty pounds lighter, but he recovered. A neighbor of Bryant’s lost two dogs in a hunt and scoured the country for them. Later they were found in an old dry well, one dead and half eaten, the other one still alive. But Bryant’s gyp Alice represented the mysterious norm; she just vanished like Ike.45 If you knew your hound, and experienced hunters like Bryant and Adams knew their dogs’ quirks and oddities very well indeed, you might have a good guess as to why it had not immediately come back to the horn. Some foxhounds had a weakness for carrion. Bryant’s gyp Alice had a liking for dead horse flesh and often disappeared for days at a time, hanging around the tasty treat, in the years before she disappeared for good. A friend’s hound named Scott had this obsession to an even greater degree. If Scott came upon a dead horse or cow in the course of a race, he shortened the race to get back to it, then remained with it for as long as two weeks. Scott would gorge, go foxhunting on his own, come back to the dead cow, gorge, sleep, leave to run another fox, and so on. “Mr. Clagett said he saw him one day standing on a carcass fighting off vultures and other dogs.” Bryant’s fine gyp 102  

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Page, another obsessive den digger, often broke off the fox chase every time she passed a skunk. Page loved to consume skunks, a common animal in Maryland. Seemingly ashamed of her eating disorder, Page often remained away from home for days after devouring a skunk to let the smell wear off.46 Emmett Adams had his own rogues’ gallery of wayward foxhounds. One excellent gyp he owned stopped dead where the race ended at loss of scent trail, den hole, or tree and waited right there for someone to come get her. She would not home, she paid no attention to the horn; some human being had to come and find her and snap a dog lead on her collar. Later, he owned two littermates named Sam and Sue. Sam readily returned to casting ground or to home, Sue not at all. A farmer had spoiled Sue in one of her first foxhunts by taking her up and feeding her on raw eggs mixed into cream. Adams conjectured that Sue always remained behind after the chase ended trying to locate this farmer or somebody like him. Another hound, appropriately named Wildie, not only would not come home but would invariably take off in the opposite direction from home and go adventuring. He did this a time or two, once being returned from fifteen miles away, and then Adams just gave up and let him go, “deciding he has a Columbus spell on, wanting to prove again that the world was round.” Before his final disappearance, Blind Jock homed slowly because of his affliction, sometimes taking several days. When Jock did find home, he became overcome with joy and circled the house baying until someone came outside to speak to him. Roy, a bobtailed hound, had bottomless endurance. He would never come in immediately after a race ended, and if he could not find a fox on the way back he would begin baying a phony opening on a hot trail, as if he had. Someone had to go get Roy. Kate also liked to pretend she had found a fox on the way back, but she would give up the phony track and come in when she heard Adams’ pickup start. Winnie homed very well after a race, but she always had a sense of the hounds still out, and she would whine in the pen asking to be allowed to go out and find them and bring them in. She recovered these “lost sheep” on many occasions.47 Sometimes Winnie arrived too late to do anything to help her kennel mate. American foxhounds were odd dogs, and they died many an odd death. A good many were hit by trains—a measure of how much they concentrated on the scent trail of the fox and ignored everything else. Locomotives did not come on you suddenly from around a curve, as might an automobile. Enemies of foxhounds, human or animal, could hear the dogs coming from a long way off, could think about what they wanted to do, and could move to cut them off and ambush them; foxhunting was not a stealthy activity—it L iste ning i n the Dark  }   103

announced itself to the whole countryside. As nineteenth-​​century woodsmen noted, alligators paid attention to the sound of dogs and often tried to catch them. During the late 1840s, Thomas Y. Henry gave his “Henry hounds” to Larry Birdsong of Georgia because Florida alligators caught too many of them during hunts. In 1995 state-​​contracted gator hunters killed a five-​​hundred-​​pound, ten-​​foot-​​eleven-​​inch alligator within the Blackwater State Forest that had half of a champion foxhound named Flojo, including her $125 radio tracking collar, in its stomach, plus the tracking collars of several other dogs, including one from a hound that had disappeared fourteen years before. Hunters conjectured that the gator commonly waylaid hounds at a certain shallow creek crossing, honing in on the sound of their baying as they approached while running game.48 Bizarre deaths abounded, and grieving hunters reported many to the foxhunting magazines. Karl S. Harmon of Eldon, Missouri, informed readers that three of his hounds, including champion stud dog Meggs Harmon, went through the ice and drowned on the Lake of the Ozarks while running a fox. Abe Lincoln, owned by A. S. McGee of Handley, Texas, ran through so many stinging nettles near a dairy barn while chasing a coyote that he died of it. Another of McGee’s hounds, Dixie Girl, had been lost around Livingston, Texas. Some animals that foxhounds chased might refuse to circle properly, as foxes normally did, and take off fifty miles on a beeline for another country. Dixie Girl had imprudently chased a red wolf, but deer and certain red foxes also might lead pursuers into a distant terra incognita from which they never returned. Arkansan Dr. R. D. Williams reported a two-​​day, one-​​ hundred-​​miles-​​plus foxhunt that began on Crowley’s Ridge and ended up more than eighty miles to the south, as the crow flies, not as the fox runs. Dogs at the bitter end of this hunt had been sighted but not yet recovered, and some were feared dead. In truth, fox chases could go so far across the countryside, and were so totally beyond human control, that they could get into anything—anything! Hiram P. Ketcham of Long Island, New York, wrote in September 1932: “Many fox hunters have quit the chase. Some of the boys have gotten afraid to go into the woods at night, owing to so many gangsters and rum runners out there. One never knows when he is going to run into them. About every week now somewhere on Long Island there is found one or two men that have been shot to death by gangsters in the city and brought out and dumped in the woods.” Such outlaws did not like to be disturbed by baying foxhounds and often used their pistols on them.49 Foxhounds had “kamikaze” mentalities and often ran until they died. Furthermore, they ran at high speed at night guided by eyesight only a little 104  

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better in low-​​light conditions than human eyesight. No sooner had Arthur Barnes of Hearne, Texas, purchased his registered foxhound gyp Lou from the county attorney than she died in a fox race. Barnes had bred Lou immediately, then had taken her out with family and friends for an inaugural race. Lou’s fine “clear singing yaw-​​yaw” led the hunt until suddenly her voice ceased. Arthur Barnes jumped to his feet and cried, “Lou has knocked her brains out on a post oak sapling!” She had not, but she had hit something equally fatal. Barnes, his brother, and his son found where Lou had run into a remnant strand of barbed wire grown into two trees at the top of a creek bank where a deeply cut cow trail left the creek. The wire had dog hair and fresh blood on it. Lou had crashed into this at full speed, then kept going. The son recalled: By this old smoky lantern we followed splatters of blood, sometimes slung upon bushes waist high, for nearly half a mile. Anywhere the sand would show prints there was a fox track, and Lou’s tracks were right over it. Nearly half a mile from the wire we found Lou, warm, limber, and dead, lying on the fox track. Where she had fallen, not a drop of blood fell on the ground. It had all been spilled along that fox track.

The boy, his father, and his uncle were all in tears. In his grief, Arthur Barnes immediately tried to give the rest of his hounds to his brother, who refused to take them. As a tribute, Arthur Barnes left Lou lying just as she fell, not even removing her collar. His son Norval thought that Arthur had some idea that the red fox might come back to take a look at Lou and somehow pay tribute to the noble creature that had pursued him.50 Many a hound died an unknown death in the woods and was never found, but sometimes the black hole a dog disappeared into involved a dog thief. Fox men worried about dog theft, and with good reason. As magazine ads and letters to the editor attested, thieves often took hounds right from their pens. Hunters commonly located their kennels some distance away from their houses to insulate family members from the dogs’ constant noise, and a woods-​​wise thief might slip in and steal some. Not that such a risk was necessary. Every hunt launched baying foxhounds for miles across the landscape, and the dark night concealed thefts. A knowledgeable hound thief could even listen to the race for a while to evaluate a dog’s performance, then pick it up at a road crossing. Other stolen foxhounds passed into the hands of amateurs, fellow hunters who might not think of themselves as thieves. Sometimes a loose hound, perhaps one lost from a previous race (like Wild Liste ning i n the Dark  }   105

Joe Pickett) and running foxes on its own, might come into a hunter’s chase and run with his hounds. It might come to his horn at the end of the hunt along with his own hounds, and even if it did have a collar with another man’s name on it, he might be extremely tempted to throw the collar down in the woods and keep the hound. Most hunters had a strong honor system about such matters and constantly found and returned lost dogs with the expectation that others would do the same, but the temptation always remained, especially if the dog hunted well and had no collar, or if its collar said the owner lived a long way away. Truly professional hound thieves did exist, though fox men tended toward paranoia about such matters. Collars, of course, could be removed, but registration numbers tattooed in the hounds’ ears or large initials branded on their sides could not. Many hunters resorted to such markings to deter thieves, amateur or professional, and to promote recovery of hounds, and doubtless they helped. Still, dog thieves did their evil work, and lost- or stolen-​​dog ads abounded in the magazines, some unwisely incorporating stud-​​ad photos of the missing ones in their most noble poses: heads up, backs arched like greyhounds, and tails held erect. These did not look like foxhounds a new owner would ever wish to return. Being caught stealing a man’s hound could get you killed, so the professionals usually followed certain prudent rules. Most stole dogs only by night, transported them rather quickly at least one county away, preferably farther, and quickly sold them to one of the itinerant dog traders or “dog peddlers” that often set up at First Mondays or other monthly trade fairs in the county seat towns. “Dog peddler” was a dirty word. Fox men disliked such individuals, though they might be tempted into buying hounds from them. Hunters thought the dog peddlers virtually operated as “fences” for the dog thieves, who sold stolen hounds to them at bargain-​​basement prices and thus quickly insulated themselves from their crimes. The wayward hounds that wandered into other men’s hunts and distinguished themselves of course had not been stolen; they had just lost themselves and then found better homes. The “found” dog was a tradition as old as the American foxhound. It was the positive side of the lost-​​dog tragedy. Most charitably, Tennessee Lead, the great founder stud of the Walker strain, had been such a hound, although Walker historian Bob Lee Maddux called him stolen and claimed to have searched the local records and located his likely owner, who doubtless knew him by another name. General George Washington Maupin had been fully aware of the dubious origins of his prize 106  

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red-​​fox hound Tennessee Lead but somehow adjusted to it. Fox men tended to. Rev. Marvin Worley, Jr., told of the moral cogitations of a preacher and his son when a lost hound came into their hunt and beat their dogs to the fox. After examining the matter from a high moral perspective, they decided to keep the poor, starving thing. Likewise, two Maryland brothers were hunting one day when a pair of strange glass-​​eyed, brindle-​​colored hounds came into their fox race and completely outran their hounds to the red fox. The brothers naturally rescued the two lost hounds (of the Sugar Loaf strain, it turned out), keeping them until they saw the lost-​​dog ad in the local paper. Clearly, the hounds described in the ad were the lost pair. After thinking it over a while, the Crawford brothers reluctantly agreed that they absolutely must return the star Sugar Loafs to their rightful owner—as soon as one of their gyps came into heat and had been bred to them.51 Even before hard-​​surface roads and sixty-​​miles-​​per-​​hour automobiles arrived in rural counties after World War II, and before the deer returned to the woods and deer defenders took up arms against all running hounds, terrible dangers lurked in the countryside. Many times foxhunters could only hope that their beloved hounds had been stolen by thieves, or had been lost and found and were living a happy life somewhere else. Death stalked the fox chase, and hunters lived with a constant, grinding anxiety about the welfare of their hounds—the better the dogs, the greater the anxiety. American foxhounds often ran themselves to death from exhaustion, heatstroke, or heart failure. They crashed into trees or other things in the dark woods, or they ran off cliffs. Some made a habit of climbing limb by limb after gray foxes, and in time such zealots tended to fall to their deaths. Every woven-​​ wire fence jumped or clambered over in the chase represented a potential death trap, and many died long lingering deaths hung in fences. (Nothing bothered hunters as much as fences, and with each loss of a dog they walked every fence line where the hunt had occurred.) Hounds fell into wells and old cisterns in the dark, and they fell through the ice of lakes and streams and drowned. Intent on the fox trail, they sometimes chanced upon feral hogs, javelinas, large bobcats, red wolves, or other dangerous animals, and came under attack. A great many died of poisonous snakebites. Steel traps placed by fur trappers and bounty hunters dotted the woods, increasing in number whenever the price of fur went up or a rabies scare triggered apprehensions about “mad foxes.” On the western edge of the fox range, hunters encountered coyotes and the bounty men who tried to kill them with deadly cyanide-​​gas guns. These “coyote getters,” which could be hound getters as well, were tubular devices driven into the ground. A scented head attracted List enin g i n th e Da rk  }   107

the curious canid, and when it pulled on the head a cartridge of cyanide gas fired directly into its mouth. Death usually came swiftly—something that could not be said for hounds caught in the bounty hunters’ steel traps. A rare countryman, often a sheep or goat raiser, dared to shoot a trailing hound before World War II. Foxhunters kept a watch for newcomers to their running country and went over to check them out soon after they arrived. Politely, then as emphatically as seemed necessary, they warned the newcomers not to harm their hounds. Two sheep-​​raising brothers moved to Putnam County, Tennessee, around World War I and, despite warnings, began to shoot and poison hounds. Soon, every one of their four hundred sheep had been shot dead in retaliation. In 1936 the federal government relocated two hundred refugee families from the “dust bowl” to Skagit County, Washington, and the leader of local hunters came to investigate the government workers laying out the property lines of the new settlement. Dave Henry left a clear message to be conveyed to the newcomers. While all hound-​​dog men were welcome, the government “should leave a good spot for a marble orchard, as some of those dust farmers might be hound haters or trappers.” Henry made this roundabout threat of death because he feared dog murderers and looked upon any newcomer to his running country with suspicion.52 Fox men sometimes pretended stoicism about such dangers to their hounds and took a hard-​​hunter line on their frequent deaths—in the magazines. In real life they tended to shed tears. And a lot of tears must have fallen, since hunters with large packs often lost ten or more hounds every year they hunted. No sooner did a valued hound fail to return from a race than the hunter launched a search, usually extending farther and continuing longer than any search for a beloved house pet. Some fox men dropped everything in their lives and searched for weeks or even months, driving thousand of miles, trying to find their lost dogs. “This winter has been a bad one in many ways,” wrote Herschel Rawlings in 1958. He had lost his fine gyp purchased from Hinkel Shillings, had driven more than four thousand miles in one month trying to find her, while a hunting buddy drove another one thousand, all with no luck. Since then he had lost her sister as well.53 It hurt even worse if a man did not know if his hound was dead or was still lost. The image of the dog dying a lingering death caught in a fence or in a steel trap haunted many. Someone found part of the collar of an Arkansas man’s hound, lost six months. The collar showed what might have been car-​​ strike damage but was still limber, as if a dog had been wearing it recently. “I wish I knew for sure,” Bob Clark wrote in his column. “I would know 108  

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whether to keep on looking or quit. I had rather find one of my hounds dead than to never find them at all.” Until an actual corpse appeared, hope remained.54 Many foxhounds showed less than ardent attachment to their owners and a willingness to take up elsewhere, but not all of them. Some of them homed like Lassie. Floyd Huff ’s hound Seminole, a dog of the Arkansas Traveler strain, lived up to his name. He came home to Huff ’s home in Arkansas after being lost at the National Field Trial at Crab Orchard, Kentucky, in 1906. Lost at the Louisiana State Hunt, a hound named Wild Man eventually made his way home from Arcadia, Louisiana, to Sulphur, Louisiana, a distance of 256 miles. A friend of the owner reported: “When Bob looked down the road and saw Wild Man walking down the road, old Bob grabbed him around the neck and cried like a baby and said, ‘Wild Man, you will not have to go away from home any more.’ Bob loved this old hound.” At Arcola, Mississippi, L. W. Stephens and his family knelt down every night at bedtime for their daily prayers, and, as he said, “we ask God to send our lost dog home, and we thank God for all the prayers that he answers.” God had just answered another one. The Stephenses’ hound Raw Steel had been stolen, tied to a man’s outhouse for ten weeks, then finally carried hunting 15 miles north of his old kennel. Raw Steel then immediately came home. Previously, a hound named Blue Steel had gone missing. Stephens had driven around for eleven days in three different counties and offered a big reward in several local papers. Nothing worked, but one evening “Blue Steel walked into my yard and dropped flat on his side as if to say, ‘I have finished my journey.’ ” His wife, who deeply loved Blue Steel, hugged the dog and cried.55 Bob Lee Maddux’s gyp Mattie, who led his foxhound pack in the solo night hunt of 1937, did not fare as well as Blue Steel. Mattie died the next year after the hunt, struck by a car on her way home near Maddux’s farmhouse. Mattie made it close to home before dying. Maddux’s hunting friend buried her, and Maddux’s wife put flowers on her grave. Maddux himself had been too overcome to take part. She had been his “favorite and best foxhound.” Hounds that had quit the chase earlier often rose to rejoin this virtuous foxhound, the “character witness,” out of shame when she passed by still running the fox. Many were the times she would come in hearing running her fox when all the other hounds, good hounds, had given up. She never told a lie in her life. When she gave tongue, hounds came out of their beds in the corner of the fences and went to her. Lame hounds or sore hounds L isten in g i n the Da rk  }   109

would hobble off on three feet. Young hounds would step in your face if you had given up, too, and stretched out on a sheepskin for your forty winks. Before and since, she was my best hound—good hunter, good trailer, good mouth, dead game, and a driving hound if there be such. I am glad she died here. She might have hung in a woven wire fence, miles from the casting ground, and died in pain and thirst and hunger. Or, have fallen into a sinkhole in a deserted mountainside. I have hunted lost hounds for days, leaving my business, wearing out casings over impossible roads, and spending twice the cost of replacement. Then I learned a lesson. It wasn’t because I had to have the hound but because it needed me. From that I learned a greater lesson. The Savior didn’t come to Earth because He has to have us, but because we need him.56

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C ha pt e r 4

Y



Fox Racing

oung hunters like Ancil and Roder Barber of Arkansas might arrive at their first foxhunt with potlicker hounds on plow lines, but for real fox chasers matters never ended there. Hunters wished for their dogs to do well in the fox race, and from the first night’s experience of listening in the dark they began the quest for better hounds. Adequate hounds to run gray foxes could be bred or bought or traded for more easily, but when red foxes lived in the local running country hunters found themselves confronted with a lifelong challenge to create dogs able to run with the red ranger. This was not easy; physically, red foxes bordered on the uncanny. Canids, at least some wild species and some breeds of dogs, possessed an evolutionary trick of extreme endurance. Normal canid resting metabolisms resembled those of humans and other animals, but during the stress of a long run canid metabolisms changed and became more efficient. Alaskan sled dogs could rise from their beds and run a hundred miles a day for weeks at a time. Red foxes, too, might run a hundred miles a night, and American foxhounds—at least some of them—mobilized special resources to follow. In the best scenario of fox chasing, hunters listened all night to awesome events, to one super-​​being in pursuit of another, something in truth a little magical.1 Conversely, and all too often, perhaps two or three hours into the race after the red fox a man’s hound might exhaust itself and return to the hunters’ fire in search of rest, forgiveness, human companionship, and perhaps dog food. There the quitter hound stood revealed for all to see, a dog perhaps even 111

named for the hunter himself, an ignominy of ignominies. R. C. Wadley of Luray, Tennessee, realized his hound Melvin had quit the chase only when at three in the morning it reared up next to him at the hood of his pickup and tried to get some of the peanut butter cracker he was making. “The boys really had a kick out of that,” Wadley recalled. “I felt like crying because he had quit the race.” Other hunters often restrained themselves when events like the early return of Melvin occurred, since their quitter hound might show up at the fire next. But not always—some hunting groups had traditions of twisting the knife. One Oklahoma race described by O. B. Underwood went on all night and made many hounds quit and come in, including those of a hunting buddy of Underwood’s, and “I laughed so much my stomach was sore the next morning. I really poured it on old Skeets. He said, ‘I think my dogs are sick.’ And I told him, ‘Them cur dogs of mine will make them get sick.’ He said, ‘Boy, I am going to go back to feeding Nutrena dog feed,’ but I told him I would bring him a gallon of separated milk so they could run.” (Raw milk, it seems, causes hounds to have diarrhea.)2 Perhaps “old Skeets” ended up with tears in his eyes, as did R. C. Wadley? In any case, hunters’ first experiences with the high performance of red foxes quickly launched them on lengthy searches for faster and more enduring foxhounds that never came back to the fire. This slippery slope often led to lifelong obsession, with a huge dose of frustration thrown in along the way. Roder Barber did not mention whether any of his plow-​​line potlickers quit and came in, but probably they did, and since Roder hunted into his eighties, he had some forty foxhound generations to try to breed dogs that did things right. But Vulpes vulpes at its best set an enormously high standard for flesh-​​ and-​​blood American foxhounds to meet, and many hunters never had red-​​ fox dogs as good as they wished to have. Others, by calculation or good luck, did get a paragon hound or two in their hunting careers, but such men often commented that in some ways this made things even worse. The wonderful dog soon came and went in the way of foxhounds—lost in the chase, run down on the highway, dead in the stud pen—leaving behind deep feelings of grief and increased dissatisfaction with the performances of dogs that only chased foxes very well. The slippery slope of hound-​​making obsession stretched away from the first night’s fox chase, a long road with no clear ending. Hilltopping had two psychological epicenters. The first could be visualized as a group of men standing around a fire, strangely detached from each other, facing in different directions, projecting themselves into the fox chase by listening in the dark. For the second epicenter, imagine a man gazing at length at his 112  

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hounds in his dog pen, brooding about bloodlines, crosses, genealogies, ancestor hounds, stud dogs, and other such breeding matters, cogitating endlessly about how to improve his personal stock. Not that such a man thought about such things only at the dog pens. Many mentioned tossing and turning in bed at night, regretting selling dogs they should not have sold, not purchasing dogs they should have purchased, and lost dogs and bloodlines. The making of their personal hound pack and their personal strain of foxhound became a great passion for such hunters, who revealed this in many ways. Raymond M. Fountain of Monroeville, Alabama, typified the obsessive hound maker at the end of a long career. The quest begun so long ago had taken him to a strange place indeed. Fountain had become the chief genealogist and keeper of papers for the July strain of the American foxhound, the repository of July records inherited from his cousin Dr. H. C. Fountain and July scholar and breeder George Garrett, as well as those of other breeders. However, since 1920 this self-​​made high priest of the July strain also had labored at perfecting a personal strain of foxhound, which he called the Free Lance Hound. Fountain had put together a mix of 3/8 July, 3/8 Walker, 1/8 Trigg, and 1/8 Goodman to assemble his Free Lance Hound, a sub-​​breed designed to be perfectly adapted to pursuing red foxes in Monroe County, Alabama. A few years before Fountain’s death in 1978, a bemused reporter followed Raymond Fountain around his kennel, listening to his prolonged rundowns of the bloodlines, sires, dams, and personal careers and peculiarities of every Free Lance dog in his pens and examining his rolls of paper pedigrees of foxhounds, some of them thirty-​​six feet in length.3 Many hunters began their hound-​​making careers with limited resources, taking full advantage of the generosity of the local hunting groups. Men often gave puppies away or sold them for a token price, although recipients might become aware that some of the hunters who provided such puppies were getting rid of their culls. Even the hard hunters did not like to kill puppies, and it often seemed better to just give them away. In truth, givers and takers all recognized that such rejected pups might turn out to be good foxhounds. Hunters found judgments about pups hard to make, and the runt of the litter might grow into the best dog of any of them. Some men made a practice of loaning a newcomer to the local group one of their good gyps to breed to and establish a pack. Foxhounds had large litters, so one pregnant gyp could create a pen full of running hounds. As the new hunter remained in the game, he developed special hunting buddies in the local group, and such friends often aided and abetted each other’s breeding programs. They traded hounds, exchanged pups, and Fox Racing  }   113

loaned each other breeding stock, joining forces to try to build a better collective pack, and all outside the money economy. A new man often found dog swapping a quick way to improve his pack—if he made the right swap. Especially with young and unproven hounds, dog swapping amounted to a form of gambling. According to Bob Lee Maddux, one Tennessee hunter of his acquaintance loved dog swaps so much he had a sign over his pen gate for would-​​be swappers who showed up when he was not at home. It said, “Take Two and Leave One.” Some local groups practiced more dog swapping than others. Emmett Adams overheard a conversation about dog swapping at an Arkansas Open field trial he attended. A group of hunting friends had driven a long way together and had made many swaps and re-​​swaps on the way to the state competition—so many in fact that by the time they reached their destination and began to unload hounds from their truck they could not agree about which hunter now owned which dog.4 A hunter closely watched his hounds in the pen, and every gyp that came into heat triggered intense speculation about alternative strategies of bloodline improvement. If a man had an established pack, he probably matched her with one of his own proven stud hounds, kin to the gyp but a few relationships removed—uncles to nieces, grandfathers to granddaughters, and the like. Such “line breeding” was a weakened form of inbreeding designed to perpetuate good traits already in the pack. Hunters thought inbreeding to be a bad thing but defined it in only the most extreme terms—fathers to daughters, sons to mothers, and brothers to sisters. But what if a pack had few good traits to perpetuate? What if it was a pack of “Melvins”? Men new to the game of hound making probably did not have very good males, so to improve their pack they sought “crosses” for their gyps with the better male hounds of other men in the local hunting group. A hunter could have only sparse information about the nationally known stud dogs advertised in the magazines, but he had direct personal knowledge of potential mates for his gyp from within his local hunting group, had hunted with them on numerous occasions, and knew what they could do. Stud services from the hounds of hunting buddies usually were available for the asking, but sometimes they carried a certain price—the taste of crow. The itch of competition often began at the lowest level of fox racing, the hunt among close friends. “I had rather for my hounds to beat his than to eat when I am hungry,” said Dr. C. M. Davis of one of his hunting buddies. H. P. Purtle of Arkansas had tried to breed foxhounds to match Adron Hick’s stud dog John for years, with no success. Finally, as Hick noted, “one day he drove up in front of my house and said, ‘I can’t beat him, so I want to 114  

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breed to him.’ He mated three bitches to John,” and with good results. C. P. Dillard’s foxhound Scrape was the best he ever owned, a dog that did everything right, and all who hunted with Dillard and Scrape agreed. One night Dillard and other hunters heard a great race run by Scrape, and one of the older men became so excited that he threw his hat on the ground, stomped on it, “and swore if he had a thousand bitches he would mate all of them to Scrape.”5 Poor-​​boy hunters, and men just starting out, often mated their dogs to local legends like Scrape—unregistered hounds of dubious bloodlines and perhaps unprepossessing appearance, who nonetheless ran the red fox well. Hunters around Richmond, Kentucky, bred extensively to a hound named Tom Hensley (owned by John Hensley) despite the fact that “Old Tom” looked awful—like a bird dog from a bad dream—blackish, average-​​sized, so humpbacked that he seemed deformed, legs crooked, and foot conformation far off foxhound standard. Nonetheless, Old Tom performed freakishly well in a red-​​fox chase. He had great drive and endurance, sailed over high wire fences, and often left big packs so far behind that he became the only dog giving voice. Hunters loved Old Tom and often bred their gyps to him, though over time some sadly concluded that he did not “throw” his fine fox-​​chasing attributes into his “get” (his offspring) very well, though many did inherit his ugly humped back and crooked legs. Around Lyman Bennett’s Arkansas home the local legend was a hound named Shorty Joe Shelton, who ran loose around his family farm and came out to defeat passing packs night after night. Nobody much noticed Shorty until he was about four years old, “but he made enough running history after that for a dozen hounds. When a pack would open within hearing Shorty would hook them and outrun them the rest of the night.” Foxhunters had a saying, speaking of hounds but characteristically expressed in the first person, “If you beat me, I want your blood.” Many of them wanted Shorty Joe Shelton’s blood in their packs, and he cheerfully obliged. Every local running country had its Shorty Joe Sheltons, canine local legends whose exploits often had nothing to do with field trials and bench shows. Hunters got Shorty’s blood, and beyond the living hound they followed the blood as it reverberated down through the generations. But eventually, as always, it dwindled away. Bennett wrote, “What hounds I have now have Shorty in the fourth generation, and anything any closer to that is scarce.”6 Rather quickly in many cases, the poor-​​boy hunters turned to pack improvement options that did cost money, sometimes a lot of it, whether they could really afford the price or not. Harriette Arnow’s poor hill farmer, who Fox Racing  }   115

sold his family’s milk cow to finance two blooded pups, had been sketched from life. They shipped their females to advertised stud dogs, some of them costing $150 per impregnation by the 1970s, and they bought registered puppies at high prices from registered breeders. The three foxhound magazines all ran registration programs and promoted pedigreed dogs—what hunters termed “paper hounds”—and gradually most hunters came to accept that registered foxhounds performed better, on the average, than unregistered ones. Most zealots with money bred gyps to established studs and bought pedigreed pups to try to improve their packs. Some hunters even had the resources to purchase adult registered foxhounds to try to accomplish this, although others regarded that approach as dangerous practice and advised against it. Conventional wisdom held that if a born foxhunter had a good dog, he would not sell it, and that if he did offer it for sale, it was not a good dog. This dictum proved true more often than not, and the magazines printed the occasional bitter letter reporting bad results from the purchase of adult hounds often advertised in just those magazines. A North Carolina man wrote, “I’m not trying to tell you someone would cheat you, I just never did buy a good dog,” and a Texas hunter seconded that observation, noting several cheating long-​​distance transactions involving adult hounds advertised in Hunter’s Horn. Two dogs supposed to be manageable turned out to be wild and useless, and another died soon after arrival, and the seller refused to do anything about any of them. “Let the buyer beware” applied with a vengeance in adult hound sales, although fox men might find a way to make the seller beware also. Wayne H. Howqle purchased a registered Walker from an Oklahoma breeder, then waited in vain for the dog’s promised registration papers, which the breeder repeatedly assured Howqle were in the mail. Howqle somehow discovered that his new hound’s rightful documentation had been attached to an unregistered hound recently sold by the Oklahoma breeder to someone in Florida. Extremely angry, Howqle took his new dog to the local landfill, shot it dead, then drove north toward Oklahoma to confront the dealer, who after a time admitted to his actions. Howqle said nothing further about his dealings with the Oklahoma man (but check the landfill).7 Another kind of adult hound purchase began with the buyer who had decided, for whatever reason, that he had to have a certain dog, no matter if its owner proved initially unwilling to sell. Over time, hunters tended to form more and more definite opinions about the characteristics of the hounds they wanted in their personal packs, and these strong preferences sometimes 116  

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evolved into true compulsions. They felt that they must have this ancestor-​​ hound bloodline, this coat color, a certain sort of mouth, or a dog that committed whatever sin necessary to win the race to the fox. Breeding programs were the most satisfying way to create the obsessed hunter’s ideal hound, but breeding for foxhound performance moved slowly and erratically, with many setbacks. Obsessions with hound genealogy, with “blood,” triggered many to resort to desperate action, with money no object. Would-​​be purchasers harassed owners until they sold—halfway in self-​​defense—to stop the repeated pleading letters or phone calls. R. G. Baucom reported the successful conclusion of just such a campaign in 1938: I have been trying for a year to buy Liberty Dawson. After she had whelped the Igo Parrish pups, I made a deal for her. She will be seven years old December 7 and is still a great hound. She is one of the very few hounds living today that has old Hub Dawson in the third generation. She also carries one cross of Hub Dawson in the fourth generation on the sire’s side, the third generation cross being on her dam’s side. She has more of the old time breeding than any pedigree in four years. I have tried for a year, as brother J. T. Howard of Oklahoma will tell you, to get this matron.8

Bloodline obsessions might not simply target a certain breeding stock of American foxhound, but a specific dog, as in the case above. A public notice in a 1962 Hunter’s Horn informed the foxhunting public that a West Virginia hunter had just purchased a fine Walker stud known as “Kentucky Black Man,” another hound who carried a heavy dose of holy Hub Dawson blood. “Black Man has at least 28 crosses of Hub Dawson that we know of, with most of them up in the sixth, seventh, and eighth generations.” The West Virginia hunter believed that he absolutely had to have Black Man for a breeding program dedicated to a virtual re-​​creation of the legendary Hub Dawson, inasmuch as that was possible. Hunters’ hound-​​making programs commonly went off in this direction. First, they fixated on some wonderful ancestor hound of the past, a legendary creature without fault or blemish, and then they set about assembling a pack that concentrated his blood. Sometimes the obsession extended to several ancestor hounds. J. T. Roan of Bastrop, Louisiana, sent a hound registration to Hunter’s Horn in 1960, proudly noting, “I own a running pack of 14 hounds rich in Red Raider and Red Liquor and Buzzard Wing blood.”9 Fox Racing  }   117

The “have to have that hound!” phenomenon also sometimes began with mouth, as in the case of young Tom Benbow of Kentucky, who heard an unknown hound in 1900 and traded his father’s milk cow to get him. Likewise, Hinkel Shillings once witnessed a man buying a hound for several hundred dollars sight unseen, based only on the sounds it made in the race. Hunters played the sport of fox chasing by ear, and nothing mattered so much as a hound’s mouth, its voice in the hunt. Mouth seemed harder to breed for than other characteristics, so men with a strong preference for a certain kind of mouth might have to buy it from others. Perhaps Delbert E. Hanson had just lost such a hound when he advertised in a foxhunters’ magazine for “a started Walker pup who has a screaming squall mouth on track.” Lost-​​dog ads in the magazines always specified the mouth of the lost one along with its physical characteristics, although hunters’ language more or less broke down when it tried to describe the sounds. As the Inuit of Alaska had many words for different conditions of snow, fox men had many words for the noises dogs made in pursuit of foxes: “chop mouths,” “horn or bugle mouths,” “squealing mouths,” “squalling mouths,” “turkey mouths,” “screaming mouths,” and more, including such combinations as “screaming-​​squall mouths” and “heavy-​​fast-​​driving-​​chop mouths.” A good many fox men cared so much about the hound music that they assembled their packs on the basis of mouth, with every hound having a voice very different from every other hound. Some thought a pack with mouths one octave apart would be perfect. Mouth was almost everything to hilltoppers, the soul of the American foxhound expressed in voice and major indicator of performance in the chase.10 A hunter could breed for mouth in a way, could match a sire and dam that both had good mouths, but he could never be sure what their offspring would sound like. Nor could he really judge from the vocalizations that pups and young hounds made in the pen while growing up. Only in their first fox chase did they reveal their true voices. Each good-​​looking young foxhound was like a beautifully wrapped Christmas package that you had to wait a long time to open, knowing all the while that it might contain a joke gift. You wished for the most distinctive hound voice possible up to but emphatically not including something ridiculous. James Washburn of Louisiana once asked a friend how his two young hounds sounded, “hounds that were just beginning to run and be heard,” and the friend replied, “One has a mouth like a setting redbird and the other has one like a chimney sweep.” Another friend remarked that his new hound’s mouth “sounds like it splatters against something.” Joking aside, 118  

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these hounds’ mouths were weak and not good, a big disappointment. And things could get worse: some told of hounds that sounded like roosters and even mosquitoes, and a hunter known to Emmett Adams reported that his new dog “has a mouth that sounds like filing a crosscut saw.” A young hunter went out with this man, and when the pack jumped a fox the boy asked, “What is that down there with the hounds?” It could be a bad sign when a man’s hunting buddies nicknamed his hound—one hunter’s dog became known as Lion because of his strange roaring voice. One night Lion became entangled in an electric fence, and the noises he made then caused hunters to rush to his aid with tears of laughter running down their faces, much displeasing his owner. However, sometimes when you opened the Christmas package something wonderful emerged. Champion stud dog Big Strive entered his first fox chase as an overgrown puppy in 1894, and no one up to that point had heard him give mouth. Soon after the race began, however, as Howard Forsythe recalled, “there sounded at the forefront of the pack a new voice to both the old servant and myself. Both of us thought we knew every mouth in the whole county. This battle cry was a deep bass, and the tone was that of a master, clear, resonant and triumphant.” Big Strive had uncloaked himself.11 After a couple of decades of hound making—of more or less successful plotting, planning, and obsessing—a hunter might begin to believe he had created something special with his “family” bloodline of foxhound, and he might subsequently become somewhat less free with the services of his stud dogs. He now felt that he possessed something of value, with the fate of the bloodline much more important than the fate of any individual. Inferior hounds now provoked swift culling as counterfeits, although some dogs developed late and a man had to be careful. A hunter named Johnston might begin to refer to his personal line of Walkers as “Johnston hounds” and to name each worthy dog for himself, rather often with a straightforward human name, such as Pearl Johnston. Sale of some members of the family bloodline did not entirely sever connections with them for such a man, and the hounds’ creator might from time to time call their new owner to inquire about their health and performance in the chase. He might even go to visit them. If he saw sad news of the new owner’s untimely death, he might launch bloodline recovery efforts in the Horn or the Ranger, with ads inquiring about his former hounds’ current whereabouts. Over time, many hound generations, and much culling, some men succeeded in making American foxhounds much as they wanted them, in their own image, whatever that image was. As hunters often asserted, after a while Fo x Racing  }   119

the virtues and vices of the man and his hounds become commingled. “Even though I didn’t know a hunter, I could take his pack of hounds and run them several weeks and tell just what kind of a person he was,” Bub Wilson wrote. “If he is crooked, so will his hounds be; if he is honest, then that is the kind of hounds he will keep. If he wants to be part of the hunt, his hounds will pack. If he can’t stand to be equal in a chase, then he will have hounds that will get in front any way they can.”12 Whatever their moral proclivities, some hunters’ family bloodlines of foxhound attained high levels of performance in their ultimate test, the race with the red fox—higher perhaps than Walker-​​dog standard. The wheel had been reinvented to work even better, but it usually did not remain so. Some families kept their outstanding hound stocks across several generations, but they were the exception. The born-​​foxhunter gene often skipped a generation, and whenever that happened the family bloodline of foxhound invariably dispersed, disappearing within the packs of other men. Many hunters came into contact with these unusual family strains of foxhound and occasionally wrote about them in the magazines. Douglas T. Ellis offered a typical account. A closemouthed, secretive family moved into Ellis’ rural Georgia community from parts unknown, accompanied by a mixed-​​breed strain of foxhound that had some unusual characteristics. After a while, Ellis began to hunt with the head of the family and got to know the man’s hounds. They were smallish, long-​​legged, and very fast red-​​fox dogs, a good bit better than anything owned by Ellis. Their greatest superiority showed up in casting. Only the owner could cast them, and he had uncanny control, far surpassing anything the Georgia man had ever seen. The owner could send some of his dogs out in one direction to find a fox trail, and some of them out in another. If the hounds did not strike in about twenty minutes, they returned to their master to be cast in yet another direction. When any one of the sub-​​ packs struck, all the family hounds immediately merged to the chase. Ellis had never seen foxhounds so under control, so manageable. True, some potlicker hounds were manageable, but these were not potlickers. They were outstanding red-​​fox dogs, and one of them, a “screaming-​​mouthed gyp” named Crazy Run, was the best foxhound Ellis had ever hunted with. In the end the mysterious family left the community unannounced, much as it had arrived, leaving behind only Crazy Run tied to Ellis’ gate as a parting gift. She became the best foxhound he ever owned.13 Such paragon hounds sometimes emerged directly from hunters’ breeding programs, while others—like Crazy Run—arrived entirely by chance. In any case, hunters never forgot them. “My best hound” served as a standard 120  

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essay topic in the magazines, and people often commented on the pain of loss when such dogs passed from the scene. Some quit hunting because of it. Not long after the old man threw his hat on the ground and stomped it to celebrate Scrape’s wonderful performance in a race, the hound died under a train. Hard hunter W. L. Rigdon of Mississippi noted that “one good hound is worth a train load that lack just a little being as good,” and when you do get a rare great one, all the rest seem like culls. It was a bittersweet thing to have a truly great hound. Kenneth Hager once owned such a dog, a wonderful gyp named Pencil who took the lead on every fox race she ever took part in. She was fox-​​wise, fast, and impossible to run out—all in all, a great foxhound. However, at three years of age the vet diagnosed Pencil with incurable leukemia. She soon quit eating and became almost skeletal in appearance. Already in deep grief, Hager decided to run Pencil one more time and allow her to die happy, die doing what she most wanted to do. Pencil held the lead that night in the fox race, as always, and gave mouth as usual, but at the end “to see her was a thing of beauty, death was in her every step.” She quickly became so stiff she had to be carried to the truck, and she died the next day. Kenneth Hager never got over it and lost most of his zeal for foxhunting. He tried to find another hound as good as Pencil, but he never did.14 If they were lucky, lifelong hunters might get one or two “Pencils” along the way, more or less by accident, but many men labored for decades at hound making without coming up with a pack of truly satisfactory foxhounds. As time passed, personal standards rose, and the mediocre hounds of the beginning no longer sufficed, so hunters put greater and greater resources into the task of hound making. Even so, the best that money can buy often did not work, and the breeding of dogs able to pass the red-​​fox test proved difficult—so difficult in fact that experienced men discussed breeding in the magazines in carefully measured words. “I will explain, in short form,” wrote Ottis King of Groveton, Texas, summing up many years of effort, “that breeding hounds, good foxhounds that is, is an experiment and speculation.” And lifelong foxhound breeder and agricultural geneticist Dr. H. P. Stuckey of Georgia A&M University agreed, writing a frustrated fellow hunter that “the genetics of breeding are so perfidious that we have found it impossible to put our finger on which will produce which.” In truth, the “experiment and speculation” and indeed perfidiousness of trying to breed good red-​​fox hounds drove many hunters to distraction, then to desperate action—to insane dog abuse and drastic pack cullings, to the placement of Dog Wanted ads for the “best foxhound in America” in the magazines, and to crazy trips Fox Racing  }   121

out of state trying to buy better hounds. Red foxes caused all of this by how well they ran, exhausting and frustrating both hounds and hound breeders.15 All hunters agreed that breeding remained the most important determinant of foxhound performance in the chase—in fact, virtually the only one. Training counted for very little. Ultimately, you just put your untried hounds into a fox chase and they revealed what they were. Experienced breeders like Ottis King bred registered foxhound to registered foxhound after carefully scrutinizing each dog’s ancestors for at least five generations back, sometimes rather more than that. He set up the present match or cross on the basis of good traits present in each ancestor line and the absence of bad traits. King believed in “old line” Walkers, and in fact sometimes wrote a column by that name in Red Ranger. “Breed the best to the best,” men like King advised, and they followed that dictum in their hound-​​making programs, but some hastened to add, “and keep your fingers crossed.” Several hard facts haunted the foxhound breeder, explaining why this breeding of the best to the best could, if luck ran against you, and as King himself admitted, result “in a litter of quitters.” First, at the end of the process, the red fox set up an extreme test of hound performance, one that some dogs, registered and well bred though they might be, simply could not pass. Second, even the Walker bloodline had foul balls in it, dogs such as the hound named Lee, a babbler, a terrible barker at other things beside foxes, whelped in 1906. Lee should never have been put to stud, in King’s opinion, but he had been, and his babbler trait occasionally cropped up in modern Walkers, even in dogs whose ancestors had been free of sin for many generations back. Thus, ancient evils lurked in the bloodlines of all strains of foxhound and sometimes surfaced in the present—sins of babbling, trashing, cheating, backtracking, dog running, and quitting the chase, the greatest of all foxhound sins. Many hound makers had suffered through this litter-​​of-​​quitters lesson, and they also quickly learned that they could not observe their puppies and young hounds growing up in the pen and predict how they would perform in the red-​​fox chase. “Nose, tongue, drive, fox sense and determination are the essentials of a foxhound’s mental makeup,” and those qualities were not visible to even the most discerning eye. They revealed themselves only in the chase, and wise hunters waited a long time to put young hounds to the test, especially the red-​​fox test.16 Adrift in uncertainty, foxhunters clung to many theories about breeding, some at war with each other, some supported by modern genetic science, and some pure superstition. Most followed the “best to the best” rule 122  

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as much as they were able to—“best” being judged from eyewitness information in local hunts, the testimony of other hunters, or hound genealogies. Some learned to their sorrow that the size of the stud-​​hound ad in a magazine did not necessarily equate with the performance of that dog’s get, at least from the gyp you sent to him for breeding. A perfect hound match not being available, they might make a corrective cross, breeding a male with good speed and a poor mouth, for example, to a laggard female who gave excellent voice. A hunter might get just what he wanted out of such a litter—or all the dogs might run slowly and sound awful. Some men bred for color and conformation; some disregarded such matters entirely and (like the Walkers) bred only for performance, arguing that red-​​fox chasing was so difficult for hounds that you could focus on little else. Some thought the sire “threw” more of his traits into the offspring than the dam did, while others (including Ottis King and other experienced men) believed the dam had greater influence on the pups.17 In the end, there were the young foxhounds playing in the kennel and you wondered what they would do in their first fox chase. Compared to breeding, foxhound training was simplicity itself. Texan Hinkel Shillings’ practices closely matched those of most experienced hound men: Hinkel fed his puppies well, raising them in a separate pen immediately adjacent to a pen with an adult hound or hounds in it. Pups needed to grow up socializing with older dogs. Hinkel would have preferred to “farm raise” his pups, letting them run outside and do as they wished, chasing rabbits when they got big enough, but by the middle twentieth century that had become much too risky. When Hinkel’s pups were six months old, he moved them into the main pen with his older hounds, letting them become personally familiar with the rest of his running pack. Then, when they reached eight months, he took them hunting one at a time with a small group of familiar older dogs—a carefully managed hunt after a known fox, almost always a gray, which would give one- to two-​​hours’ chase and then take refuge from the hounds. Hinkel let most of the pack get in full cry after the fox, then turned the puppy loose to join them in the company of a well-​​trained older dog that would “take him to the right place and let him get his nose full of fox.” The next day Hinkel might take out another puppy from the same litter for his first hunt and repeat the procedure. Hinkel’s one-​​at-​​a-​​time training ensured that young hounds focused on the task at hand and not each other and that they learned to hunt foxes in the natural way for foxhounds, by accompanying and imitating their elders. As did many other hunters, Hinkel chose his hound’s first Fo x Racing  }   123

fox very carefully, since he wanted the pup to have a positive experience and not be “run out” and made to quit, perhaps harming his performance in the chase forever.18 If the young hound refused to accompany his mentor dog to the fox race, Hinkel just took him home and tried again later. Some hounds waited a long time to begin to hunt foxes, and a hunter needed to have patience with them and to be careful not to cull too soon. Some dogs that turned out to be excellent foxhounds spent a long time learning what they were and what they were supposed to do. D. B. Roach’s handsome hound, Big Boy, refused to run foxes and ran only rabbits until he was about two years old, a very advanced age for a non-​​performer. He always left the casting site with the pack but trashed on the first rabbit that jumped, and there was always a rabbit. Roach had no way of training Big Boy not to run rabbits; the dog had to realize he was a foxhound on his own. One night Roach’s pack ran a hot fox track for several hours, while Big Boy ran his usual rabbits, and Roach finally gave up. He got a suitable tree limb and walked out to eliminate his wayward hound, but the fox accidentally ran up to Big Boy as Roach approached, squalled in the dog’s face, fled, and Big Boy soon denned his first fox. Thereafter, Big Boy ran only foxes and ran them very well. He ignored rabbits. Hard hunters prided themselves on resolute culling of counterfeit foxhounds, but stories like Big Boy’s gave them pause. Sometimes you needed to wait and see what developed. A gyp named Godwin’s Jane ran poorly, if at all, until the night when something happened during a chase and she took the lead, never to relinquish it. After that, she always led the pack, even the ultimate packs. Jane won the United States Open, one of the two national field trials, in 1971. Likewise, deep in hound-​​sale remorse, Dudley Steward, Jr., reported in 1978 that a gyp he had given up on and sold to a friend had just won the Tennessee State Open. Steward had waited in vain for the gyp to get into fox races, but she only lurked companionably around his hunting fires. However, soon after he sold her, “Dub told me he had applied his boot in the right place a couple of times and she stopped hanging around the truck and started doing what she was supposed to do. I guess you live and learn in this sport.”19 Once new hounds began to run with their packs, men needed to monitor their performances to see which ones to cull, which hounds deserved breeding rights, and which dogs to cross to improve the pack. Most hunters did this the best they could by listening in the dark and by occasionally rushing to a road or clearing to see a pack crossing, but not all of them. No matter how good a man’s ear was, listening around the fire often did not provide 124  

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that sort of data, so from the Walker brothers on, a minority of very serious hound makers tried to follow their packs closely enough in daylight to study exactly what went on in the hunt. They did this on horseback or muleback in the early days, then in pickup trucks and on foot during the twentieth century, and they usually did it alone, since nobody but a hunter in a pack-​​ making obsession would do anything so strenuous. Ledger Harrell of North Carolina hunted like this several times a week. He followed his hounds cross-​​country by pickup truck, trying to get as many sightings of the action as possible. Furthermore, as an admiring observer noted, “he is his own best hound.” Periodically, to get closer to the action, Harrell jumped from his pickup and ran with his pack on foot. According to the observer, “When the fox made a big looping circle over a field, I saw Ledger run across the circle hollering, and the hounds lifted themselves off the track and short-​​cutted to him, fell in behind him, passed him, picked up the line and continued on, never making a second pause in between and, of course, gained ground.” Jay Stradley of backcountry South Carolina was another hunter of which the old-​​timers said, “That boy is the best ‘foxhound’ in this country.” Stradley, at least in his youth, liked to hunt in this direct, participatory way as a leader of the pack, but he had a strong underlying purpose. He wanted to see what his hounds did and then he wanted to breed accordingly. Stradley’s hounds may have liked to have him running along in the chase, but they did not know what he was thinking. He watched them with a critical eye and culling on his mind. He noted in one of his characteristic trade-​​craft articles in Hunter’s Horn, “Lesser hounds exhibit useless physical motions that cut deeply into that hound’s pursuit speed and overall endurance but add nothing to the chase factor.” Cull such hounds, and also “cull out those hounds that piddle trail, not drifting rapidly up on their game, also cull hounds prone to make unnecessary search swings (on an ‘out’) over ground obviously being covered by other hounds within that dog’s range of vision.” Unusually swift hounds received no automatic breeding pass from the hypercritical Stradley, who remained always ready to, as hound men said, “cull from the front as well as the back.” Watch any unusually fast hound, Stradley advised, “to see if it can handle the scent line most consistently at its running pace. Any hound trying to run faster than it can smell is of little value.” And if hounds got up front in the race by cheating, such as cutting or road running, Stradley also purged them from his pack. Stradley reported many things that most hunters did not know because they never got to see them—for example, that a good pack used to running together often ran in an “inverted V,” like a flock of wild geese in Fo x Racing  }   125

reverse. Close track runners ran slightly behind at the point of the “V,” directly on the line of scent, while other hounds ranged forward on each side of the line runners. The “wing” hounds on one side or the other normally were the first to pick up a fox’s drastic change of direction and ran at least briefly to the front, and Stradley both saw and heard that.20 Occasionally, serious breeders who could not follow their hounds closely enough in the daytime to keep them under observation hired others who could. These human foxhounds ran with the dogs and then gave a report. Percy Flowers of Clayton, North Carolina, employed a black huntsman named Percy Kent who often ran with Flowers’ pack, observed his hounds’ performances, then debriefed the breeder. Kent loved to participate in the chase, where he periodically gave mouth in a fine tenor voice. The developers of the Baldwin hound (a sub-​​strain of Walker), occasionally required the services of marathon runner and foxhunter George McCalpin of Exeter, New Hampshire, “who ran and conditioned many of the hounds for field trials.” McCalpin, who had finished the Boston Marathon several times, enjoyed running with foxhounds and did most of his marathon training in this unconventional way. Charles Murphy recalled, “He could get the low-​​down on hounds quicker, and see more of the hunt, than any man I ever hunted with. He hunted nearly every day, always on foot, in a fast dog trot.” George also identified with the hounds, since on one occasion when some of the pack he ran with had trashed after sheep, George refused to tell local officials which hounds had committed the crime and so he went to jail himself.21 Men like Ledger Harrell and Jay Stradley had become so obsessed with breeding and pack making that they dropped out of their local hunting groups and hunted mostly on their own. If a man wanted to take his hounds out six times a week, to hunt for several nights in succession, or to bust brush after his dogs on foot in daytime, usually he found few companions. Harrell and Stradley perhaps had not quite reached the lunatic fringe of their sport, but as the years went by and other hunters still failed to breed or otherwise obtain a pack of satisfactory red-​​fox hounds, some of them went over the edge. A man might quit in disgust, neuter his pack, and give them away, or he might do some strange things—take actions considered bizarre or extreme even by foxhunters. Sometimes decades of careful hound making went out the window overnight, and a man decided he had to get better dogs from somewhere immediately. A Missouri hunter took his pack over to run with another man’s pack on his farm, beat the resident’s hounds all night, then received an astonishing offer at first light: if he left his hounds where they were, in the resi126  

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dent’s dog pen, he could take the twenty-​​three Hereford cattle in the adjacent pasture home with him. Despite the recognized perils of adult hound purchase, some stressed-​​out hunters launched into a frenzy of dog buying, hound testing, perhaps culling, then more dog buying. Lennis McCurry of Atoka, Oklahoma, for example, made repeated trips into Texas to buy registered hounds and then ran them to death or near death around Atoka, searching for his perfect stud, the hound that would not quit. Likewise, Paul Jaster of Round Rock, Texas, abandoned more than forty years of personal hound making and set out with a July breeder friend on a 3,320-​​mile trip north “to look for hounds that were better than we had.” These men visited breeders in Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, and Missouri and bought hounds from all of them. And the pathological extremes of hard hunting, hound culling, and dog abuse, such as the nine hounds dumped from the river ferry in the Hub Stride incident, are best understood as the actions of foxhunters deranged with pack-​​making frustrations. Granville Faires of Florence, Alabama, bought blooded hound after blooded hound, launched them into dog-​​killing races in the Alabama hills, counted noses of the survivors, then bought more. Faires and his brother supposedly operated a cabinetmaking business in Florence, but they admitted, “If a hard race is on, we let the cabinets go.” The dog pens of some breeders resembled death camps. Hard hunter R. H. Blystone defiantly told readers of Hunter’s Horn: “It is my opinion that the best way to improve a pack is with a .22. It has worked well for me. When the cull hound gets to the real hunter, that is the end of the trail for him. There are lots of bone piles around here that belong to me, and all of the skulls have small round holes in them.” Acting out of frustration, overwrought hard hunters culled hounds ruthlessly, searching for their own version of Hub Dawson or Big Strive, for the one stud dog without fault or sin. In truth, some men would go to any lengths in their quest. Richard Rochowiak reported to Hunter’s Horn that he had taken off all of 1974 for “solid hunting and dog testing,” had run an average of four nights a week for eight-​​and-​​a-​​half months (at which time he collapsed from exhaustion), and had thinned his pack of twenty-​​eight down to a single stud hound.22 “A hound really isn’t supposed to be able to catch a good-​​running red fox,” Hinkel Shillings once said, putting his finger directly on the root of the hunters’ problem. Sixty-​​year-​​old architect Leroy T. Clark of Austin, Texas, had been fox chasing for more than half a century at the time he wrote to Chase in 1955, and while he had not yet gone ’round the bend, he clearly felt frustrated. He had the resources to breed good red-​​fox hounds and had tried very hard to do so but had failed. As proof of this failure, Clark declined to Fox Racing  }   127

mention a single hound’s name in the long, confessional article in which he summed up half a century’s unsuccessful attempts at hound making. Clark had owned hounds since he was six years old except for two years during World War I and a short time after an incident in 1938. Clark’s fine pack of six had run a coyote for hours, caught it in a man’s farm pond, then by way of thanks for their varmint eradication had been shotgunned to death. The hunter arrived soon after the gunshots, and, as he said, “Can you even imagine how I settled the debt?” First and foremost, Clark sought good red-​​fox dogs, but he never got them. At one time or another he kept registered packs of every major strain of foxhound, bred gyps to winners of major national field trials, and bought pups and adult hounds as biologically close to recent winners of the National and the United States Open as he could, “hounds that are the best that paper can produce,” but nothing worked. Clark often planted red foxes in the nearby Bastrop County and Lee County hills, but none of his packs could ever run them to ground to show him where their dens were. “I do know that the majority of hunters this country over have had the same experiences I have,” Clark asserted.23 Born only a few years after Leroy Clark, Hinkel Shillings of Shelby County, Texas, had a very different hound-​​making career from Clark and “the majority of hunters this country over.” Hinkel grew up with eight brothers on a small farm near a place called Bone Hill, a traditional foxhunting site in East Texas. The Shillings boys passed their off-​​duty time listening to late-​​night fox races from their front porch, reading foxhunting magazines, arguing about hound genealogies, riding horseback to view good-​​blooded foxhounds owned by others, and plotting how to get enough money to buy one for themselves. This took a long time; their father owned little land, and the arrival of the Great Depression did not help. The Shillings brothers took up tenant farming not long before the coming of five-​​cents-​​a-​​pound cotton, so they did not immediately prosper. Hinkel went on his first hilltop foxhunt in 1916 and heard the angels sing and the hounds call his name, but he did not get a pure-​​blood foxhound until 1931. His father somehow managed to buy his first car in that year, and Hinkel and some of his brothers rode with him to attend the yearly field trial of the Texas Fox and Wolf Hunters Association. No Shillings had attended this event before, since none had come within horse-​​and-​​wagon distance. Hinkel probably would have just hung around and watched the action, but a family friend took the shy young farmer in hand and introduced him to all the hunters he knew, soliciting subscription renewals to Hunter’s Horn in Hinkel’s name. The magazine had a “premium pup” program to help poor 128  

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boys like Hinkel; for ten subscriptions you received a registered foxhound puppy donated by some supporting breeder from someplace in the country. Hinkel then either got very lucky or demonstrated that fifteen years spent studying Walker dog genealogies in the magazines had not been in vain. For his subscription pup he chose a female contributed by Bert Flowers of Springdale, Arkansas. She arrived by train on Christmas Day, 1931, and Hinkel named her Christmas Dawson. She grew to be a big, fast, fox-​​wise gyp that ran like the wind, with an ear cocked to one side. Hinkel rolled the dice again in 1933, sending his excellent gyp to be bred to champion Hub Stride in Birmingham, Alabama, for a staggering $10 fee, and by the end of that year the gamble began to pay off. Christmas Dawson won the field trial at the East Texas Hunt and her six-​​month old pup Dawson Stride won the puppy show. Dawson Stride took several other prizes at foxhound meets, then in 1936 Hinkel gritted his teeth (he was on a rented farm, in debt, and this was the Great Depression) and took Dawson Stride to the Texas State Hunt. Hinkel borrowed his father’s car, threw in a quilt, carried some bacon and eggs in a cardboard box, made Dawson Stride comfortable in the backseat, and drove to the meet. Out of more than three hundred entries, Dawson Stride won both the all-​​age field trial and the bench show. Foxhunters loved Dawson Stride’s style. This big, handsome Walker ran fast and well, giving melodious mouth and carrying his plumed tail high like a banner as he coursed through the woods. The high plumed tail became his trademark. (Fox men were obsessed with tail carriage and may be seen in thousands of magazine photographs holding their hounds’ tails in perfect and unnatural positions.) R. W. Sherrod of Conroe, Texas, observed the 1936 field trial all three days. Then, gripped by have-​​to-​​have-​​that-​​dog obsession, he offered Hinkel $1,500 or a herd of Jersey milk cows, or perhaps both for Dawson Stride, but Hinkel turned him down. Editor E. E. Everett of Hunter’s Horn, elated by the performance of one of its premium pups and admiring this story of rags-​​to-​​riches success in the Great Depression, began to give Dawson Stride and Hinkel Shillings wonderful and sustained publicity. Hinkel quickly turned to breeding foxhounds, selling Dawson Stride’s stud services and pups, while farming cotton on the side. Hinkel put his champion hound to stud, but he continued to take him out and run with any man who brought his dogs down to test him before breeding to him, something few breeders dared to do. Hinkel’s stud-​​dog ads for Dawson Stride and all his successors ran continuously in the foxhound magazines for forty years. After Dawson Stride came his great Fox Racing  }   129

Texas foxhound breeder Hinkel Shillings and Rebb, descendant of Shillings’ famous foxhound Mark S (Courtesy of Rudy Eddington)

stud offspring Mark S (Mark Shillings), a champion Walker who successfully transmitted his fine traits into litter after litter of his get to create an impressive descendant generation of field trial and bench show champions. As Hinkel modestly noted in his magazine ads for years, “I believe I could say Mark S would come nearer breeding a good mouth on any kind of bitch than any other hound I have owned.”24 Most stud-​​dog ads were anything but modest, and in general hunters’ behaviors with regard to stud dogs became quite exceptional. A lost stud dog always triggered a desperate and prolonged search. Hunters commonly buried their stud dogs in carefully marked graves decorated with formal 130  

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gravestones and even flower beds—this when their lesser foxhounds might just be dumped in the ravine. Not one man commented on how he felt while observing the line-​​of-​​duty sexual activities of his stud dog, but some peculiar feelings may be presumed. When people began foxhunting and found themselves on the slippery slopes of the hound-​​making obsession, a good many ended their careers as did Leroy Clark, with no red-​​fox dog worth mentioning. Others fell into excesses of hound culling, or, like a man known to Emmett Adams, decided his whole pack was no good, took them to the vet for neutering, gave them away, then started over again. Only a very few hunters began their careers with a champion foxhound, as did Hinkel Shillings. Most nationally advertised stud hounds came only at the end of several decades of concentrated effort that cost much time, money, and loss of sleep, and by the end of it hound makers had become somewhat peculiar. Hound men had a cautionary saying: “Don’t brag on your dog,” which allowed you to protect yourself, as best you could, for the nights when it slunk back to the fire and disgraced you. However, when a hunter decided he had attained the breeding heights with at least one male hound and posted it for stud in one of the hound magazines, he usually bragged incessantly. A 1976 ad for Yazoo Kelly’s Stinger, for example, though asking a modest stud fee for the time, claimed that Yazoo was “the best producing sire in the United States” and one certain to “make a marked contribution toward bettering the American Foxhound.” Many ads became much more specific than this, as did the one posted by Rev. Joe T. Stevens of Clifton, Texas, for his studs Singing Deacon Stoker and Stevens’ John Rader. Deacon pursued his game with utter determination. “He dominates a race all night with his superior running ability and great mouth and will kill hounds the next morning that stay with him” (by running them to exhaustion). Meanwhile, John, “as the night wears on, pumps his outstanding clear fast chop right into your soul. It takes on that sweet kind of note that adds a little honey to the dew the next morning.” Stevens charged only $35 for his hounds’ services, but the Bartless, Kansas, owner of a July stud hound named Kansas Kajun asked for $100 and justified his high price with a fine burst of brag-​​dog rhetoric. Hunters used American foxhounds to chase both foxes and coyotes, and the “wolfhound” breeders like Kansas Kajun’s owner waxed even more frenetic: Boys, I don’t have to buy or borrow hounds, carry a gun or ballpeen hammer to catch and kill a wolf. Either Kajun or his half-​​mates have run with many of the Greats, Legends, and Flying Machines of our time and Fox Racing  }   131

has yet to come out on the short end of the stick. If you want a hound that will hide or trot around in the brush while you are sitting around the fire and telling about how good ol’ so and so used to be, then you are wasting yours and my time both. Kajun is not the hound for old men or kids. Kajun is not the intellectual type, he has but one thought, and that is to catch and kill a wolf. Boys, even if you don’t breed a gyp, come and take a run at Kajun and Company. Have plenty of room and hunters are always welcome.

Foxhound breeders might say anything in their stud-​​dog ads (as, for example, the preacher-​​owned kennel that advertised its three main studs as “The Trinity”), and many stud owners followed Kansas Kajun’s owner in challenging all comers to a match race. Match races were one-​​on-​​one races between hounds chasing good-​​running foxes where, even at night, winners and losers soon became perfectly clear. After praising his stud hound named for himself (Stony’s Little Melvin S.) in a full-​​page ad, Harland Stonecipher of Centrahoma, Oklahoma, ended: “Melvin is open to the public, as was his sire. He is not retired, crippled or too valuable to cast. Will haul him a reasonable distance to run against any presently advertised stud hound.”25 In a sport sometimes called fox racing or dog racing, a spirit of competition extended from the national field trials and nationally advertised stud hounds featured in full-​​page ads to the very grassroots, the small group of men listening in the dark around the hunters’ fire. Some local hunting groups emphasized adversarial racing more than others, but only by hunting alone could a man entirely escape competition. And, as has been noted, some solo hunters were anything but contemplative; they might withdraw from the crowd only to better observe their hounds, to cull, to breed accordingly, and then to launch better dogs into the group competitions. Match races, as hunters called them, were always labeled “informal” but were actually very serious fox races held outside the local hunting group. They were not the usual Saturday-​​night hunts, and they were not the formal “field trials” held annually in daytime by foxhunter organizations at the community, county, state, and national levels, but they could be extremely intense. Match races pitted the best hounds of one hunting group against the best hounds of another, one foxhound strain against another, or one man/ hound team against another. Match races took place after some sort of formal challenge between hunters, and they always involved one key ingredient—a known fox that was certain to run all night, take hounds to their absolute limits, and not let itself get caught or perhaps even denned. Match races re132  

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quired these highly valued good-​​running foxes, but such foxes were not the focus of the event. They simply made it possible. No hound would catch the super-​​fox, often a local legend with a name like Long Ranger, so the fox-​​ and-​​hound-​​competition aspect of the fox chase was held in abeyance. In the match race all focused on the hound-​​to-​​hound competition, as dogs underwent the ultimate test to determine which of them would lead the race after nine to twelve hours of “solid running” and which of them would quit. Usually some individual hunter or hunting group had a special proprietary relationship with the uncatchable fox. It lived in their running country, and they tended to control access to this valuable resource. An outside hunter often had to ask someone for permission to run the special fox, and fox protectors frequently limited races to one a week. Such foxes gave rise to many match races, but they needed to be scheduled ahead of time, and hunters had to wait in line. Occasionally the proprietors of the good-​​running fox might schedule a match race on their own and invite certain hunters to run the fox. Such invitations came virtually as challenges. A hunter might not really want to find out when his poor Melvin would quit and come in to the fire for peanut butter in this ultimate test, but he might find it impossible to honorably refuse. Robert J. Smith, for example, returned home from a week-​​long business trip to discover his wife in tears. Smith had been invited to bring his hounds and further neglect his family in an all-​​night match race pursuing a locally famous good-​​running fox, and she had correctly assumed that he would choose to go. The race went all night, as usual, with various quitter hounds slinking in to the fire from time to time, much to their owners’ displeasure. Hunters might not be able to tell precisely who won the match race if a good many hounds were involved, but they certainly could tell whose dogs quit. Smith’s did not, so he recorded the unseemly reactions of disgraced hunters with a critical smugness. The good-​​running, never-​​put-​​in-​​a-​​hole fox once again ran all night and exhausted nearly all the hounds, though it uncharacteristically took refuge in a sawmill debris pile at first light. It had had an off night, Smith’s host implied.26 Tennessean B. Rule Stout remained interested all his long life in match races and the super-​​foxes that allowed them to take place, and Stout often wrote about such things. “The fox is half the pack,” hunters sometimes said, and Stout believed that only incredibly stupid hunters tried to catch a good-​​ running one, as certain hunters around Oglethorpe, Georgia, had done to the fox known as Old Sly Fox. The fox called Nichol Cave Red, one of a group of red foxes released by Gorden Powers near Knoxville, Tennessee, Fo x Racing  }   133

ran for many years, protected by local hunters, as did the fox called Red Deacon in Sevier County. The three local hunters who lived close to Red Deacon controlled access to him, insisted that he be run fairly, threatened anyone who might think of disturbing his den, and once sent letters to all their hunting buddies in Knoxville informing them that the Deacon was raising a family and “not to come up there and run this fox until the young had been raised.” They did this not just in fondness for Red Deacon, but because they wanted his champion bloodlines perpetuated in local foxes.27 Hunters like Stout had certain beliefs about such foxes, based on close observation. Red Deacon and those like him possessed remarkable physical abilities, but they also seemed to be foxes who liked to go on long runs with hounds. Young foxes and foxes that did not wish to run usually had many opportunities to abort the chase. They might tippy-​​toe away at the first hint of hounds, sticking to roads, plowed fields, and bare-​​rock surfaces that retained little scent, or they might play tricks with multiple stream crossings. And if they did that, the hounds never went beyond cold trailing and there was no race at all. Refuge dens presented themselves nearly everywhere in the upland landscapes, so foxes that were run by hounds might end chases any time they chose. Named foxes like Old Hickory, Barking Bet, and Old Sinner, all known to Stout, seemed to like to run before hounds. They waited until the hounds cold-​​trailed up to them before they ran so they would leave a hot trail, and after that they often stayed just ahead of the hounds, even in sight. If they got too far ahead, they might wait for the hounds or even get up on a stump or rock and bark back at them. Many hunters had seen such fox behaviors during the chase, especially among red foxes. A few men said they had observed hounds running with such foxes, even in front of them, and suggested that on some occasions a sort of inter-​​species truce might exist, at least for that night’s chase. Something like this might have happened with a red fox in Bob Lee Maddux’s running country known by hunters as “Foxx” or “Double X.” An outsider had named this large red male with a half-​​white tail (not just the usual tip); he had remarked that the fox ran too well to have only one “X.” Double X was a fine runner, but Maddux knew a secret carefully kept by local hunters. Part of the local running country had antique woven-​​wire sheep fences, and Foxx and the local hounds that respectfully chased him all knew where the holes in the fences were. Alien hounds brought in for the match race did not. Local foxes and local foxhounds seemed to cooperate in their collective use of these woven-​​wire “hound strainers.”28 134  

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Stout’s fox Old Hickory denned on the Sheperd farm twenty miles east of Knoxville in the Hickory Knobs area. The farmer protected Old Hickory and his mate, contributing many yard chickens to their diet over several years. Jumped at dusk, Old Hickory invariably ran all night, then early the next morning lost the hounds in a nearby plowed field—something he could have done all along—and trotted back to his den on the Sheperd farm for a good day’s rest and perhaps a tasty pullet. The fox known as “Barking Bet” had speed to burn and liked to cruise along almost within sight of the pack after her. As Barking Bet ran, she gave mouth back at the hounds, issuing a loud “red fox scream” every four hundred or five hundred feet. Old Sinner ran almost weekly for years in the Knoxville area. He always ran the same five-​​mile figure-​​eight course that stayed within hearing of a traditional casting site, and he never went in a hole. Out-​​of-​​state hunters brought their packs to be tested by Old Sinner, and he drew many local match races. He would never throw the dogs for at least eight hours, guaranteed, and many times he ran all night and into the next morning. Old Sinner preferred the pack that chased him to be nicely bunched, so whenever it strung out by trying to stay up with him he reversed his course, ran back through the hounds until he reached the last one, then reversed himself again. At that point all would be tightly packed up behind him, just the way he liked. After he had run enough, Old Sinner went to some ivy-​​covered cliffs, played a few tricks with his scent trail, and very shortly lost all the hounds and sent them back to the fire. He just dismissed them.29 Gray foxes like One Eye, near Natchez, Mississippi, and Tuffy, near Waco, Texas, sometimes joined the ranks of good-​​running foxes in match races, though they had to use typical gray-​​fox skills to escape the hounds. One Eye ran a circular race for three hours just like clockwork, then he went up a certain big, slanting pin oak. Hunters built their fire within sight of the tree before casting hounds after their regular gray fox, and then at the end they watched One Eye mount his tree. No one had to blow his horn to get the dogs in. Tuffy caused the hounds that ran him more grief than those that chased after One Eye. Tuffy wound around and around in a big briar thicket for hours, every few minutes crossing the same hog-​​wire fence. He just popped through the fence mesh, but hounds following him had to leap or scramble over the fence—again and again and again. The gray fox that Florida hunters called Triple Toe or Old 517 also had a name, but he was not a good-​​running fox but a “dog-​​killing fox.” Old 517 circled around a time or two after being jumped (to maliciously pull all the dogs into the chase, Fox Racing  }   135

hunters said), then he took off for his usual several-​​miles run down hard-​​ surfaced Highway 517, while hunters rushed in their cars to try to save their hounds from the traffic.30 Hunters fortunate enough to have a good-​​running fox in their running territory perfected their packs in pursuit of it, learned all of the fox’s tricks (for example, its preferred holes in wire fences), and stood ready to take on all comers in match races. Such men faced outsiders almost as hound-​​fox teams and ones with a considerable home-​​field advantage. Outside hunters wishing to challenge them in a match race made a respectful approach, perhaps through a middleman, negotiated the details of the competition, and set a date. Foxhunters risked their valued hounds every time they sent them out but did not usually bet money on fox chases; however, they might bet money on a match race, and interested parties might make side bets. Match races normally took place at night, like ordinary hilltopping, but with only one or two hounds on each side chasing foxes capable of running for several hours, and with many trained ears listening to the race, outcomes would not be in dispute. Men might bet money, they might bet their hounds, or they might wager something else of value. Finally, perhaps risking even more, they might throw down the gauntlet in a brag-​​dog boast about what their hounds were going to do to the other man’s dogs in the match race. Stud-​​dog braggadocio usually stayed in the stud-​​dog ads, but it might show up in the ritual boasts at the preliminaries of such a contest. Tricks and subterfuges were not unknown, especially from the challengers. In 1961, elderly Oscar Green of Tennessee presided over a good-​​ running fox named Red Ranger, who had his den near Green’s farm. Green, his brother, and his cousin all lived close by and often merged their packs in ritual chases of Red Ranger, who stayed home and could always be found, always ran the same six-​​mile circle, and “did not know what a hole was made for, he would not go in one.” Gradually, the fox’s reputation spread far afield. One day a man from another county named Leonard Malugin came to visit Oscar about his wonderful fox. Malugin purposed a match race, and even dared to predict that his dogs would catch or den Red Ranger in six hours’ time. Offended, Green accepted the challenge, and he made no objection when Malugin asked, in an offhanded sort of way, if he could include a certain non-​​standard foxhound, a fox-​​chasing black-​​and-​​tan coon dog called Black Bear, which gave little mouth. Green allowed this. What good would a coon dog be in the race—even one that cheated on the other hounds by saving breath to run by not baying on the track? Green soon found out. As the match race made its six-​​mile circuits 136  

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all night long after Red Ranger, Black Bear took control. After two laps, Green heard his occasional little yelp at the lead of the combined pack. He kept getting ahead, and the elated Malugin made a ritual brag-​​dog comment: “The Black Bear is walking on his hind feet,” to which Green replied, “They’ll chain him to the ground.” But Green’s hounds did not do that. No hound caught or denned Red Ranger, but as the days passed after the big race and Malugin and Green recovered their hounds, Green’s showed up in bad shape. Some had cuts, one had a broken leg—clearly hounds run to a shambles by Black Bear. Malugin smugly pronounced, “The Black Bear has crippled a lot of good hounds.” Word of Green’s trouncing spread all around the county and beyond. However, Black Bear had not caught the Red Ranger, and when Green’s brother challenged Malugin to a rematch against his hounds, the foreigner could not honorably refuse. Now local hunters knew Black Bear for what he was, a freakishly fast cheater who saved breath to run other hounds to exhaustion, a Walker dog’s worst nightmare. Nonetheless, the brothers’ pack took him on once again in a match contest after the super-​​fox, and this time the Walkers triumphed. This time, in a wonderful race, one even longer and harder than the first, two of the brothers’ hounds finally outran and outstayed Black Bear, and Malugin slunk back to his home county in defeat.31 In 1958 a well-​​known and respected older foxhunter, Brad Durham of Goreville, Illinois, presided over another legendary long-​​running red fox called Mr. Red, pursuing him with two great foxhounds, virtually undefeated in the chase, named Thunder and Lightning. Various hunters and their hounds had challenged fox and hounds in match races, but this had virtually stopped, so dominant were “Durham’s storm dogs,” as some called them. However, young LeRoy Williamson of Royalton, thirty-​​five miles away, had a good young hound called Puddin’ Foot, who gradually gained a reputation, which led to a friend challenging Durham to a match race on Puddin’ Foot’s and LeRoy’s account. Durham accepted the challenge. He spoke to Williamson by telephone to set up the terms of the race and at the end laid a terrible brag-​​dog boast on him, predicting the awful beating that Mr. Red, Thunder, and Lightning soon would administer to Williamson’s poor young foxhound. Williamson listened to this for a long time, then asked to be allowed to say a few things himself. Durham stopped his brag, commenting, “Talk now, boy, but when Lightning and Thunder strike and jump, all I want you to do is listen.” After two weeks, LeRoy Williamson put Puddin’ Foot in his car and headed out for Goreville, and most of the foxhunters from Royalton also Fox Racing  }   137

hit the road at about the same time. The match race had turned into a confrontation between the two small Illinois towns. Williamson arrived at the agreed-​​upon casting site, he shook hands with Durham, and at sunset Durham released Thunder and Lightning to jump their favorite red fox. This accomplished, Williamson loosed Puddin’ Foot, and the race began. The red fox ran in long ellipses, as he always did, passing close to the casting site, then traveling once again far into the outer darkness like a comet circling the sun, then back again, his return each time foretold by town dogs that heard the hounds coming before the men did. Hunters could almost set their watches by the fox’s circuits. While most hunters stayed by the fire, one or two listened from the top of a nearby hill. At the first lap, the second, and the third, Thunder led the race, followed by Lightning, with Puddin’ Foot chiming in from the rear. Then, about midnight, the race came into hearing once again with a new hound’s voice in the lead—Puddin’ Foot’s—with Thunder and Lightning just behind. Williamson’s heart almost jumped into his throat. As with many hounds, Puddin’ Foot’s mouth had changed when he got to the front. All of Puddin’ Foot’s running life, midnight was the time when he began to take over. Durham said, “Boy, that was a great show. Can he bring it back?” and Williamson responded, “He can and will if Mr. Red will stay on top of the ground.” The race passed out of hearing once again, and when it came back at 2:15 a.m. Puddin’ Foot clearly led, with Thunder and Lightning back some, not giving good mouth. Almost beside himself, Williamson jumped up from his seat by the fire, sprinted to the top of the hill nearby, and whooped at the top of his lungs to encourage Puddin’ Foot even more. Far away in the dark, LeRoy’s dog heard his master’s voice and ran even harder. Only Puddin’ Foot could be heard the next time around, and at around 5 a.m., as Williamson noted, “we heard a sound every hunter has heard, a hound walking into his camp. Lightning made his bed, and Mr. Durham started to tie him up.” At about good daylight, Thunder came in also. Williamson added, “I did not feel good at all, there stood Mr. Durham looking at his hounds.” A graceful loser, Durham announced to all, “This boy and his hound has done me in.” Puddin’ Foot came back after the fox denned at 8 a.m. After this great race, LeRoy Williamson never left a casting site again without Puddin’ Foot. If it took the hound two days to come back, he waited two days. And other men changed LeRoy’s name. From that day forward, he was known by all adult males in Royalton, Illinois, as Puddin’ Foot Williamson; the hound’s name had become his own.32 138  

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Puddin’ Foot (the foxhound) became a local legend in southern Illinois, many hunters brought their gyps to him for stud, and he fathered pups all across the southern counties of the state. Williamson did not mention running Puddin’ Foot in field trials, however, and only by success in important field trials did hounds become nationally known stud dogs, their proud images posted for years in virtually every issue of Chase, Red Ranger, and Hunter’s Horn, preferably with the mark of a major championship in their name—for example, Hinkel Shillings’ Ch. Mark S. Field trials, usually held in the daytime by the 1920s, never seemed like real hilltopping to many hunters, though they might attend them from time to time. Field trials were far removed from the night hunt alone, but what they did offer was crowds of onlookers, sideshows of various sorts, a protracted campout in some remote location, a gathering of the brotherhood of foxhunters, and rigorous daytime competitions where a score of field judges ran themselves ragged attempting to generate hard visual data about foxhound performance. Mouth mattered little at a field trial, so long as a dog did not run mute. What mattered was for a hound to run as close as possible behind the fox each day while avoiding any of the major foxhound sins for which judges scratched hounds from the competition—loafing, babbling, trashing, backtrack running, and the like. If the sin fell into the class of “interfering with the hunt,” judges immediately banished a hound to the “scratch pen,” a temporary enclosure back at hunt headquarters. Some hounds used to hunting at night with only a small pack became overwrought and dropped out of field trial packs, which might number in the hundreds. With the many strange dogs, the judges riding horses, and all the excitement, some hounds tore around madly like bird dogs, or just retired from the fray, soon to be scratched for loafing, quitting, or wild running. Field trials were not hilltopping, but they grew out of the competitive side of hilltopping. The more-​​competitive hilltoppers and those passionate about dog breeding liked field trials because they provided information about the current status of their own hound-​​making programs relative to those of other men. They might prefer to hunt at night, but field trials provided an occasional opportunity to come out into the full light of day, put their hounds into an intensely competitive hunt, and see how they performed. Commercial breeders like Hinkel Shillings needed to place well in field trials to have any real economic success (sometimes defined as just breaking even). Wins at trials stimulated puppy sales and stud-​​dog fees, and breeders always needed money. Keeping a big pack of foxhounds had become costly in the era of commercial dog food and mandatory inoculations. Men often kept Fox Racing  }   139

Hounds on chain line at field trial (Courtesy of F. E. Abernethy)

their wives less than well informed about cash flow around the kennels, and some confided to the magazines that they waited until the spouses were away from home before they burned the big piles of dog food sacks. Field trials and foxhunter organizations had begun at the same time and were closely related. In 1893 the National Foxhunters Association formed in Waverly, Mississippi, and held its first field trial in Kentucky the next year. State foxhunters associations also formed in the 1890s. Texas hunters, for example, had written back and forth discussing an organization for some time. Then, perhaps in 1895, interested hunters gathered in one large room of the old Windsor Hotel in Dallas during Texas State Fair time to make final plans. A charter member recalled of this occasion four decades later: “When fox hunters get together, talk of hounds and hunting must be. In those comfortable surroundings, with ample liquid cheer, some of the great140  

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est fox races ever run on carpet and some of the grandest hound music that ever came from the mouth of man was had.” Amid all the whiskey drinking and hound imitation, hunters agreed on an organizational meeting and a first field trial, to be held the next year at Henson Springs. Men duly gathered a year later to form the Texas Fox and Wolf Hunters Association, including “wolf ” in its name because South Texas members had few foxes to chase and so made do with coyotes. Other state organizations would add “wolf ” to their titles in later decades, as the triumphant Canis latrans expanded eastward. The first Texas State Hunt used simple rules, resembling those at the first National and at other primitive state meets. Hounds passed through a trial by attrition, similar to a usual hilltop fox race but more intense. Hunters ran their hounds from dusk to daylight for five days, Monday through Friday, in an extreme test of endurance and gameness. When a dog quit or came back, judges tied it up and scratched it from further competition. Day by day the ranks thinned. At the end, the hunt designated no formal winner, as had been agreed beforehand, though virtually all participants believed that a gyp named Meg had done the best work. Hunters probably avoided designating a formal winner to avoid serious internal disputes, such as those that plagued the winner-​​take-​​all “silver dog collar” Kentucky field trials of the late 1860s. There had been some trouble with locals at the first Texas State Hunt. Farmers had been warned to keep their cur dogs penned up to avoid interfering with the hunt, but one man, a German, refused. His cur dogs barged into a race, leading Dr. Rosenborough, a local doctor and owner of the gyp Meg, to corral the German’s hounds. Then, “his surgical skill enabled him to perform a very creditable operation—amputation of their tails just behind the ears.” The rifle-​​carrying German soon accosted Dr. Rosenborough in his Marshall office, but the formidable doctor faced him down.33 Texas field trial men stubbornly continued to hunt at night until the 1922 state meet at Karnack, a very successful daytime field trial that set the pattern for all that came after. Hunters in Texas and Alabama and Kentucky and all the rest of the foxhunting states discovered that if they held their field trials in daylight, several thousand members of the general public would attend. All state-​​level field trials, and many regional and county ones, gradually took on a carnival atmosphere, with food booths, dance bands, and gospel-​​quartet competitions. On the night before the first day of the field trial, hunters held horn-​​blowing contests, “wolf howling” contests, and other events. After a time they also began to include bench show competiFox Racing  }   141

tions for foxhounds, which drew much interest from the general public. Spectators often found it difficult to observe the field trial itself, but hunters and non-​​hunters alike loved a dog show. Foxhunters associations and field trials began with the National, often held in Kentucky, spread to the state associations, then moved downward to the grass roots. Several hundred county and community associations, each with its annual field trial, existed by the early 1920s. The National Hunt, held annually by the National Fox Hunters Association, continued to set the pattern, with local associations affiliated with the NFA sending representatives to its board. In 1920 the NFA began publishing Chase magazine and initiated the Chase Futurity, a three-​​day field trial for registered hounds under two years old, which preceded the National All-​​Age, the main three-​​ day field trial for foxhounds of any age or sort, papered or not. Many state and local groups also established futurity hunts, and after 1941 they followed the NFA in limiting daily field trials to five daylight hours. The NFA’s By-​​ laws: Running Rules and Regulations became the rulebook for field trials large and small. The NFA logo on the cover of its ubiquitous little field-​​trial rulebook, however, suggested a social problem, one that lurked in the background until a grassroots rebellion led to the establishment of a rival national field trial and organization in 1946, the United States Open and United States Fox Hunters Association. The NFA logo proclaimed “good fellowship,” but it displayed an elite black riding cap and a horse whip along with a hilltoppers’ cow horn. These items did not mesh. Two out of three of the NFA’s symbols came from the elite equestrian side of foxhunting, something that always bothered forks-​​of-​​the-​​creek hilltoppers like Hinkel Shillings. Hard hats and horse crops had no place around the hunters’ fire for foxhunters listening in the dark. “Forks-​​of-​​the-​​creek” might sound derogatory in some circles, but real hilltoppers used it as a term of approval. Hinkel Shillings called himself a forks-​​of-​​the-​​creek hunter, and by that he meant a common man from the backcountry and back roads, dedicated to dusk-​​to-​​dawn hunting, and one that could have foxhounds as good as those of any rich Kentucky breeder. Too many rich men from the Bluegrass State sat on the NFA’s board of directors, and too many of them sometimes put on strange clothing and “rode to hounds” in British style. One-​​gallus hunters in their overalls did not like that. History explained the symbolism of the NFA logo. The organization had grown up around Lexington, Kentucky, home of the Kentucky Derby, where the Bluegrass Country met the Appalachian Highlands and eques142  

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trian hunters of the organized clubs mingled with nocturnal hilltoppers. It had always been something of a hybrid organization—mostly hilltopper, but incorporating elements of the organized-​​hunt culture that flourished all around Lexington. Viewed from afar, especially from the rural South, the NFA seemed to overemphasize the state of Kentucky, rich people, hunt club culture, formal bench shows, and perhaps Walker foxhounds (which had been developed in Kentucky, after all). Until his death in an automobile accident, editor Sam L. Wooldridge of Chase did much to reconcile poor-​​boy hilltoppers to the horsey eccentricities of the NFA. He had helped to found the magazine, then served as its editor until his untimely death. Almost everybody liked and respected Sam Wooldridge, a huge, affable man with a rumbling voice. Hinkel Shillings contributed a regular column to his magazine titled “Texas Notes.” Sam had ridden to hounds as a young man and remained a fine horseman, but he bred champion American foxhounds and usually hunted in the dark in hilltopper fashion. However, Wooldridge died in 1945, soon after the official 52nd Field Trials and Bench Show of the National Foxhunters Association, the biggest National in history. The 1946 National, held in Paris, Tennessee, and headquartered in the famous Greystone Hotel, witnessed something of a hilltopper rebellion. The NFA carried on more or less as usual, though a good many Southern faces were missing from the ranks. The National Bench Show came first, followed by the three-​​day field trial, the Chase Futurity. Then came the main event, the National All-​​Age. Probably the usual array of equestrian events also took place at Paris, Tennessee, in 1946, though Wooldridge’s editorial replacements chose not to emphasize them in this time of troubles—the usual horse show, rings competition, steeplechase, and perhaps “hunt ball.” These side affairs, plus a sort of discreet following of the hounds in hunt club regalia during the six days of field trials, had been part of every National since the event’s origin in 1894. Sometimes hunting clubs entered their best pack hound, or hounds, in the field trials. Normally, keeping up a long tradition, a few of the several hundred equestrians following the chase seriously injured themselves at some point in the six days. Nothing ever happened to hilltoppers, but jumping skittish horses over high obstacles remained a risky business. Many thought the equestrian sideshow was part of the National’s unique charm, but others did not like it, and in 1946 most of them stayed away. “There is but one ‘class’ at the National or any other Field Trial and that is FOXHUNTER,” wrote Chase editors after the event, trying to grease an obviFox Racing  }   143

ously squeaking wheel. “There are no ‘hard-​​hats,’ ‘velvet-​​caps,’ ‘slouch-​​felt’ or any other ‘hat class’ but our actions can give room for these figments of publicity imagination to arise at regular intervals. The National is an organization composed of hunters from every walk of life—rich, poor, smart and shabby—all melted into one fraternity and one organization.”34 But “hat class” was a problem, as was the NFA’s ever-​​increasing emphasis on the dog-​​show side of things. Photos of the 1946 National in Chase’s write-​​up of the event illustrate what bothered the fork-​​of-​​the-​​creek camp of hilltoppers. They reveal men in suits wearing felt fedoras, formally dressed women, and judges on horseback decked out exactly as if they were hunt club members. Men in overalls from creek headwaters are notable by their absence from such photographs, though such people showed up in Florence, Alabama, two weeks later for the organizational meeting and first open field trial of the United States Fox Hunters Association. The twenty-​​two-​​ member board of directors of this organization included Hinkel Shillings of Texas but only one Kentuckian. Its first president came from Mississippi. The ad for the United States Fox Hunters Association, duly printed in Chase in September 1946, told of a stripped-​​down, no-​​nonsense, national field trial, with no bench show, no derby class, no equestrian side events, and mostly Southern boys in charge. A four-​​day field trial under modified NFA rules would take place in open country with plenty of field judges and would select “the best field trial fox hound in America.” The ad stated: “This trial is being sponsored by a group of old hunters and experienced field trial men who love a good foxhound, are primarily interested in improving his field qualities and want a field trial designed only for this purpose.” No hound registration papers were required for entry; if a dog hunted foxes well, it hunted foxes.35 The USFA persisted after 1946, though some poor boys complained about the high prices it charged for organizational memberships and for hound entry fees at its annual United States Open. The two organizations moved the dates of their respective field trials farther apart, so interested parties could more easily attend both. Southern breeders and hound men gradually came back to the venerable National to find perhaps a little less emphasis on horses and bench shows. Directors of the NFA moved their event outside of Kentucky and Tennessee more often, and in 1967 they even crossed the Mississippi to the western limits of the red-​​fox zone at Nacogdoches, Texas. Already, however, Nacogdoches County was “in the wolves,” as hunters said, and some easterners and their hounds experienced their first wild coyote chase. 144  

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Meanwhile, out in the hinterlands, several hundred community, county, and regional foxhunting associations continued to hold their three-​​day yearly meets in spring or fall. The pattern for these affairs had been set by the late 1920s and remained so for the next half century. In areas with especially good foxes and running country, county meets might attract almost as many spectators, hunters, hounds, and gospel quartets as the state meets. Each county meet represented an extreme organizational challenge for the sponsoring association—one involving fox management, landowner negotiation, deals cut with various county officials for their assistance (county agent, game warden, sheriff, etc.), and necessary logistical arrangements for human food, dog food, horse food, kennels, stables, and shelters where field judges and the MFH (Master of Fox Hounds) could perform their official duties. Sometimes things ran like clockwork; sometimes they did not, as at an ill-​​organized Polk County, Missouri, hunt in 1951, a very cold occasion, where everyone ending up huddled all night around fires made of “old tires in an old open building,” trying to keep from freezing to death. By morning many had stood in the black tire smoke so long that “they looked like owls—the only white places on their faces were around their eyes where they rubbed the black off.”36 County or community field trials usually took place on Friday through Sunday, or, if the Sabbath was to be avoided, Wednesday through Saturday. A hunter drove in the day before the trial or the day before that, picked out a spot on the grounds of the hunt headquarters, staked out a long chain, then snapped the dog leads of his hounds to links of the chain at intervals usually great enough so hounds could not reach each other. American foxhounds were not inclined to fight, but as coyotes moved east and men bred for more aggression, that changed. The hunter usually made the rounds of the camp, looking for his local hunting buddies or for hunters that he had met at other field trials. Every county hunt was a major social event for foxhunters, a gathering of the clans. Only there could a man find another eager to participate in a three-​​hour conversation about the bloodlines of legendary old Buzzard Wing, whelped in 1932. Socializing might go on very late in the night, but if hunters used any alcohol they did so with discretion. Field trials tended to be traditional teetotal zones, and obvious drunks might be shown the doors of their pickups and asked to leave the camp. Finally, hunters returned to their chain lines and hounds and got ready to sleep, more often than not in or under their pickups. The hounds—fresh, anticipating the hunt, and perhaps smelling foxes on the wind—often did a lot of barking and baying during the night, Fox Racing  }   145

Men paint number on the side of a foxhound at National Foxhunters Association field trial, Nacogdoches, Texas, 1967 (Courtesy of F. E. Abernethy)

but foxhunters were used to hound voices. Many of them experienced dog vocalizations as restful and sleep-​​promoting, like the sound of rain on the roof or running water. Sometimes entertainments went on during the day before the first day’s hunt, but things always happened that night, leading up to the bench show. Late-​​coming hunters registered their hounds in the afternoon, and all got busy painting big numbers, as large as possible, on their sides. Judges scored hound performances in the hunt by these numbers and were not supposed to know whose hounds they were. Hunters with unsteady hands or poor graphic skills recruited friends known to be good at dog painting to number their hounds. Then, at about dark, the program commenced. A gospel quartet might sing before or after the convocation. Hinkel Shillings, choir leader of his church for half a century, offered the official prayer at the Texas State Open of 1992, asking God for a little rain so the dogs could better smell 146  

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the fox trails. Soon thereafter the hunt grounds echoed to the sound of cow horns in the horn-​​blowing contest, as a succession of contestants stood on a stump or a pickup tailgate and sounded their hunting horns for unknown judges stationed among the crowd. In places where the coyote had arrived and “wolf howling” had become one of the hunters’ useful skills, a wolf-​​ howling contest might follow the horn-​​blowing contest. Hunters in the field howled like coyotes to set off any varmint within hearing, then loosed their hounds on the sound. (Others used a siren to accomplish the same thing.) Other events followed—a raffle, a contest for a puppy, or an auction of items contributed to the association. Then came the bench show, the highlight of the evening. Hunters brought nervous foxhounds in on dog leads, put them on boxes or tables, then—in several classes—prodded and pushed them into show-​​dog position for the

Judge Hinkel Shillings examines foxhound at unidentified bench show. A dog handler was allowed to hold the tail in proper position, but no other body part (Courtesy of Rudy Eddington)

Fox Racing  }   147

eyes of the bench show judge: head up, eyes forward, feet planted wide, back arched like a sight hound, and tail held high. Often tails needed human assistance to assume the perfect attitude, and judges allowed human help with this part of the “perfect foxhound” poise. Otherwise dogs had to hold their position on their own at least momentarily, long enough for the judge to look at them. The bench show judge picked finalists in each class (for example, all-​​ age males), then repoised them to pick the top dog. The bench show champion had better be ready to run his game on the first day of the field trial, however, since by NFA rules all bench winners had to take the field to establish their credentials as true foxhounds. County hunts often had special programs on each night of the field trial. One evening might feature the bench show, the next, old-​​time string bands, and the next night, gospel quartets. If an election loomed on the horizon, political speakers might show up and become part of the entertainment. County foxhunting associations hoped to stimulate enough public attendance and food sales to break even on the expenses for their annual field trial, perhaps augmented by the proceeds of a foxhunters’ booth selling food and drink at the county fair. The Maury County Fox Hunters Association in Tennessee, for example, staged a baby contest with a hundred babies entered on one evening of the hunt, and a gospel sing, featuring fifteen quartets, on the next. Associations had to take care that such entertainments did not get out of hand, however. Old-​​timers at the Greene County, Missouri, meets had been taking a few discreet nips of whiskey to enhance the music, and young bloods then began to get stone drunk. Finally, the man in charge of the next year’s field trial at Greene County held a meeting and told the hunters they had to “clean it up to where your mother, your sister, or anybody else can come here and be respected.” His solution: invite at least one preacher to every hunt, a strategy that worked. Entertainment programs drew upon local talent, and sometimes it was considerable, and exotic. In 1963 the Barnsdall, Oklahoma, association met on Andrew Sixgun’s ranch a few miles outside of Barnsdall, and a crowd of 1,500 Native Americans and Anglo-​​Americans witnessed a field trial, an old-​​time fiddling contest, a horn-​​blowing contest, and a program of Indian dances drawing on the repertoires of several tribes.37 Before daylight on the first day of the field trial, the Master of Fox Hounds inspected each hound by flashlight to check its number, then set up the hunt. In many cases the field trial had been located at a country crossroads, rural school, or another place where a cast could be made right from 148  

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Elizabeth Stanly and Jack Stanly with bench show winners at Camp Tonkawa, Texas, 1970 (Courtesy of Jack Stanly)

the camp, thus avoiding loading hundreds of dogs and hauling them around in the dark. Sometimes hounds under two years old ran in a Derby class on the first day and all-​​age hounds on the next two days; sometimes all hounds hunted together for the full three days. Field judges positioned themselves in the running country where the MFH thought them most useful; he was in charge of them and the overall hunt, though he scored no hounds himself. At first light or just before, he gave the signal by horn or voice, and hunters loosed their hounds, which rushed off into the dark with the pent-​​up energy of mad things, crazy to find a fox. A few always lost control and barked at this point—a wicked fault, but excused from the crime of babbling by NFA rules. No hound could be scratched for babbling for five minutes on the first day, three on the second, and two on the third. Rules about babbling illustrated the many niceties of judgment in the field trial. The rules stated: “Any hound shall be scratched for babbling. Babbling is defined as giving false tongue to the extent of interfering with the chase.” When two or more judges agreed that a hound’s babbling so interfered, it was removed from the hunt. But a hound could not be considered to babble if it bayed within thirty yards downwind of the fox track, or if it gave tongue briefly at a loss of trail, at a fence, or at a stream crossing. It was all a matter of time and Fox Racing  }   149

The Master of Hounds, highest official of the field trial, inspects hound numbers before start of day’s competition, 1962 (Courtesy of F. E. Abernethy)

judgment; if the hound remained at the stream and kept barking, it would be scratched, since NFA rules considered “babbling at a stream” a scratchable offense.38 “Scratched” was one of the dog verbs often picked up by wits and applied to human endeavors, along with “babbling,” “trashing,” and “loafing.” Hound man P. W. Walker often visited Lions Clubs and other social groups with his sermons on dogs and men, and one of his favorite topics was God’s scratch pad for men. Men, like foxhounds, often fell away from their duty and high ideals and got themselves scratched, Walker pointed out. “In youth, he had high ideals, a good trail, but along the way he lost it or quit or was lured off to piddling at something trashy.” In his hound sermon Walker even took liberties with Revelation 20:12–15: “And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God (the throne); and the scratch-​​pads (books) were opened.”39 Other offenses could terminate a hound from that day’s hunt and from hunts on succeeding days, banishing him to his owner’s dog chain— babbling, loafing, trashing on illegal game, tracking other hounds, and a few other sins, all sufficient to be considered interfering with the hunt. Judges always scratched more hounds for loafing—for non-​​participation and failure to “harken” to the hunt—than for any other fault. Otherwise, for five hours each day, hounds rushed about after foxes, often several separate sub-​​ 150  

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packs after different foxes, and field judges rushed about on foot or in trucks or on horseback trying to see them pass and to award them point scores on a scale of good behavior within the general categories of “hunting,” “trailing,” “speed and drive,” and “endurance.” Only the speed and drive scores relied entirely on clear-​​cut data—based on which dogs a judge saw leading the chase for the fox. Usually, he or she scored the first four hounds behind the fox. Other scores remained judgment calls to some degree, and old hands often singled out the endurance scores for special criticism. In the opinion of many, no real foxhound endurance could be evaluated or scored in a vestigial five-​​hour hunt. In any case, hounds accumulated point scores over the several days of the field trial, and the highest scorers won. Each day’s hunt ended officially when the judge sounded his horn, signaling that five hours were up. In truth, hunters and hounds usually remained in the field for hours more each day, as the former struggled to get the latter on dog leads. Especially on the first day of the field trial, hounds did not wish to end their pursuits that soon, and so hunters stalked them about the running country for a long time. Every man tried to catch any dog he could, later to divvy them up. Hounds played a coy game. If a man could get directly in front of one at a road crossing or clearing as it ran by, it usually gave up and let itself be snapped onto a lead. If he could not, the hound averted its eyes, acted as if it had not seen anybody, and kept on running. Finally, it might slink in to the hunter, behaving like a dog that knew it had been very wicked. A few hounds always remained lost on the course each day, and if those had not returned to their owners by casting time the next morning, officials scratched them. Some hunters did not like field trials, though they might show up as observers from time to time. At many field trials before World War II, almost as much hunting action went on at night as during the official daytime hunts, since traditional hilltoppers attending the trials got together for informal night hunts somewhere close but outside of the official territory of the field trial. Some men liked nothing but night hunts and so had hounds that were totally unused to daylight running, although they might attend the trial for its social scene. Fox chasers had another problem with daytime field trials: they thought that the large packs of hounds involved caught and killed too many foxes. All field trials somewhat endangered foxes, since the more hounds in the hunt, the more likely it was that some foxes would be caught. And if the local foxes were the more vulnerable grays, this became even more of a problem. Twenty foxes died at the East Texas Fox Hunters Association meet at Boles Field in Shelby County in 1947, something that Fox Racing  }   151

must have pained Hinkel Shillings, and so many gray foxes perished before 486 hounds at the Florida State Field Trials on St. James Island in 1960 that the hunter reporting the event discreetly refused to tell their number. Field judges and other officials intervened to save foxes whenever they could, sometimes making a huge effort, and many field trials resulted in few if any fox deaths, but in general the men who liked foxes the most liked field trials the least.40 Hunters complained about various aspects of field trials—too many dead foxes, arbitrary and inaccurate judging, foxhound-​​strain bias on the part of some judges, and, from the beginning, the unnatural situation of running nocturnal foxhounds in the broad light of day. Field trials differed too much from ordinary hilltopping, such men argued, and in the 1950s some of them began a movement to encourage another kind of field trial more in keeping with hilltopper tradition. Here and there across the foxhunting universe night hunts like the Yaupon Association Hunt of East Texas began. Hunters cast hounds at dark and judges monitored their running all night, scratching hounds for all the usual sins and removing them from the hunt but not scoring them. Scoring of the survivors of the night’s running took place only from first light to 9 a.m. the following morning, the time when the Walker brothers used to ride out to evaluate their hounds. Then dogs were taken up and the process was repeated another night. Two all-​​night, fifteen-​​hour hunts truly tested gameness and endurance and so distinguished the real foxhounds from the counterfeits, Yaupon Hunt organizers claimed, and so it did. However, after a time or two, many hunters in East Texas and elsewhere chose not to put their hounds through this two-​​night ordeal. A gray fox at a Yaupon Field Trial held near Huntington, Texas, in 1957, for example, took hounds through so many briar patches and thickets that they came in covered with blood and only four of sixty-​​two finished the hunt. Such a result demonstrated the problem with the innovative night field trial. A handful of hunters might be made very happy, but fifty-​​eight had endured a “quitting hound.”41 Some hunters, perhaps the more social or competitive sorts, loved the camaraderie of daytime field trials and participated in them as long as they could. In 1964, eighty-​​one-​​year-​​old hunter Albert Brock, who perhaps had no automobile, put his hounds in a dog cage on his tractor and hauled them sixty miles to Owensville to take part in the Mississippi Open, just as he had all the years before. John B. Watson was a kindred spirit to Brock, though clearly one with far greater resources. A friend noted of Watson after his untimely death by heart attack in 1967, “He was always so happy and full 152  

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Competitors prepare to loose their hounds at start of field trial, 1967 (Courtesy of F. E. Abernethy)

of energy while preparing for a field trial.” Watson was a gregarious, social hunter, but highly competitive. Doubtless he also had a good bit of money. An organizational stalwart, as were most ardent field trial hunters, John Watson was at his death a member of the Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, Illinois, Alabama, Putnam County (Tennessee), One Gallus, Southern States, and Mid-​​South Open fox hunters associations. He also served on the board of directors of the National Foxhunters Association and on the five-​​member executive committee of the United States Open.42 By skill or luck, some men got their hands on an excellent field trial foxhound and dropped everything else in their lives to “campaign” the paragon around the field trial circuit. Two owners in succession did this with a wonderful Walker gyp named Evelyn Kortz between 1935 and 1937. The first owner wore himself out, then passed the baton to the second. This big, beauFox Racing  }   153

tiful lemon-​​and-​​white hound sailed over wire fences without touching— her trademark—and repeatedly beat all hounds to the fox. She won bench shows and field competitions and seemed to be everywhere. Her owners put everything on hold and took Evelyn from meet to meet. Forty years later, elderly Jesse B. Durham also campaigned his two champion July hounds, Jesse and April, from field trial to field trial in his native Florida and in neighboring states. Jesse the July had won three shelves of trophies in Durham’s home and April two shelves. In terrible health, Durham told his sick wife, Violet, that he would go to the National even if it killed him. He stopped at a coffee shop on the way, drank his cup, then fell fatally stricken on the way to the door. “Me and Ole Jess didn’t make it,” he told the truck drivers that tried to help him. This mention of the hound named for himself were his final words. Not only American foxhounds ran until they died.43 From the 1950s into the 1970s, accounts of field trials took up ever more space in the three foxhunter magazines. Conditions worsened for traditional hilltopping and running outside, and more and more hunters—by necessity—chose to cast their hounds in the controlled circumstances of daytime field trials. Tragedies still happened to hounds in field trials, but less commonly. Something mysterious and beautiful had been lost when fox chasers moved from night to day, and many of them admitted that. Perhaps because they described daytime hunts, hunters’ reports of field trials generally were pedestrian affairs compared to their other writings, although here and there one of them managed to capture something of the frenetic, Keystone Kops atmosphere of the daytime field trial. Judge Ben Lindsey of Florida certainly did so, offering colorful descriptions of various field trials in Florida and the Southeast in the decade before deteriorating circumstances forced foxhunters into fenced hunting clubs. In one story Lindsey told of the annual field trial of the Dry Creek Foxhunters Association held near Marianna, Florida, on April 2–4, 1976. Lindsey arrived at this affair, one typical of many small association meets, on the evening before the first day of the hunt. A “chicken fry” attracted hunters and many non-​​hunting types, including politicians (like Lindsey) “on the prowl for votes, all joviality and big smiles, at least from the teeth out.” The bench show followed the chicken fry. At the pre-​​hunt breakfast hosted by the club the next morning, held well before daylight, Lindsey heard some hunters worrying about snakes—not an idle fear in the Florida scrub. The MFH checked dogs’ numbers, then hunters cast 175 of them in the first day’s hunt, which turned out to be a total bust. Conditions were too dry and bad 154  

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Equestrian-​​style hunters prepare to follow hounds at National Hunt, Nacogdoches, Texas, 1967. A few such hunters usually participated in major state and national hilltopper field trials (Courtesy of F. E. Abernethy)

for hounds to smell foxes. Field trials often included bad scenting days, and hunters and hunt associations had to take the bitter with the sweet. However, that night it rained, and the next day dawned perfect for foxhunting. This time, no sooner had hounds been cast than they hit hot fox trails. Foxes and sub-​​packs chasing them soon ran everywhere, coursing in every direction in the Florida scrub. The Dry Creek association allowed spectators on the course, so Ben Lindsey rode all five hours of the hunt in a friend’s SUV—spinning around the many sand roads, stopping on hilltops to monitor the judges’ traffic on the CB radios, and trying to see fox and hounds go by. The hunt waxed and waned, as foxes escaped or went to ground and others jumped. Lindsey’s vehicle dodged those of other spectators from time to time and got out of the way of the judges’ trucks, which were beFox Racing  }   155

decked with official red ribbons. Cars shrieked to a stop, men jumped out and listened intently to the sounds of the hunt, then leaped back in and rushed to where fox and hounds seemed likely to cross a road. Lindsey had a hound in the race, a dog named Sassafras, though he never saw it all day long. Most other spectators had dogs in the hunt too, and some of them jumped from their cars “and raced down the road like spooked antelope and caught the crossing as six hounds drove wide open through the blackjacks.” A little later, Lindsey recalled, “we were standing near the intersection of two roads when another small pack came through really driving a red, there was a runover near us, and the fox hit the road below us and took off down it. All this red fox running threw a lot of good gray fox hounds. These more conservative types were running through the country looking confused and baffled by these races that sliced across country and down the roads.” Spectators ran about on foot like crazy men, judges did the same and became entirely soaked with sweat, and Lindsey himself “pooped” in the ninety-​​degree temperatures.44 Later, all agreed it had been a fine day’s field trial, although some hounds had trashed. “During the hunt the hounds devoted most of their efforts toward fox, deer, and wild hogs, but a few entertained themselves briefly with a box terrapin, a wild turkey, two possums, an otter and an alligator.” Hounds might trash on strange things at field trials. In a USO held at Florence, Alabama, Towles T. Walker, son of Stephen Walker, one of the four famous Kentucky brothers, worked as a field judge, and on the first morning of the hunt excited foxhounds ran babbling after buzzard shadows sweeping across grassy fields. Towles rode like a madman (or a Walker) across rough country to catch the buzzard-​​trashers, picking them up on the run by their collars, throwing them across his saddle, and putting them in scratch crates.45

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C ha pt e r 5



F



Coyotes, Deer, and Endgames

ox chasers paid more attention to tracks in sandy roads than most hunters did, and sometime during the early 1960s Hobert Cook and other men around Austin, Arkansas, just east of Little Rock, noticed the arrival of a new canid in their running country. To a trained eye, the tracks looked nothing like those of gray or red foxes. They resembled ordinary dog tracks, but with subtle differences. For one thing, the feet lined up while trotting or walking so that the back foot often stepped on the mark that the front foot had made. “Wolves,” someone finally concluded, giving Canis latrans, the coyote, its respectful western name; coyotes normally weighed only around thirty pounds, half to one-​​third the weight of a gray or red wolf. Anglo-​​Americans had first encountered the coyote on the edge of the Great Plains in the early nineteenth century. The Lewis and Clark expedition noted many of the new wild dogs and took biological samples for scientific study. Later settlers moving west called them “prairie wolves,” “brush wolves,” or “little wolves,” and some reported seeing well over a hundred in the course of a day’s travel. You could hardly fail to notice this smallish wolf-​​like canid of the prairies. It came over in curiosity to watch you pass, it visited your campfires at night, and it punctuated dawns and dusks with spirited yip-​​and-​​howl concerts very unlike the long drawn-​​out howlings of wolf packs. Canis latrans, scientists termed it, following Lewis and Clark, an apt name meaning “barking dog” or “song dog.” The Navajo also recognized the dog-​​like nature of the coyote, naming it “dog of God.” 157

Foxhunters like Hobert Cook soon also began invoking the name of God with regard to the coyotes that migrated eastward into their running countries, though they used it in a curse. At first, Cook and other hunters had been intrigued by the new game species. Coyotes sometimes gave good races for their hounds, but when pressed they often joined others of their kind for solidarity in numbers, and local hunters’ American foxhounds were not ready for that—not even close. Chases frequently ended in standoffs between packs of dogs and packs of coyotes and even in reversals of fortune where coyotes chased the hounds back to the hunting fires. Hounds began to accumulate battle scars from their fights with coyotes, and some of these were on the wrong end of the dogs. Hunters found this intensely humiliating, at least when it happened to their hounds. Races became strange affairs in which almost anything might occur. Individual coyotes rarely circled within hearing, as gray foxes always did and red foxes often did, so hunters could build a hunting fire and listen to the race; more often than not, they just ran straight courses right out of the neighborhood. Hunters had no choice but to launch themselves into frantic automobile pursuits to monitor the races and try to stay in position to recover their hounds. Other races began with single coyotes but then became social occasions, with other coyotes running in to harass the hounds from the side or even to follow them from behind, yipping and giving mouth while they ran. Listening in the dark to the music of the hounds now meant listening to wolf music as well, and traditional foxhunters like Hobert Cook did not care for that. Cook longed for old-​​time red-​​fox chases but had fewer of them all the time. Hounds usually encountered coyotes soon after casting, and fox numbers seemed on the decline. The year 1967 was the first time the Cooks had been unable to find red-​​fox families at their customary local denning sites. Hunters were sure the coyotes were killing the foxes, and Mrs. Hobert Cook reported that two boys out rabbit hunting had actually found coyotes eating a big red fox in the snow. By 1967 the Cooks’ opinion had solidified: coyotes were not an exciting new kind of “fox” to chase; they were just one of the scourges bringing an end to traditional foxhunting—an infestation of wolves to go along with the even more troubling infestation of white-​​tailed deer, the ultimate temptation for trashing foxhounds. The end seemed nigh to Mrs. Hobert Cook, and the twin infestations were only part of the reason. The city had come to the countryside, and the born foxhunter’s gene had unraveled. “Our two sons never learned to like fox hunting like Hobert,” she wrote, “but they will go with him when they are home. But with the country filling up with 158  

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A coyote trots toward the photographer (Courtesy of Doug Newman)

houses, trailers, highways and parks, I am afraid hunting is on the way out. But so are we.”1 Although they might ultimately repent of it, other traditional fox chasers took a positive view of the coyote and even assisted it in its move eastward, just as hunters a century before had helped the red fox advance to the west and south. As trapping decimated fox populations during the “fur boom” of the 1970s, hard-​​surface roads multiplied, city people continued to relocate to the countryside, and deer and hunting clubs spread, only the coyote seemed capable of coping. Against all odds, this ultimate survivor spread eastward Coyo te s, Deer , a n d Endgames  }   159

into the rising tide of population and rural development, seemingly impervious to anything humankind could do to stop it. A good many lovers of wildlife and wild things found it difficult not to admire this “wolf.” Six years after Mrs. Cook wrote her requiem for local foxhunting, Lee Keathley of Cook’s hometown of Austin, Arkansas, confessed that he had been feeding dead chickens from the area broiler houses to local coyotes so they would prosper and give better races, but he planned to stop. His chicken-​​fed coyotes ran and fought all too well. “I guess I am going to have to cut off their chicken diet, seems they are better fed than our poor ole hounds. In the past year I have fed them upwards in the hundreds of chickens.” Meanwhile, some hunters had gone far beyond Keathley; some could not wait until the coyotes moved in on their own, so they took action to give them a head start. Beginning in 1967, John Bray of St. Clair County, Alabama, imported coyotes from Iowa trappers and released them in his running country, much to the consternation of his neighbors. A decade later, Bray was still the only local hound man to run coyotes by choice, though choice was in decline. His Iowa imports now mixed and merged with migrants from the west, and native foxes continued to disappear in the teeth of steel traps and, perhaps, of coyotes. Everybody in St. Clair soon would be wolf hunting by necessity. John Bray liked his coyotes and studied their doings much as foxhunters of earlier generations had studied those of the fox. Coyotes readily hybridized with dogs, and a few of the ones sent to Bray from Iowa had been much larger than the pure coyote. Coyote nature entirely dominated domestic dog nature in such big, prick-​​eared, yellow-​​eyed hybrids as the male Bray called Barking Boy, a sort of super-​​coyote. Bray noted admiringly, “If he catches a bitch or young dog by itself, he will bay the dog until help gets there, then the race is on, him barking that challenging screaming bark in front of the dogs.”2 Coyotes were like that—a sort of shape-​​shifter animal, dark in color and large in the northern portions of its territory, smallish and yellow in the Texas Brush Country and in Mexico, mixing with gray wolves, red wolves, and dogs to create hybrid forms wherever they made contact. Canis latrans remained at war with dogs except during the truce of canid estrus, when farmers’ dogs joined the intrepid bands following each coyote female about the countryside and male coyotes came into yards at night to romance female dogs in heat. Coyotes had a huge range, from Alaska to the Yucatán Peninsula. Beginning around 1920, they spread eastward across the southeastern states, replacing the red wolf as man eradicated it and hybridizing with its last sur160  

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The trotting coyote pauses to howl (Courtesy of Doug Newman)

vivors to make bigger and better coyotes. Pure coyotes ranged from twenty to forty pounds, though hybrids could be much larger. Coyotes were grayish brown to yellowish gray above, white on throat and belly, reddish brown on forelegs, sides of head, muzzle, and feet, and often had some degree of black stripe down the back and across the shoulders. They looked like medium-​​ sized, narrow-​​muzzled, bushy-​​tailed dogs with pricked ears and yellow eyes. They did not at all resemble the cat-​​like foxes of North America—gray, red, kit, or swift—and in fact sometimes killed and consumed the smaller canids. They ate everything that foxes ate—grasshoppers to persimmons, crayfish to carrion—and more, since they sometimes cooperated to run down larger game, such as deer. They preferred fresh-​​killed flesh of rodent or rabbit, but they would make do with snake or skunk or maggoty roadkill. At times, such as in the late-​​summer lean season of East Texas, they subsisted mostly on grasshoppers and wild grapes. Usually hunting alone, pouncing on rodents in high grass and running down rabbits much as foxes did, they ventured around human habitations at night in search of garbage, domestic fowls, pet chow, and the pets themselves, which they often killed and ate. They consumed watermelons in people’s gardens and scrambled into their peach trees to get the peaches. They very occasionally preyed upon larger domestic animals, especially calves and lambs. Within the city of Los Angeles, coyotes Coyo te s, Deer , a nd Endgames  }   161

mastered the labyrinthine drainage systems to pass underground from city parks to golf courses, and they knew just where to surface for rich Dumpsters or a drink from backyard swimming pools.3 Coyotes were much more social than foxes but less social than wolves, which usually hunted in organized packs. Coyote packs tended to be temporary and seasonal and composed of family members—often the mother and father coyote and their female offspring as core, perhaps joined by a few other blood relatives and hangers-​​on. Male offspring tended to leave the coyote family early, looking for new territory. Coyotes often yipped, yelped, barked, and howled at dawn and dusk, with the vocalizations increasing during the breeding season of January and February and later when pups were still part of the family pack in September and October. Males helped the females around the den, just as male foxes did. They served as sentries, brought food to the pups, and helped lead enemies away or directly defended the den. Coyotes did not behave like foxes; they could be very intimidating. Coyotes that might oblige hounds with a chase at some other time of the year often stood their ground and fought them viciously in denning season, and with good reason. Hounds could go anywhere that coyotes could, and that included inside their dens. Texan N. Cheek told of an imprudent 1964 hunt during denning season in which his three hounds, joined after a while by three others, ended up backed defensively into a prickly pear patch all night while a pack of irate coyotes howled, barked, and held them at bay. When the dogs finally came in, “their rear ends were full of prickly pear thorns,” but they had survived the night. As hunters like Cheek also knew (and most wildlife biologists did not), coyotes often rushed in to break up chases after young coyotes if the quarry gave a certain distress call. C. T. Bunger of Kansas witnessed this rescue maneuver several times. A young coyote pressed to the limit by dogs, short of wind and getting rattled, might give a particular cry, “a medium long harsh squall and the loudest noise I have heard a coyote make. Any coyote in hearing will answer and come to the aid of the squaller. They show almost uncanny nerve in trying to take our dogs off the tired wolf.” One thing that sometimes discomfited hunters about coyotes was this “uncanny nerve” in defending each other and, if need be, in fighting to the death. Gray foxes could climb trees and red foxes could take refuge in narrow dens in the ground that were inaccessible to foxhounds, but the dog-​​sized coyote could only try to outrun or outlast the hounds and if that failed to make a last stand in stock pond, brush heap, or culvert. A trapped coyote—furious, yellow eyes blazing, ears laid back, hair standing 162  

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up, snarling with open mouth in the coyote way—gave many foxhounds pause. Hunters projected human virtues of bravery and gameness upon their hounds, but coyotes sometimes displayed more of these qualities than most domestic dogs.4 Coyotes arrived as a new animal to most eastern foxhunters, who had to learn their ways, but men like C. T. Bunger of Kansas and N. Cheek of Texas had lifelong experience with coyotes and hunted them with hounds at least partly adapted to their challenges. Folklorist J. Frank Dobie grew up in a remote ranch house in Live Oak County, Texas, and listening to the coyote was one of Dobie’s oldest recollections. An older woman, perhaps Dobie’s grandmother, told him her first memory was of the coyote. Her mother would say, “Drink your milk or the old coyote will get it,” something that sent a real chill down the child’s spine, since the coyote could be heard crying for its lost milk every evening. The coyote was the wild trickster spirit of the place for this woman, who noted that “coyotes were more real to us than anything else alive,” and Dobie added, “It is the voice of the coyote, more than anything else, that has had this effect.” In the languages of people living in coyote country—in their traditional sayings, stories, and folklore—resided much evidence that the coyote often came to mind. This was true in Spanish, the various Indian tongues, and in English. South Texans sometimes remarked of a man who had experienced many strange and wondrous things in his lifetime, “He has heard the coyote bark.”5 In 1947 J. Frank Dobie published The Voice of the Coyote, still the best book on its subject. He used all the scientific literature about the coyote extant at the time of his writing, but he also talked to many professional trappers, game wardens, and veteran ranchers about their direct personal observations of the coyote, and he researched nineteenth-​​century travelers’ and pioneers’ accounts as well. Dobie had friendly relations with the trappers and learned much from them, despite his deep personal distaste for the federal predator-​​control programs that most of them served. Nobody knew as much about coyotes or respected their intelligence so thoroughly as such men. The prolonged duels that Dobie described between professional trappers and certain hard-​​core, sheep-​​killing coyotes made the intelligence point clearly. Humans exceeded coyotes in mental powers, but they had to work at it. For example, one coyote liked to locate and dig up traps as a kind of game until a trapper tricked him by setting one upside down. Other coyotes always carefully tested around the mouth of their den before going in, or never went through a hole under a stock fence on a given day without seeing another Co yote s, De er , a nd End games  }   163

coyote go through first, or refused to investigate any scent lure no matter how alluring. Still others seemed to concentrate on randomizing their behavior and movements, never doing the same thing or going the same way twice. Great human ingenuity might be required to catch such coyotes, as in the case of the oft-​​frustrated trapper who buried the ticking alarm clock in a can as an attractor, or the man who set up a hanging goat on a scaffold and caught the coyote in a blind set on an overlooking knoll—the natural place to gaze at something too dangerous to approach. Trappers often caught these genius sheep killers by using something that piqued their curiosity (they were coyotes, after all), such as the ticking alarm clock, goat scaffold, and (in another instance) a dried coyote foot thrown out in a ranch road with two scentless traps set in the dirt beneath it. Or, they might study the coyote’s peculiar habits so long that they could take advantage, as in the case of the multiple-​​sheep killer that liked to amuse himself between mass murders by catching frogs in the creek. No trap could take this wizard coyote around the sheep pens or in his randomized movements around the countryside, but the trapper finally caught him as he played in the froggy creek.6 J. Frank Dobie collected many eyewitness accounts of opportunistic hunting behaviors by coyotes that also indicated their intelligence and ingenuity. People he talked to had seen coyotes following South Texas “pear burners” to catch the rodents spooked by their use of flamethrowers to prepare prickly pears for cattle to eat; others had seen them shadowing bulldozers being used to build stock ponds or walking at the front of just-​​released irrigation water to pick up flooded-​​out gophers. Some told of coyotes rushing in at the sound of gunshots in search of wounded game, coyotes observing circling buzzards to find carrion, or even coyotes playing dead themselves in attempts to lure the tasty buzzards down from the sky. Coyotes infallibly patrolled every rural road for the daily roadkill.7 “The coyote is the smartest varmint alive,” a government trapper told hunter B. A. Skipper, soon after finding every one of his three dozen traps sprung and robbed of bait. Once a coyote discovered a trap, it often went looking for others as a kind of amusement. Skipper then reported to the readers of Chase several other examples of coyote intelligence, some of them instantly credible, some perhaps not; it was hard to judge about coyotes. He noted that ranchers walking or riding around without a firearm often saw coyotes, but when they returned with a rifle they did not. Many people reported this phenomenon. Government trappers speculated to Skipper that the coyote might smell the gun. Other veterans of the coyote wars believed 164  

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the uncanny creature could read minds. Anything seemed possible; Skipper himself had known a coyote to escape hounds by jumping on a passing railroad flatcar. In the open country of the West, trained greyhounds were deadly to coyotes. D. M. Bentley, who often chased coyotes with greyhounds on the Texas plains, saw coyotes rolling in certain sappy weeds to stain their coats green so the greyhounds, which hunt entirely by sight, could not easily perceive them. Bentley told Skipper he had actually seen this tactic succeed—while he could still discern the camouflaged coyotes, his greyhounds clearly revealed by their actions that they could not.8 Camouflaged or otherwise, by the time of J. Frank Dobie’s book in 1947, coyotes had successfully expanded eastward into heavily wooded landscapes where only gray foxes, red foxes, and the red wolf had lived before. Professional trappers employed by the Predator and Rodent Control Branch of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service continued to decimate the red wolf into the 1960s, inadvertently preparing the way for the triumphant coyote. Trappers and government poisoners effectively eradicated the red wolf, as they had the gray wolf in earlier decades, but they found the coyote to be another order of difficulty. Three coyotes seemed to spring forth from nowhere for every one killed. As Dobie noted, the federal government began “systematic destruction of predatory animals” in 1915, and between that year and August 1947 had destroyed approximately two million coyotes in the western United States. Still, Canis latrans continued to howl from the hilltops every evening and now expanded its range to the east. Government predator-​​control professionals often used such primitive means as rifles and steel traps, but they had other weapons in their arsenal as well, including the cyanide gun, the “coyote getter,” and a substance called Compound 1080, a deadly chain-​​action poison capable of killing an estimated million pounds of animal life for each pound of poison used in bait. If a coyote ingested a small bit of a ground squirrel that had died from a small dose of 1080, it soon died itself.9 Western sheep ranchers and to a lesser degree cattle ranchers wanted the coyote wiped out and did not care about collateral damage—this despite repeated studies of coyote stomach contents that revealed very infrequent predation on lambs and calves and efficient destruction of pasture-​​damaging rodents. Outlaw serial killers did emerge from time to time, but most coyotes simply did not target stock. Over time, government predator-​​control programs aroused much controversy and stimulated many scientific critics, but still they continued—even after most cattle ranchers had come to oppose them. In 1959, for example, eighty-​​seven government agents in California “took” 27,228 wild predators and distributed more than 258,000 pounds Coyote s, De er , a nd End games  }   165

of Compound 1080 poison in bait, and in South Dakota 42,909 predators died, most of them coyotes.10 From the 1930s on, some field biologists saw unintended consequences of the government predator-​​control program. For one thing, killing rodent-​​ eating coyotes greatly benefited rats and gophers, which expanded their populations to injure grazing lands, public and private, making an ironic joke of the agency name, “Predator and Rodent Control Branch.” For another, a half century of trapping and killing seemed to be creating a super-​​coyote, clever and resourceful, harder to trap, poison, shoot, or kill with cyanide guns. The fittest had survived. A biologist noted of the government professionals, “They’ve created their own worst nightmare. They’ve created a coyote that’s impervious to their means.”11 Coyote scholar H. T. Gier observed that historically only three factors had impeded the spread of coyotes— uninterrupted timbered environments, the presence of gray or red wolves, and intense eradication campaigns by humans. Man was the most successful enemy of coyotes, but human activities of landscape alteration, especially forest clearing, had enormously benefited the coyotes, and human elimination of wolves opened vast new territories to them. Coyotes had adapted to human landscapes to the point of living close to man, in suburbs, and around human habitations. “They have adapted to scavenging from humans even within a few meters of the farmhouse, as they formerly scavenged from the gray wolves,” Gier noted. “Man has been directly responsible for much of what the coyote is today. . . . We, in our persecution of the coyote, have added another parameter to natural selection, with the result that coyotes are now larger, smarter, more adaptable, faster, and more cunning than when white men first entered the coyote’s territory.”12 For a half century before Dobie published his 1947 book, trailing-​​hound men in western Kansas, western Oklahoma, and West and South Texas had inadvertently helped to build the super-​​coyote, ready to invade the east. They ran coyotes with mixed-​​breed packs, often pursuing on horseback to be present at the fight to the finish to encourage the hounds, riding cowboy-​​style but in something of the spirit of Peter Beckford and the wild British equestrian hunters of the red fox. The weak, sick, and inferior coyotes died, while the swift and strong got away. The folklorist knew such hunters well, and in fact on one or more occasions had attended annual hunts of the South Texas Wolf Hunters Association (established ca. 1922) at the enormous King Ranch in the South Texas Brush Country or another of its favorite hunt sites. Huge numbers of coyotes roamed the Brush Country from south of San Antonio to the Rio Grande Valley, the largest concentra166  

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tion in North America, and generations of ranchers and farmers had sought to thin their numbers by sporting pursuit with hounds. South Texas “wolf hounds” often mixed foxhounds with various larger and more aggressive sight-​​hound breeds, greyhounds, Russian or Irish wolfhounds, and others. (In their dangerous running country, South Texans emphatically displayed the foxhunters’ attitude of “whatever works, works”; in the late 1970s, one man told of his use of “Rhodesian Ridgeback Doberman Walkers” to pursue formidable local varieties of gray, black, and red coyotes.)13 Percy Cornelius often wrote about the old hunting days along the Rio Grande, when mixed-​​blood killer packs were almost certain to get some sort of coyote—if they did not run afoul of javelina, jaguar, rattlesnake, or some other Brush Country peril along the way. “Wolf hunting in the Valley” during the early twentieth century was an unabashed blood sport. “At a particular location on the old river,” Cornelius informed possibly-​​disapproving fox chasers in Hunter’s Horn, “I cut the tails of seventeen straight catches. We didn’t get number eighteen only because he was chased into the river and drowned. Here where there are literally thousands of coyotes, you love to have a ‘running to catch’ pack. It is altogether a different tune and flavor—a feeling you do not get in a half-​​hearted race.” Texans like Cornelius called coyotes wolves partly to justify the way they hunted them, which violated several strong sporting traditions of eastern hunters of the red and gray fox, proponents of hound music, listening around the fire, and the “half-​​hearted race.” They hunted coyotes with the largest packs they could, and they often held hounds in reserve, releasing them into the chase in twos and threes from time to time as the night wore on. Their fiercest hounds, the “fighter dogs,” might be saved for the very last, after the wolf tired, but Texas hunters still tried to rush in to encourage their dogs at the fight to the finish. Even for foxhounds bred for generations to run coyotes and perhaps mixed with larger, fiercer breeds, a big coyote backed into a tight place presented an unnerving sight, and without human help sometimes dogs just walked away from it. “Some hounds won’t stay bayed long, it takes a tough gritty hound to kill a wolf,” a successful Texas coyote hunter admitted in 1973.14 Beginning perhaps during the 1930s, the human-​​improved coyote gradually moved east, colonizing first the eastern sections of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, then the states of the upper South and the Southeast, realm of the fox and the foxhunter. Hunters in the eastern woods had no early ethical problem with the death of wolves, since, as it turned out, most pure American foxhounds viewed the coyote as a step too far or perhaps two steps too C oyo tes, D eer , a nd Endgames  }   167

far. They refused to fight them and often would not even run them, and they sometimes returned to their masters after a first encounter with a strange look, as if to say, “Surely you don’t want me to chase that!” Hunters did a lot of joking about this to keep the tears away. Lyman Bennett of Ozark, Missouri, noted that while a few local hunters had dogs that would tackle coyotes, his hounds would not. “There’s no problem with my hounds having that awful ‘coyote breath’ from eating coyotes, and besides, I think if the Almighty had meant for hounds to outrun and kill wolves, He would have made dogs with great long teeth and at least six legs.”15 Then, in the very next issue of Hunter’s Horn, Bennett told just how humiliating the confrontation between foxhounds and coyotes could become. He described a hound-​​pack, coyote-​​pack face-​​off, with his hounds on the defensive. Launched on a lone coyote, his pack soon encountered the quarry’s entire family group, and the affair ended with baying hounds backed up butt to butt in a defensive clump surrounded by coyotes barking and howling even louder than the dogs. A hunting buddy rushed in swinging a club to break this up, saving the foxhounds to pursue something else another day. Likewise, L. M. “Goob” Newton of Newton County, Texas, had to intervene to save his dogs. Newton had grown up hunting gray foxes, but the local game had changed, and his foxhounds had not yet coped very well. He told of a recent coyote hunt where his hounds had gone out after a solitary “wolf,” then returned to his campfire still running their quarry but now with twenty-​​five or so coyotes pursuing them. Soon, the noisy coyotes caught up with his hounds and “did everything but kill them.” His toughest Walker ran back to Goob and got between his legs. Newton’s hounds were willing to run the individual local coyotes, but they were not willing to fight them—a common story. W. C. Wilson of Noble, Oklahoma, told Red Ranger of being under siege by coyotes, which often came into his yard to attack his beagles. Every time the passing steam train whistled at night, coyotes howled from all around. One evening he heard three coyotes stand off six hounds. Another hunter drove up and turned out four more dogs, which joined the first six, but the three coyotes just held their ground and kept barking defiance, refused to run, and the hounds never opened. Both amused and offended, Wilson took a flashlight and went to the scene of the standoff, then began shouting at the coyotes, which finally conceded to run, with the hounds after them. On his way back to the road, however, Wilson found a coyote following him, giving mouth as it went. Somewhat unnerved, he returned to his house for a pistol, came back to the casting site, and began to fire in the air—this by way of intimidation. But every time he shot, the 168  

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coyote barked at him. Around Saginaw, Missouri, teenagers Richard and Walter Anderson also cast foxhounds in the new coyote era. Despite throwing themselves personally into the chase, things often went badly for the Anderson brothers. Walter wrote: “Richard and I did about as much running as our hounds trying to have a race. Sometimes we would run and holler until we were exhausted, then have to give up and leave the wolf barking at us. When we got back to the car we would be disgusted to find our dogs all there. What were not on top of the car were under it. These hounds could sure run, but they ran the wrong way. You could see the scars on our dogs, but the scars were on the wrong end.”16 Coyotes showed up in hunters’ running countries at different times between the 1940s and the 1970s, but when they did, humiliating experiences like the ones above galvanized the hunters to do something. Returning in bad humor from the field and ripping open a copy of Hunter’s Horn, Red Ranger, or Chase, a man might find various stud-​​dog ads suggesting traditional breeding solutions to the coyote problem, usually from professionals located in longtime coyote country. Perhaps sending a gyp or two to such guaranteed, ferocious, wolf-​​destroying stud hounds would instantly breed one’s pack into the coyote era? Men who wrote the stud ads seemed to assume they had a credibility problem and responded with ever more extreme claims and challenges. David Nield of Winnstay Kennels in Wichita Falls, Texas, followed the extravagant comments of his stud ad with a notice of equal size offering to take on all comers. He asserted: “Attention Stud Hound Owners. I will run my stud hound, Winnstay Skyrow, against any advertised stud hound in the U.S. three consecutive nights, on neutral ground, on wolves and where they can really ‘turn it on’ but not in brush so thick they have to walk or trail, for $1,000 or more. . . . I maintain that it takes a specially bred hound to catch a wolf. Remember a dollar bill, printer’s ink or a big fancy stud ad cannot catch a wolf.” Perhaps Harland Stonecipher’s Stoney’s Big Lep S. accepted the challenge, although if so, history did not record the confrontation. In his stud ad Stonecipher described a dog so fierce he seemed certain to impregnate any gyp sent to him with a litter of coyote destroyers, assuming the poor female foxhound survived the contact. “He is a wolfhound from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail,” the breeder wrote in the ad. “Big Lep is a KILL dog. He is a head dog, back dog, throat dog, hind leg or hip dog—just whatever part of the coyote that is turned his way when he gets there. Big Lep doesn’t have to run a coyote three days across a wheat field to get his blood up to kill it. His blood stays up! All he needs is a coyote.” Big Lep would go into a fifty-​​gallon barrel for a coyote, catch it, and kill Coyot es, Deer , a n d Endgames  }   169

it, and if readers did not believe that, they could come up and see it for themselves; Stonecipher had coyotes and barrels. If Big Lep failed to exterminate the coyote, Stonecipher would pay his visitors’ travel expenses. Big Lep had one problem, however, Stonecipher admitted; he was so vicious he had to be transported in a dog cage by himself, apart from the other hounds. Easterners who sought a traditional breeding solution for the coyote problem were desperate and ready to take such extreme measures as Big Lep. Time seemed short and the wolf howled in the woods. Theodore Krantz of Ohio wrote Hunter’s Horn, “If a man has good running dogs that lack the fighting quality it is easily achieved. Buy a savage bitch and breed her to your gamest dog. Breed the dog pup back to her that shows most of her characteristics and you will come up with a fighter.” Such extreme inbreeding as mother to son, Krantz admitted, might cause some problems.17 A large number of hunters decided they could not wait on breeding solutions and instead sought established coyote fighters in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. During the early 1960s, coyotes appeared in E. G. Bailey’s running country around Dexter, Missouri, and although his pack of Julys chased them a little, they refused to fight them; furthermore, if the coyotes became displeased or were in a bad mood that night they ran the Julys back to the casting ground. Bailey could not stand this, could not wait to try to breed better hounds, and so launched himself into a buying spree in the coyote country of Texas and Kansas. Hop White of Cisco, Texas, informed the impatient Bailey that he had one guaranteed coyote fighter for sale, Old Black John, so the Missouri hunter put nine of his Julys in the truck (he planned a hunting and hound-​​purchasing visit to Kansas) and drove down to get him. Unfortunately, on the way to Kansas the bedding in his dog pen caught fire from his tailpipe and Old Black John and some of the Julys perished. Saddened but undeterred, Bailey continued on to Kansas, where he purchased a new pack of five hounds that he had observed catch and kill wolves. Back home in Dexter, however, Bailey discovered one hard truth that other eastern hunters were finding out: coyotes in one place might not be the same as coyotes in another. Coyotes were shape-​​shifters, which often bulked up by breeding with local dogs or remnant wolf populations. His Kansas coyote hounds would fight the formidable Dexter coyotes, but they could not whip them. Neither Bailey’s hounds nor any local hounds seemed able to accomplish this. E. G. Bailey had taken his new dogs out with a local hunter’s pack, and after they jumped the wolves and began running, he noted, “Wolves came from every direction. I never heard anything like it. They got in a fescue field and began running around and around, and Mr. Kirby got right in 170  

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there with them. They were eight or ten old wolves trying to keep the hounds off that young one, and Mr. Kirby trying to keep the wolves off the hounds. He sure can scream like a madman.”18 Foxhunters all seemed to go a little crazy in their first exposures to the coyote chase, but they did not all react the same way. Hinkel Shillings’ elderly uncle and his friends went out to stand around a hunting fire and listen to gray foxes run half-​​mile circles one evening, as they had hundreds of times before, but their hounds jumped a newly arrived coyote and the chase went twenty miles to Hemphill, finally crossing the back of a lighted outfield during a baseball game, much to the delight of the crowd. Hinkel’s uncle did not like this, but he knew no way to keep his hounds from running coyotes, and as time passed more and more coyotes appeared in Shelby County, Texas. A red-​​fox hunter from Tennessee, B. Rule Stout went on his first coyote hunt with experienced hunters and hounds in Kansas, and the events of the night gave the elderly man almost more excitement than he could stand. The coyote, which appeared as large as a German police dog to the old foxhunter, ran for many miles, fought the pack of hounds to a draw, and made its last stand in a creek, where the younger hunters rushed in to help kill it. Hounds were covered with blood from coyote bites and nearly drowned in the creek, and two hunters fell in the water trying to save their hounds from the coyote. Stout did not say if he really enjoyed himself or not, but clearly he had found things almost intolerably exciting. In 1976 A. L. Watkins of Winslow, Arkansas, reported that coyotes were moving into his part of the western Ozarks from nearby Oklahoma. He was unsure how he felt about them, noting, “They run good unless you get after the dog wolf, when he takes the hounds out of the country. I have picked up my dogs 38 miles from the casting grounds, and they were not able to come home.” Hard hunter Granville Faires of Florence, Alabama, a seasoned red-​​fox man, had his first coyote race in the same year, and his coyote, like Watkins’, finally went completely out of hearing and never came back. Before that, the “wolf ” had run “like a coon, a gray fox, and a red fox. He would get in these corn fields and go around and around for thirty minutes [like a coon], then he would hit the open country for a while [like a red fox], then he would get in the rough bottom like a gray fox.” Finally, he ran like a coyote and took the hounds into the next county, from which they straggled back with bloody feet.19 Even some early coyote sponsors repented of their actions during the late 1970s, and the long, straight races to who-​​knows-​​where were just one of their reasons. Bill Bates of Henry County, Tennessee, had imported western coyotes to his coyote-​​free running country in 1974, kept them in an old barn, Coyote s, De er , a n d Endgames  }   171

then let them go. By 1979, as Bates noted, “there were plenty of coyotes over a five-​​county area around us.” It was far too late—the coyote was out of the barn—but Bates now wished he had devoted his efforts to restocking red foxes, and he had hard reasons. Hoping to deter other foxhunters from his mistakes, Bates divided his bad news into four bitter lessons, about which he felt he had emphatic evidence. First, you could not successfully run coyotes with “native-​​bred foxhounds.” Your foxhounds will run a coyote probably the first time but only as fast and as far as the coyote wants to run. When he slows down they will slow down, and when he stops, they will stop, and when he backs up under a cut bank or brush pile and turns all that hair the wrong way and shows his long teeth, the dogs will go off and look for something else that will run. He [the coyote] is spoiled then and will not run again, and if he has a buddy or mate with him the next time you turn loose, they very well may put the dogs back in the coop for you.

Second, they had found it next to impossible over five years to buy a dog that would successfully run, catch, and kill a coyote. Many could not make a coyote turn tail and take off, and if they could not do that, you would not even have a chase to listen to. Bates noted, “We have bought dozens of dogs that were supposed to tear into a coyote and make him run or kill him, and not one of the bunch would do the job.” Third, relative to that bad news, some coyotes were even more formidable. The purebred coyote provided challenge enough for an American foxhound, but there were coyotes out there, mixed with dogs or wolves, “that weigh up to sixty pounds and will whip any dog that ever walked.” Fourth and finally, coyote races rarely provided much satisfaction. Typically, even if your dogs jumped a coyote and got it to run, things quickly went downhill. The coyote might circle a time or two within hearing, but then “usually he will line out to some rough country he knows of several miles away, and that is the end of your race as far as you are concerned.” The coyote would lead the pack out of hearing and would not return. Incapable of catching him or fighting him to make him stop, the over-​​matched foxhounds just followed him mile after weary mile into unknown territory and then as likely as not got lost.20 By about the late 1970s, Lyman Bennett of Missouri also had decided that such races “were from nowhere.” He did not like them, and he did not like the coyote. He reported in Hunter’s Horn: “We’ve had a lot of coyote races in the past that showed speed but always toward a distant shore and we’d 172  

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hear the first three miles of it going out, then we’d hunt dogs for a week.” As had Hobert Cook at Austin, Arkansas, Bennett noticed another chilling thing about the coyote. As coyotes became more common, foxes disappeared from his running country, especially the red fox. The only foxes he knew about had moved into the edges of his hometown, presumably to escape coyotes. No wonder, then, that Lyman Bennett wrote, “Coyotes for us are like a bad dream, but when we wake up they won’t go away.”21 Others felt the same, even some men like Bill Bates, who had helped the coyote spread to the east. Things had deteriorated for traditional hound-​​dog men by 1970, and the coming of the coyote just made everything that much worse. As fur prices began a decade-​​long rise, trappers flocked to the woods with their steel traps, decimating fox populations and maiming hounds. Deer spread far and wide from the game preserves where state game departments had reintroduced them after World War II, giving landowners significant new reasons to withdraw customary free-​​range rights of hound trespass on their lands or even to take their shotguns out of their closets. Hounds heard running in the woods now were assumed to be after deer, and game wardens, landowners, pasture riders, and people paying deer leases all felt prepared to counteract that. The white-​​tailed deer and the deer hunter had many friends and supporters, the fox and the fox chaser very few. Deer hunting had hard economics behind it, as fox chasing did not; deer had become a commodity. A great many former urbanites had moved to the county as commuters and weekend homeowners, and to such people the music of the hounds just sounded like unacceptable noise pollution, and the thought that the dogs might be chasing “Bambi” made them sound even worse. Rural roads had been improved into high-​​speed thoroughfares, dangerous to all unwary running hounds, and every twenty miles or so the multi-​​lane “I-​​highways,” or their close imitators, set up veritable corridors of death. Finally, into this ever-​​increasing obstacle course and minefield of modern horrors arrived the long-​​running coyote, ready to go thirty-​​eight miles into the next county, dragging hounds and hound packs to an all-​​too-​​frequent doom. H. I. Jenkins of Eldon, Missouri, loathed coyotes, and he told a story repeated many times in the magazines during the 1960s and 1970s, a dirge to a dead dog: Casting fifteen from the yard last night, I had bad luck from the start. Angel Princess never swung far enough west to get my foxes so they ended up on a coyote that wanted to travel. Tis six or eight miles down C oyo t es, Deer , a n d Endgames  }   173

to the Saline Creek bridge on 17 Highway, and that’s where Hazel Dell met her Waterloo. Herb Martin and Roger Halderman found her on their way home from work last night. Herb got her collar and called me this a.m. Glad he never called last night or I’d not slept a wink. There’s ten more strung out between here and somewhere. So-​​o-​​o, the highway has struck again.22

Since he never mentioned deer in his columns, H. I. Jenkins seemed not to have any in his running country in 1977, though he doubtless had them within a decade. Things were going to get a lot worse; many hunters sorrowfully wrote to the magazines about an erstwhile wonderful running country now infested with deer. Deer also led hounds on long, straight chases across dog-​​destroying highways, and deer, unlike coyotes, often ended up in places where they had human defenders—public or private deer preserves. Hence, many chases of deer terminated in gunshots and, from the hunters’ point of view, in lost dogs. In a way, history had repeated itself. Foxhunting developed in the British Isles as a consolidation sport after the “noble stag,” the proper beast of the chase, had been hunted to near extinction. Likewise, hilltopping developed in North America only after white-​​tailed deer had been mostly eradicated from the eastern United States. It developed in a big-​​game vacuum. Men like the Walker brothers did not have to breed or train their first generations of American foxhounds not to run deer—deer no longer roamed their woods. Americans first used recycled deerhounds to hunt the gray fox, then altered and speeded-​​up deerhounds to hunt the red, but, as it turned out, the so-​​called foxhounds avidly pursued foxes only in the absence of deer. The propensity to run deer lurked in their genes as a fatal flaw, as did an obdurate willfulness to do as they wished. Deer remained the ultimate temptation for any American foxhound, an almost irresistible quarry that more than any other single factor led to the doom of the fox chase. Fox chasers did not like deer, agreeing with the old Virginia man who wrote, “I wish they were all dead or in some of my neighbors’ deep freezers.” Recently formed state game and fish commissions began small experiments with deer restocking during the 1930s, and immediately some hound men realized the ramifications. Kentuckian M. Casper wrote Chase in 1931 noting that—as he had predicted—the deer placed on the Bernheim estate in Bullitt County refused to stay on their preserve and scattered to the four winds. Despite all his efforts to prevent it, Casper’s hounds now often trashed on deer. “All the other states that have tried the propagation of deer have re174  

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ceived a storm of protest, especially from the market gardener, whose produce they devour and destroy. The Fish and Game Commission will have plenty of bills to pay along this line before they know it.” And Casper also related an ominous event, doubtless predicting what was to come: a local farmer had heard hounds running one of the state’s deer, tried to get in position to illegally ambush it, failed, then illegally shot the two pursuing hounds in frustration. If he could not have the valuable deer, neither would the hounds.23 After World War II, state game and fish departments successfully reintroduced white-​​tailed deer to nearly all of the species’ previous wooded range; foxhounds, practically to a dog, proved willing to trash on them; and in the end foxhunting outside of enclosures did not survive. Along the way, the anti-​​deer complaints of the hound men went unheard in the general clamor of public support for the return of the noble stag, which turned out to be lucrative for a lot of people. By the middle 1980s, what was left of foxhunting retreated to hunting clubs whose high fences were designed, perhaps first and foremost, to keep out white-​​tailed deer. For two centuries after Americans began expansion westward through the woodlands, deer existed in great numbers along the line of the moving frontier, and farmers often regarded them as crop-​​destroying vermin except when they needed meat. For a decade or so after pioneering a new area, they shot deer off their back porches in the evenings or after short stalks at first light; little hunting was required. For a time deer even seemed to thrive in the messy fields and ragged half forests left by settlers’ slash-​​and-​​burn agriculture. The first settlers recalled seeing herds of hundreds of deer, told of deer following the milk cows into the barns at night to get their fodder, and recounted desperate attempts to keep deer from the gardens and the cornfields. Gradually, however, as more people settled the neighborhoods, the deer thinned out, and people turned to night hunting. Deer found bright lights fascinating and gazed fixedly at them, so hunters stalked deer with brightly blazing “fire pans” and shot at their glowing eyes. “Fire hunting” or “jack lighting” worked well, so in the absence of functional game laws (and few existed before 1930), deer eventually became scarce, and people began to use dogs to hunt them. Dogs did not need to be trained to chase deer; they did this naturally. Any sort of a dog would pursue a deer. By this time deer hunting had become more of a sport and a recreation than a dependable way to put food on the table. In the “stand hunt,” practiced all across the wooded South and parts of the Midwest, a line of “standers” took up positions spaced out down the edge of a road or a fence line and waited for C oyo t es, Deer , a n d Endgames  }   175

deer to be driven through them by a huntsman and his pack of deerhounds. Hunters took snap shots with shotguns as the deer ran by. Finally, virtually all the deer were gone, and young hunters grew from boys to men without having seen a white-​​tailed deer. Given this absence of deer in the Walker brothers’ Gerrard County, Kentucky, during the 1870s and nearly everywhere else, hound men began to run red and gray foxes for sport—something that would not have been possible had there still been many deer in the woods. Furthermore, as they had hunted the vanished deer, they ran the foxes on any man’s land by customary rights—“hunters’ rights,” people called them. Since colonial times, lasting into the middle twentieth century in some areas and varying greatly from place to place, a rural private-​​property owner’s rights were not absolute but were compromised by various customary use rights, all involving trespass, exercised by his neighbors. Such rights precluded perimeter fencing of landholdings, so for over a century the only fences in many areas were stock-​​exclusion fences around homes, gardens, and cultivated fields. Hunters’ rights involved virtually unrestricted rights to hunt, with dogs or without them, on any person’s undeveloped land, and pretty much disregarding whatever vestigial game laws resided on the books. In practice, hunters’ rights even extended to the occasional unfortunate passage of hounds and game across fenced croplands and whatever damage that caused, since all understood that the chase took place outside of human control. “Free range” referred to the right to run any number of hogs and cattle at large on all unfenced lands, your land and the lands of others. And “open woods” referred to the general neighborly right to trespass for shortcuts to road or river, to gather hickory nuts, cut bee trees, pick up pine knots from the forest floor, cut firewood, and a variety of other activities. Hunters’ rights, free range, and open woods were common folk labels for this overlapping array of use rights on other men’s land, and such customary rights had a very early impact on the formal law. When Virginia passed the first Southern game law in 1632, it swept away English restrictions regarding wealth and landownership by affirming the right of Virginians to hunt on unclaimed or unenclosed land. The House of Burgesses stated: “It is thought convenient, that any man be permitted to kill deare or other wild beasts or fowle in the common woods, forests, or rivers in regard that thereby the inhabitants may be trained in the use of theire armes, the Indians kept from our plantations, and the wolves and other vermine destroyed.” Again, in 1643, the legislative body affirmed the right of Virginians to hunt on any “land not planted or seated though taken up.” Southern legislatures passed 176  

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various mildly restrictive game laws over the next century and a half, but they had one thing in common: they had no enforcement teeth whatsoever. Across the lower and upper South, the opinion expressed by the Georgia Supreme Court in State vs. Campbell in 1808 for long held sway. The court upheld the customary right of trespass on unimproved lands, observing that prohibiting trespass appeared ridiculous in “a country which was but one extended forest, in which the liberty of killing a deer or cutting down a tree, was as unrestrained as the natural rights of the deer to rove, or the tree to grow.” The court asked rhetorically, “Where was the aristocracy whose privilege [was] to be secured?”24 This opinion long persisted in rural people’s attitudes and in the law. Perimeter fences precluding neighborly trespass remained anathema, and stock continued to roam the free range, in many parts of the lower and upper South until after World War II.25 The golden age of American hilltopping took place in this rural world of neighborly use rights, semi-​​subsistence agriculture, and small family farms that dominated the eastern United States, especially the South, from the decades after the Civil War into the 1950s. The preferred game of black bear, white-​​tailed deer, and wild turkey was either completely gone or else resided unseen in scattered remnants in the deepest, most impenetrable swamps and river bottoms. Many people lived in the countryside, eking out a living with an animal-​​powered agriculture that featured tobacco, cotton, and corn as money crops, but focused equally upon gardens, yard chickens, milk cows, and subsistence field crops. Rabbits, squirrels, bobwhite quail, and gray and red foxes thrived in the diverse, human-​​altered landscape of small fields, woodlots, and pastures that existed across the North American foxhunting universe. From Florida to Iowa, if hunters released American foxhounds into their local version of this rural world, they could be nearly certain the dogs soon would chase foxes (or, after the coyote began to come in, coyotes). Farmers might or might not accept the hunters’ claim that the fox is the farmer’s friend, but they did tolerate the nocturnal activities of the foxhunter. In his history of the evolution of foxhunting in Mississippi, Wiley Charles Prewitt, Jr., aptly observed: Landowners generally looked on hunting as a communal right within the rural community, and they allowed and usually welcomed fox hunters on their land. . . . Because red foxes are creatures of well settled farming areas and large areas are required to run them, few types of hunting better illustrate the once cohesive rural community than fox hunting . . . only the game and the hounds determined the boundary of the chase. C oyo te s, D eer , a nd Endgames  }   177

The fox hunt was one of the communal uses of the land that the traditional rural community recognized and participated in.26

Recalling the first half of the twentieth century, hundreds of foxhunters wrote nostalgic memoirs of the lost golden age of their sport for Chase, Red Ranger, and Hunter’s Horn, but Prewitt’s informant David Hellums spoke for all of them to the historian’s tape recorder. Hellums referred to Mississippi, but his words could have described anywhere that foxhounds had run foxes: Well, when we hunted outside, you just throw ’em in the truck and go over to a certain spot, ’cause back in them days most people didn’t care if you were running on their property. Be glad, most of the time they was glad for you to come over and chase a fox. It may be catching his chickens, or doing something, you know. And they’d want you to come over and run ’em and maybe catch one every once in a while. And it was a pleasure to, you know, to go out and run ’em. You just go out and find you a good place, and back up side the road and dump ’em out through the woods or out across a pasture, you know. And pretty soon, the race is on and chances are, the farmer or whoever owned the place would probably come around and talk to you awhile, you know, while they were running. But you don’t have that any more. That’s all gone.27

In Mississippi and everywhere else, two changes had ended it: the demise of the small farmer’s way of life after World War II and the associated depopulation of the countryside and breakdown of rural communities; and the state-​​sponsored reintroduction of deer. These changes fit together hand in glove to bring about the end of traditional hilltopping. Wiley Prewitt usefully summarized the history of the reintroduction of deer in Mississippi, a story that closely resembled that of other states (although the timing of events might vary). Deer had been fairly plentiful until after 1900, when levee systems opened the extensive primal bottomlands to timber cutting and agricultural development. By the late 1920s, not much virgin bottomland remained, and deer and wild turkey survived in only a few places. Pressured by year-​​round hunting, the deer population diminished to a low ebb of perhaps a few hundred animals statewide. Deer liked the pre– World War II agricultural landscape of animal-​​cultivated fields, pastures, and second-​​growth woodlands as much as the foxes did, but the large and well-​​armed rural population and an absence of effective game laws did them 178  

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in. As everywhere else, rural Mississippi liked venison. Then, in 1932, the tide slowly began to turn. Mississippi established a state game and fish commission in that year, which immediately took steps to control hunting and preserve what was left of the state’s deer. From 1933 to 1940 the commission took the first tentative steps to restock with deer from other states and from its own refuges, and by the beginning of World War II Mississippi harbored an estimated 4,600 deer. Since 1937 and the passage of the Federal Aid to Wildlife Restoration Act (usually called the Pittman-​​Robertson Act), federal matching funds had been available to aid in restoration of deer, and after the war ended Mississippi intensified its restocking. From 1944 to 1966 the Mississippi Game and Fish Commission trapped 4,000 deer from its refuge herds and released them in carefully chosen locations across the state. Meanwhile, Mississippi had become better deer habitat. During the war and continuing for two decades thereafter, more and more rural people abandoned their “unmechanized semi-​​subsistence farming” and moved to towns, allowing many cleared fields to grow up in pine forest. Farms became woodland, rural communities dwindled away, and few people remained in the country to indiscriminately harvest the rapidly increasing deer. Game laws had met little acceptance in the older rural world. Now, however, deer became common, and properly regulated hunting grew apace. Timber companies and other large landowners cooperated with the state to bring back the deer and soon began to lease their lands to organized hunting clubs. Deer had become a valuable commodity to landowners and to the state of Mississippi, which now sold hundreds of thousands of yearly licenses to deer hunters. In 1975 wildlife biologists estimated the Mississippi deer herd at half a million and increasing rapidly. The entire deer kill in the South had numbered only around 300,000 in 1969, but by 1986 the Mississippi harvest alone had grown to about 245,000. Deer roamed everywhere, and in some places farmers began to complain about crop damage.28 Everybody liked the deer, except for a few farmers and the majority of the fox- and coyote hunters, who soon discovered that the return of deer to their running countries sentenced their sport to a slow and painful death. Different state game and fish commissions followed different schedules, so the arrival time of deer varied by decades between states and between counties within states, but wherever the deer returned, the fox chasers’ cries of protest sounded much the same. In 1961, for example, Ralph Jacobs of Jennings, Oklahoma, wrote Hunter’s Horn that the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, “the dirtiest bunch in the state,” had just brought in deer, hunting clubs, Posted signs, and an outbreak of game wardens. The C oyo te s, Deer , a nd Endgames  }   179

only place he could run his hounds was a seven-​​hundred-​​acre property of a friend, and of course that was not enough territory to contain a red fox or coyote race. Furious, Jacobs appealed to “the Horn” to do something. Hunters in a given locality typically took up arms against the deer with a protest meeting or two, but nothing much seemed to come of such affairs. Almost everyone wanted deer except the foxhunters, and even some of them secretly wished to cast their Walkers or Julys on the noble stag. In Cape Girardeau County, Missouri, in 1948, hunters from all around met at a rural school to discuss the state game and fish department’s plans for reintroduction of deer in the county, which closely resembled those of other state departments. Fourteen landowners of four hundred or more acres were to be recruited to the program. Deer would be released on each of their lands in return for an agreement not to hunt them for two years and to exclude all running hounds from their properties for the same period. The hunters at the old school discussed these plans and grew ever more appalled. Several things became obvious to all: Deer would not remain on the small properties after release, but would spread all around, luring foxhounds that trashed on them back to places where the landowners had signed official agreements to defend the deer. Running hounds made a lot of noise, paid no attention to dangers, and were rather easily shot or poisoned. Furthermore, hounds chasing legal red and gray foxes might be drawn into any of these fourteen shoot-​​to-​​kill zones by the foxes, without hunters’ being able to do anything about it. Deer defenders doubtless would err on the side of caution and assume that the baying hounds were running deer. Finally, and perhaps most disturbing of all to the hunters at the meeting, Missouri game and fish professionals must have understood all of this but simply did not care. Judging from its policies, the state viewed deer and deer hunting as rightful progress in Cape Girardeau County and regarded foxhounds and foxhunting as obsolete and expendable.29 State reintroduction programs and deer preserves seemed difficult to resist, even on foxhunting’s holiest ground. In Shelby County, Texas, in 1962, foxhound breeder Hinkel Shillings anxiously noted in his Hunter’s Horn column that state game officials recently had approached landowners around the classic running country of Bone Hill, inviting them to organize and join with the wildlife department in making the area a “deer reintroduction area,” a deer preserve. The wary landowners had just turned the state down. A deer preserve previously had been organized in the Boggy Creek area in the southeast part of the county and had caused a good bit of trouble—trouble in the form of dead dogs and death threats to humans. Two years later, how180  

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ever, a despairing Hinkel advertised his best hounds for sale and planned a semi-​​retirement. Bone Hill landowners seemed to have had a change of heart and to have joined the state deer program. Hinkel wrote: “Sorry this has happened; due to Deer Hunters taking over Bone Hill, post No Hunting, signs read ‘Warning, Wolf Poison Out.’ Bone Hill is only two miles from me and my hounds break kennel often and head for those parts. This has been my best hunting all my life. I know what this is liable to cause, and for the time being have decided to sell the hounds that I think most of to take the worry from me.” Perhaps “wolf poison” truly had been placed in the woods or perhaps not. The deer-​​loving Bone Hill landowners authentically disliked coyotes. Sometimes, however, notices about coyote poison just gave deadly emphasis to the Posted, No Hunting signs aimed at foxhunters. Landowners knew that few hound men would dare to cast their hounds after the threat of poison in the woods.30 In any case, the worry that Shillings mentioned spread far and wide after the deer returned. Hound men had been anxious every time their hounds went on a chase, but nothing like this. No sooner had deer been established and begun to roam from their first deer preserves on private or public lands than hunters began to have trouble. Bucks might wander far afield during the fall breeding season, encounter foxhounds hunting rightful game, then flee home over long distances, pursued by the trashing dogs. W. F. Bates’ hounds sometimes did this, even though his Kentucky county still contained no official deer. After these thirty- or even forty-​​mile chases, as he noted, “it takes our dogs about a week to get back under normal circumstances and longer in bad weather.” And sometimes they came home with worse things than sore feet. Jack Decker of Tishomingo, Oklahoma, had been running coyotes on his own land when his hounds encountered an adventuring buck from a wildlife management area many miles away. Some of his hounds did not return from this excursion, but one came back with five bullet wounds from a .22. Decker talked to the new supervisor of the wildlife management area, who claimed he did not recall shooting this particular dog, but freely admitted that he often used a .22 on hounds found running deer in his refuge and intended to continue doing so. Decker took this matter up with the refuge supervisor’s superiors, though not with much effect. Other hunters threatened suspected dog shooters with physical assault, stock killing, or arson, whatever seemed most intimidating. The raw threats were all they had to deter dog death, and some of them truly meant what they said.31 During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, depending on the time of their reintroductions, deer flourished in their woodland game preserves all across C oyo t es, Deer , a nd Endgames  }   181

the eastern United States, then began to spread out to colonize the surrounding countrysides, with predictable effects. Most of the customary use rights had vanished by the time of the deer arrival, and most landowners had their properties fenced, but deer gave property owners a strong new reason to abolish the last vestiges of neighborly rights. Although not always with perfect grace, dog hunting and hunter trespass long had been tolerated as a remnant of the old days and old ways after other use rights had been withdrawn, especially when the hounds pursued the newcomer coyotes. However, as many hunters complained, no sooner had a landowner seen deer a time or two on his property than the Posted, No Trespassing signs went up on his fences. Older landowners sometimes felt a little shamefaced about this withdrawal of traditional hunting privileges, but deer took priority. They valued the deer much more than obsolete local customs treasured by only a few, or the theoretical elimination of a few “wolves,” let alone foxes, by the hound men. Landowners believed that noisy American foxhound packs spooked deer off their properties even when they pursued their proper game, and many were dog men enough to know how commonly American foxhounds trashed on deer. Hinkel Shillings in East Texas and Emmett Adams in south Missouri saw the Posted signs go up and their local hunting countries ruined, as did so many other followers of the hounds. The end came around Forsythe, Missouri, during the late 1970s, and Adams’ countdown of troubles after the return of the deer may stand as example for what happened in most places. Long-​​running coyotes, wire fences, roads, and steel traps already endangered hounds, but when a landowner posted his land against hound access to protect deer, he asked something of hunters that they could not deliver; no man could control the direction of the chase. One posted property with implied shoot-​​to-​​kill threat to hounds effectively closed down a much larger area. In 1977 Adams learned that a landowner in one of their better hunting areas had just called a hunter he knew personally to warn him that poison had been found along one of the bottoms in his land, and all hunters had better keep their hounds out. Not entirely believing this, thinking that the landowner had put the poison out himself or was perhaps bluffing, the hunter asked why hunting privileges had been withdrawn. Didn’t the rancher want his coyotes thinned out as before? Cornered, the landowner said of the hounds, “They are running my deer out, and I don’t like it!” The same week this happened, the local paper published a private ad listing many landowners in a certain part of the county with the notice “No Hunting on Any of This Property.” Adams sadly continued, “That about 182  

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sews it up for us except the territory north of us. Fortunately this area is mostly owned by Hill people who have grown up here.” By the end of 1978, hunting conditions had worsened. “Here in Taney County there are only seven active fox hunters,” Emmett Adams wrote. “That is due to so-​​called progress. It would not be possible to hold a foxhound field trial in this county without fear of reprisal from many quarters. In fact I feel like a hypocrite in trying to write about the sport of fox chasing.” Finally, in 1979, Adams quit foxhunting and writing about it. The last straw had been the posting of two more farms in his traditional running country along Thurman Bend of the Arkansas River. One of the farms was owned by the son of the foxhunter that Adams heard his first chase with in 1913. The other, right next to it, “is owned by a grandson of an old timer who never kept a running hound but would jump out of the bed on a cold night and run out in his bare feet and jump up and down and yell to the hounds to ‘get ’em!’ ” Adams had had enough and was retiring to run rabbits with beagles, a short-​​range hound sport that he could enjoy entirely on his own property. He had written for the magazines since 1931 and had been a foxhunter since 1913, a total of sixty-​​six years, but no more. “I thank the Lord for being privileged to live at a time when fox and wolf hunting was great. A time before the automobile, no deer, very little woven wire and no one cared for your hounds crossing their property.” He closed with a hound man’s benediction for all those who still ran long-​​range dogs in better places to hunt. He wished them good scenting conditions and good listening in silent woods. “May the dew be heavy and the wind doesn’t blow so you can hear the hounds as they come and go.”32 The landowners who posted foxhunting out of existence in Forsythe County had other enemies principally in mind. Emmett Adams only obliquely alluded to such matters, but in nearly every rural area where the deer returned, an ugly conflict soon developed that pitted landowners, and the hunting clubs they leased to, against outlaw hunters, who often pursued the private deer with recycled foxhounds. Sometimes deer hunting with hounds was legal in a state or a county except on private and posted land; sometimes it was illegal everywhere. In whichever circumstance, some people began to hunt with dogs. Fox- and coyote hunters in the absence of deer divided into two sorts after the deer came back—committed fox men like Hinkel Shillings, who hated deer and wanted nothing to do with them, and ardent deer chasers like Aubrey Cole of Jasper County, who—as it turned out—had pursued foxes only as second-​​best game. After the deer came back to his Jasper County woods, Cole trashed just as thoroughly as C oyo t es, Deer , a nd End games  }   183

his Walkers and returned to the deer chases his father had so often told him about. There were many other hunters like Cole, who in truth first ran for the office of Jasper County sheriff as an avowed friend of traditional hunters and an enemy of game wardens, Posted signs, and dog assassins. Legitimate fox- and coyote hunters such as Hinkel Shillings and Emmett Adams found themselves caught in the middle between landowners and deer-​​dog outlaws and tarred with the brush of the latter. They could not always keep their fox and coyote chases away from posted lands, where their baying hounds looked exactly like deer dogs and often ended up in landowners’ gun sights because of it. Hounds had always perished in the chase, but now many more of them did not come home. Deer hunting clubs in particular appeared to be like killing fields, where many hounds went in and few came out again. Hound trespass on private property might still be legal in an area and the shooting of valuable hunting dogs illegal, but hound killing proved impossible to stop or to prosecute—even supposing the local law wished to do so. Emmett Adams suffered two hounds shot to death in the last year he hunted. Game wardens, constables, and sheriffs often favored the deer defenders, even when they technically violated the law, and some states soon changed the rules to empower the hound killers. In 1967 Georgia had a law that any person could kill a dog pursuing a deer. The shooter did not have to prove afterward that the dead hound had pursued a deer; his statement to that effect was good enough under the law. As critics pointed out, this gave any rural Georgian the right to kill any dog he wished to at any time and for any reason. All he had to do was shoot and lie about it. Not surprisingly, H. O. Lowery of Georgia reported, “My hunting friends and I have lost about 40 dogs over the last five years, and we cannot find any trace of where they are going, so someone must be killing them.”33 Landowners and hunting club operators had their perspective on the hound-​​trespass issue, and it involved hard dollars and cents. Recalling the 1970s in East Texas, National Forest Service law enforcement specialist Billy Ball explained to a historian that “the people running the hunting clubs were recruiting members to come in at $400 up to $800 a gun to belong to a hunting club. Well, if I’ve got a hunting club, and I’m gonna have to solicit you to join my club, and I’ve got twenty people out there that paid me $800, do you think that I’m gonna let a couple of ignorant, hard-​​headed dog hunters who hadn’t changed with the times, allow them to let their dogs run across my property and interfere with my $800 gun fees? Hell, no. I’m gonna poison and kill your dogs.”34 184  

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Club hunters knew one thing for certain: their sort of deer hunting and the hound-​​dog kind could not coexist. Club hunters quietly sat in blinds and shot deer with rifles as they came to water or food, unaware; deerhounds noisily chased deer to a line of standers posted along a pipeline, hilltop, or county road, where the hunters took running shots, usually with shotguns. Rather often, the deer-​​dog man launched his dogs on one side of a posted property after setting up a line of standers just outside the landowner’s fence on the other side. Some termed this “running dogs against a man’s land.” Dogs went on the property, but the hunters did not. No wonder, then, that many landowners shot the deerhounds. Sometimes a man knew exactly who had killed his hound, heard the shots that killed it, and had to stand there in the dark and decide whether to trespass on private property, unarmed, to confront the dog shooter. Mississippi breeder Leon Canoy heard his stud hound Canoy’s Lee Mar being shotgunned to death on a neighboring property, heard his yelp after the second shot and silence after the third. Ironically, the dog Canoy called Little Lee had been “deer broke”; he absolutely would not run deer, although the landowner presumably did not know that. Canoy told his story as part of an announcement of retirement from foxhound breeding published in a 1985 Hunter’s Horn. The sad part for me was to hear his cry after the second shotgun blast, and when the third shot rang out, I knew it was over. I couldn’t even go and get him. The land was posted, and when I did get the chance, he was removed, never to be seen again. I have lost eleven hounds last year and several more since I bought this place and built my kennel and camp house. Now I know where they all went. I have heard several shots through the years but never would I believe a person could be so cruel.35

Foxhunters prided themselves on never carrying guns, and probably this saved a good many hunters in Leon Canoy’s situation from taking drastic action. It made no sense to trespass on private property to confront the armed landowner—if you could keep yourself from doing so. Some thought it best to meet the potential dog-​​murderer face-​​to-​​face beforehand to offer a grave warning, as did a man in Angelina County, Texas. Jonnie McConnico had a reputation for shooting dogs on her Criss-​​Cross Hunting Club and for ordering standers off nearby county roads at gunpoint. One day a local man took his favorite hound to see McConnico in the company of a witness and told her: “Look at that dog good, look at it real good. This is my dog, Coyote s, Deer , a nd End games  }   185

I raised that dog, and if you kill that dog and I find it out, damn your soul, you’ll never kill another.” Sometimes the warnings worked, and sometimes they did not. A long-​​running feud between hunter Earl Jones of Waynette, Oklahoma, and a dog shooter named Wilson, who had killed more than one of Jones’ coyote hounds, ended in 1977 in an exchange of shots. Gravely wounded, Wilson went to the hospital, then the graveyard; Jones, current president of the Oklahoma Fox and Wolfhunters Association, went to jail.36 Such stories—one from an interview and the other from a news item in a magazine—were symptomatic of a general pattern of hunter-​​landowner conflict in the last years of running outside, most of it never recorded. Similar events happened everywhere that hounds still pursued fox or coyote. An obvious partial solution was to breed or train hounds that scorned the pursuit of deer. While high-​​speed roads and wire fences plagued foxhunters after World War II, nothing affected their sport like the arrival of deer and coyotes, which often showed up in local hunters’ running countryside within a decade of each other. American foxhounds of whatever strain proved reluctant to fight coyotes and make them run, but they seemed all too willing to abandon their rightful game to chase deer, despite the harsh consequences of deer pursuits. A few foxhounds—a very few—would not run deer, and they might be used as start dogs to attempt to get packs of hounds chasing proper game or else be put to stud (like Leon Canoy’s unfortunate Little Lee) in hopes of breeding foxhounds that would not run deer. By and large, breeding deer-​​proof American foxhounds did not work, or did not have time to work, before foxhunters gave up their sport, so incorrigible a deer chaser was this altered descendant of the old colonial and British staghound. Even hounds pursuing a fox so closely that they had it in sight sometimes broke off the chase after encountering deer. Beginning in the 1950s, many hunters wrote despairingly to the magazines about their truly heroic efforts to breed, buy, or train foxhounds not to run deer. Kenneth Helle of Putnam, Illinois, for example, informed readers of Hunter’s Horn about the extent of his deer problem, which he knew they shared, too. The state game department had so promoted the return of deer that in his part of central Illinois, “deer outnumber the fox and coyote ten to one.” All the hounds he’d ever had, save one, would run deer. He estimated that in a twenty-​​mile radius of his house there were thirty-​​five or so fox- and coyote hounds, twenty of them registered dogs, and “every one will run deer.” Some had cost $500, some cost $1,000, many were sold as “deer proof,” but none of them were. In an attempt to keep his hounds from death by automobile, gunshot, or poison, he had punished them to try to 186  

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train them off deer “until I was ashamed of myself.” Prolonged shocking with radio-​​controlled “shock collars,” activated from afar when Helle became convinced that his hounds were chasing deer, sometimes succeeded in breaking them off a particular deer chase, but the electrocuted hounds still pursued the very next deer they encountered. As had other hunters, Helle tried various deer-​​proofing methods using commercial deer scents. The most drastic involved placing the hound in a closed box with one hole in the end, spraying a strong deer musk scent called Deer Break through the hole, and shocking the hound with a fence charger hooked up to its collar. The box treatment was a desperate measure; a friend had killed one of his dogs doing this. “Take my word for it, the dog is in agony,” Helle admitted. However, even this extreme dog abuse did not work; once freed from the box the tortured foxhound still trashed on the irresistible quarry. As strategy after strategy failed, desperate hunters racked their brains and grasped at straws. Following some strange theory, Helle’s father once tried to deer-​​proof a hound by putting it in a barrel with a billy goat and rolling the barrel down a hill, but that had not worked either.37 Foxhunters, what was left of them, ultimately solved the deer problem by taking their sport behind high, electrified, deer-​​proof fences, but a wealthy, eccentric Georgian named Benjamin H. Hardaway III chose to solve it by abandoning the American foxhound for a mixed-​​breed variety, mostly of British stock, immodestly termed the “Hardaway Crossbred Foxhound.” His experience suggested that in order to keep the American breed from running deer it almost had to be made into something else, some other sort of dog. Hardaway did this reluctantly; he loved July hounds and had grown up with them. At first he used Julys in traditional hilltopping, later in a private equestrian hunt club of his own creation called the Midland Hunt. Hardaway and his club members ran a mostly July pack until deer began to intrude on their hunts in 1962. In a chapter of his 1997 memoir Never Outfoxed aptly titled “The Foxhunter’s Nightmare,” Hardaway described his epic struggles with the deer problem. Hardaway, like Peter Beckworth, whose book he had studied and whom he much admired, possessed financial resources. As he noted, “From 1962 on, every outcross I made and every mating I made within the pack were done with one goal in mind: producing a hound that could be made rock steady on deer.” Breeding deer-​​proof hounds proved slow and difficult, so Hardaway consulted with his local hilltoppers about various training remedies to break foxhounds off deer. Hilltoppers had even greater problems with deer than Coyote s, De er , a n d End games  }   187

the Midland Hunt did, since they went out at night, when deer were most active. Hardaway had his pack lured down a prepared deer scent trail into a fenced dead end, where hired hands beat them with long cane poles, but that had little effect. Neither did placing a dead deer under protective wire in the hounds’ pen to stink and decay, keeping two live deer in a pen adjacent to that of the hounds, or giving hounds strong emetics while placing deer-​​ scent-​​impregnated stockings over their heads. “Rat shot,” a mustard-​​seed-​​ loaded .22 cartridge designed for rodents, accomplished more, and soon every member of the black-​​coated Midland Hunt followed their hounds with .22 pistols on their hips. Whenever hounds trashed on a deer, the Georgians rode them down like Civil War cavalry and shot their rumps with stinging rat shot. By a decade after deer arrival, the rat shot and the breeding program had worked to the extent that, while the Midland Hunt pack still sometimes trashed on what Hardaway called “the antlered menace,” some older hounds now quickly ran to the hunters when it happened, as if to communicate, “They’re after deer! Here I am! I’m not doing that!” This cued Hardaway to sound his horn and call the deer trashers back before they got out of hearing (and then, perhaps, to punish them with rat shot). Repeat offenders received a version of Kenneth Helle’s Deer Break treatment, though with a literal twist. Following a suggestion from a hilltopper friend who also ran Julys, Hardaway put the deer trasher in a fifty-​​five-​​gallon barrel, set horizontally on a wooden frame so it could be spun, and sprayed the obnoxiously strong deer musk in a hole at one end while spinning the barrel. Spinning the barrel seemed to work better than Helle’s electric shock as an aversive treatment in association with the scent. Many hounds became much less enthusiastic about deer after the barrel treatment, but Hardaway found he could use it only once. After one session, nothing seemed capable of getting the hound back in the barrel. By the late 1970s, Hardaway had a pack of foxhounds that—with proper early training, including walking young hounds through a resident herd of tame deer—would not run deer. Hardaway had not accomplished this primarily by rat shot, barrel treatments, or puppy training, however, but by mostly abandoning the deer-​​crazed American foxhound. He had begun with a nearly pure July pack used as his hunt-​​club hounds, but the Hardaway crossbred foxhound ended up as only one-​​eighth American July and seven-​​eighths English foxhound. The British breed had proven much more manageable, less independent, and capable of being persuaded to leave deer 188  

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alone, unlike—or so it seemed—Julys, Walkers, Goodmans, Triggs, or any mixture thereof.38 From 1960 until they gave up on running outside sometime during the 1980s, foxhunters adjusted to the modern perils of roads, fences, hunting clubs, deer defenders, and steel traps mostly by carefully selecting where they cast their hounds. They tried to run at relatively safe places that had fewer deer than others, and then they held their breath. Even so, as the hunters listened in the dark, many a man felt sick at his stomach as the unpredictable chase turned in the wrong direction toward some high-​​speed road, dog-​​hating hunting club, or hotbed of trapping activity. Sometimes the hunter could rush to cut his dogs off before they reached the danger zone; sometimes he could not. After a hound failed to return that night or after a day or so of waiting, the hunter might begin his search. He drove likely roads, looking for the body, and he walked woven-​​wire fences, even if it required some discreet trespassing. He asked at hunting clubs and landowners’ properties if anyone had seen or heard hounds nearby (though in the worst scenario he did not expect a forthright answer), and he thought painful thoughts about hounds caught in steel traps, languishing in remote woods. Unlike dogs caught in fences, dogs caught in traps could be almost anywhere, since during the fur boom that began in the early 1970s and continued for over a decade, a great many people had traps in the woods, with or without the landowners’ permission. Trapping was an old problem for foxhunters, waxing and waning in intensity with the price of pelts and the policies of local bounty programs. Sometimes when fur prices were low, as during the 1950s, bounty prices were high, and professional trappers remained active to eliminate “mad foxes” from the woods during the rabies scare of those years. Bounty programs for foxes always had their natural supporters among farmers and quail and small-​​game hunters, and whenever fears of rabies galvanized the general public, the perennial fox haters rushed in to throw gasoline on the flames and promote bounty trapping for foxes—at least that was what foxhunters believed. The “fox is the farmer’s friend” argument had little traction during a rabies scare, when the rural public thought the only good fox was a dead one. Fox men did what they could. They tore up bounty hunters’ traps and occasionally let the air out of the tires of their cars parked on rural roads. Hunters like Hinkel Shillings even denied the existence of rabies in wild fox populations, noting that they had run unvaccinated hounds across miles of landscape for several decades without a single one acquiring rabies from C oyo tes, D eer , a nd Endgames  }   189

a fox or any other kind of wild animal. Rabies scares were nothing more than a bird hunters’ hoax, cooked up by men unwilling to share even a few bobwhites with the starving foxes. Acerbic Red Ranger editor Lewis Francis Gingery certainly believed this, and in 1944 he launched a national organization, the Fox and Foxhound Protective Association, to combat all the fox haters and fox destroyers. He attacked the rabies serum, which he believed was worse than nothing and actually killed people, and he published every scientific report he could find about fox predations on quail, none of which showed significant impacts on quail populations. He sent hundreds of free copies of his magazine to state game and fish and public health officials from many states so that the FFPA’s voice might be heard, complete with little pointing-​​hand graphics in the margins of pages to show busy bureaucrats the articles the editor believed they absolutely must read. Gingery wrote to an Alabama doctor who had advocated rabies control by way of a bounty on foxes: “Don’t you know that more men are hung to trees in Alabama each year than die from fox bites?”39 On the western edge of the hound men’s universe, where game was mostly coyotes, bounty hunter problems were even worse. There, hunters had to contend not only with dog-​​maiming steel traps but also with cyanide-​​gas guns, which inquisitive hounds triggered as readily as any coyote. Robert Pepper of Penwell, Texas, told of a successful hunt where hunters held their breath while their hounds ran a coyote for miles “over cyanide guns and through steel traps,” and Loyd McCullar of Edinburg, Texas, reported the inevitable tragedy. Two hounds, a mother and her son, had died of cyanide guns within three hundred feet of a public highway, a place where such things were not supposed to be. Almost “killing angry” at the government bounty men, McCullar “dug a grave at two in the morning and buried Beulah the old dog, the first to be killed, wrapped and lying on a blanket just like after a long night’s hunt. The darker the night, the harder the country, the more music these hounds rang out.”40 At least cyanide guns brought a quick death; steel traps did not. Traps caught many red foxes, gray foxes, and coyotes, but they also caught passing hounds. Some trapped hounds remained trapped until they died, while others finally returned on three legs after the trapped foot deteriorated so much that it fell off or the hound tore it out of the trap. Emmett Adams’ champion hound Swan Creek Night Wind remained in a steel trap for five days, then came back to the casting area painfully dragging a five-​​foot pole. Adams had lost many other dogs to traps, beginning more than half a century earlier. A charitable man, slow to criticize others, Adams made an ex190  

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ception for trappers; he actively hated them and often said so.41 Speaking for Adams and a lot of others, elderly Virginia hunter Rosewell Page expressed his opinion about traps and trappers in 1979, as the price of fur rose ever higher: I always figured that a steel-​​jawed trap was a machination of the devil himself, especially on several occasions when one of my good hounds would be several days late returning from a hunt with one of those terrible things hanging onto one of his legs; or worse still coming home with a part of one of his legs missing, probably left in a trap somewhere in the woods or on a river bank. . . . Whenever I see a fine hound injured or even die from such an “accident,” I am tempted to disobey the commandment that says according to the catechism in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer I studied as a schoolboy, “Thou shalt do no murder.” 42

Hinkel Shillings’ fine gyp Jean Harlow, a daughter of Dawson Stride, got caught in a trap crossing a log over a creek during the late 1930s, fell off, and drowned, and Hinkel—hot-​​tempered in his younger days—sincerely thanked God that he never found out who had set the trap. Doubtless some actual murders of trappers in retaliation for dead and maimed hounds did occur, though hunters naturally did not report such incidents in the pages of the magazines. Hunters very occasionally did admit to looking for and destroying trappers’ steel traps set in their running country, however— probably a rather common practice. One Albans, West Virginia, man wrote to Hunter’s Horn columnist Betty Shives in 1967, a time when mostly bounty hunters were in the field, and told her he had personally destroyed “a pickup load of traps and deadfalls, I expect.”43 Hunter-​​trapper conflicts waxed and waned with the price of fur and rose to high levels at least twice during the twentieth century, once during the late 1920s and early 1930s, then again during the 1970s and early 1980s, when this latter-​​day fur boom joined with the deer problem to finally force hound-​​ dog men inside the fenced hunting clubs. During each upturn in fur prices the same phenomena occurred. Many more rural men and boys took up trapping and set out steel traps, and foxhunters’ running countries turned into minefields. Virtually every hunter lost dogs to traps. Many hounds returned injured, and hunters suspected that other missing dogs had died at the hands of trappers and been ditched somewhere in the woods, since the easiest way to deal with a hound caught in a trap was to kill it. Trappers soon Coyote s, De er , a n d Endgames  }   191

far outnumbered the foxhunters, and their wishes began to affect local hunting and trapping regulations, state laws, and local elections. The fur industry—trappers, buyers, and “fur houses”—quickly developed local and statewide economic significance and political clout—of which foxhunters had almost none. Trapping interests typically fought to extend trapping seasons and to ban hounds from running at large during certain periods of the year—a trapper initiative powerfully joined during the 1970s and 1980s by the many friends of deer. To the horror of hunters, some legislation even proposed dog taxes or year-​​round leash laws. Foxhunters fought to limit trapping seasons, raise trapping license fees and fines, restrict the placement of traps to holes or dens so dogs could not get in them, require landowner permission for trapping, or even abolish the use of inhumane steel traps altogether. Foxhunters wrote poems for local newspapers about mother foxes dying trapped in the snow, their doomed cubs gathered around them, and trappers countered with graphic accounts of lovely (and valuable) foxes torn to pieces by vicious dogs. As in these sad stories, hunters and trappers competed for the attention and the sympathy of the general public, but both had public relations problems. Inasmuch as the public became aware of the issues, it tended to dislike both vicious leg-​​hold steel traps and killer hounds pursuing innocent woodland animals. In the midst of the public relations war, two local Iowa foxhunting associations chose to drop the word “hunters” from their club names. Henceforth they would be known as the Turkey Valley Foxhound Association and the Northeast Iowa Foxhound Association, since “everyone thinks fox hunters are killers and want to get rid of all fox and coyotes.” Some other groups changed their names from “fox hunters” to “fox chasers.”44 Things turned ugly. Fur harvesters took fox pelts not just with steel traps but by den digging, by shooting foxes running in front of hounds, or by luring them up with predator calls. A West Virginia hunter caught a man digging a den for fox cubs, gave him a thorough beating, then told him “he was going to do it again every time he saw him, and would make a point to see him as often as he could.” Trappers sometimes retaliated against hunters by how and where they set their traps. In 1932 Chase editor Sam Wooldridge strongly attacked current plans to extend the Kentucky trapping season. In exchange for the extension, trappers also supported a rule change requiring owners’ names on all traps, but Wooldridge, arguably the best-​​known hilltopper in the United States, remained bitterly opposed. He detested trappers, whom he regarded as money-​​grubbing outlaws. Kentucky already had 192  

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some of the most stringent trapping regulations in the nation, requiring a state license, written owner permission, and placement of traps in a hole or a hollow log, but the vast majority of Kentucky trappers paid little attention to these matters and trapped as they pleased. In fact, one of them had just set out a dense array of traps within a few hundred yards of Wooldridge’s kennel and caught several of his hounds—and this not by accident, in the editor’s opinion. Thirty-​​five years later, during another fur boom, Albert Burnette, president of the North Carolina Foxhunters Association, circulated a petition in Hayward County asking that leg-​​hold steel traps be banned. Trappers far outnumbered foxhunters in Hayward County as everywhere else, and soon the debate heated up in the local newspaper, most of it on the front page. One morning Burnette visited his mailbox on the county road to find a very dead fox crammed inside, its foot almost severed by a steel trap. And soon afterward a close friend’s foxhound came in bleeding at the mouth, its tongue cut off at the root. Someone had done worse than shooting it, destroying the very essence of the foxhound, rendering it mute and useless in the chase.45 During 1976, the year Albert Burnette found the dead fox in his mailbox, the price of fur climbed ever higher. Lyman Bennett of Ozark, Missouri, noted in that year, “When the price of fur pelts got up to $65 it activated every old rusty steel trap there was hanging in every smoke house in town. And out in the country, too—game to run our usual running grounds has evaporated.” Sometimes local hunters had a location or two to run where there was little trapping, but often they did not. In 1977 K. C. Bells of Palestine, Texas, reported traps everywhere and that trappers had “caught and sold everything from house cats on up.” They even caught one of his hunting buddies, C. L. Douhit, who had taken almost until daylight to extricate himself from an unusually large and tenacious steel trap. Douhit had gotten in a bad humor and would have been difficult to “skin out,” Bells surmised. Emmett Adams noted the official trapping statistics for Missouri in the 1975–1976 fur season: 497,138 pelts worth more than $4.6 million, including 9,310 gray foxes at an average value of $18.90 a pelt and 3,337 red foxes at average value of $29.50 a pelt. Prices rose drastically into 1977, however, and Lyman Bennett told that grays around Ozark then brought $30 and reds up to $80. He had never seen anything like it and felt more depressed than at any time in his life. Everybody was out in the woods trapping, from twelve-​​year-​​old boys to eighty-​​year-​​old patriarchs. Bennett had even met men walking with their wives in the woods—an incredible sight— the women having being brought along to help haul out carcasses. Early in C oyo tes, Deer , a nd Endgames  }   193

1979, Missouri fur prices mounted to record levels. Emmett Adams reported that he had recently talked to a young man who showed him a check for $820 for nine coons, seven gray foxes, one coyote, and one opossum. The grays had brought $40 each. Reds were illegal to trap in Missouri by 1979, and the young man claimed he had not caught any, but Adams did not believe him. There was no way a person could trap for gray foxes and not catch red foxes too, and the trapper could easily sell red-​​fox pelts in nearby Arkansas. Adams left the foxhunting sport later that same year, and the carnage in the woods (and his maimed hounds) were part of the reason. By 1980, editor George Slankard of Hunter’s Horn reported, “The high price of hides has brought every would-​​be hunter, trapper or game hog that can dig, tree, cut den trees, or jacklight, squall or call game. We don’t know how game populations survive,” and an ad six pages after Slankard’s editorial followed a common pattern in 1980. Wade Dutton of Hindsville, Arkansas, had given up: “For Sale, The Rest of My Pack, Walker Hounds,” Dutton advertised. “The steel traps have us covered up, so I am selling every dog I have.”46 Many hunters quit like Wade Dutton during the “endgames” period of running outside, the last decade of hilltopping outside of fenced hunting clubs, roughly between 1975 and 1985. Hunters often announced their retirements in the magazines at the same time that they placed their surviving hounds up for sale, as did Dutton. Hound men said they quit because of traps, deer, coyotes, highways, Posted signs, and social conflicts, but behind these things lay the most basic reason: too many dead dogs. Fox chasers had always endured a high rate of line-​​of-​​duty attrition for their valued foxhounds, but finally this reached intolerable levels. A few months before he announced his retirement from the sport late in 1979, Emmett Adams published a long list of dead and mangled hounds from his recent memory. The occasion was the death by car of his favorite fox-​​running beagle, Happy Jack, who “could jump and run a fox as quickly and steadily as any foxhound.” Adams admitted that he had loved Happy Jack and felt awful about his death on the highway. Even short-​​running beagles were no longer safe around Forsythe, Missouri, it seemed. Then, in a very bad mood, Adams called the names of five of his hounds recently killed by cars, eight by wire fence, two trapped, two poisoned, and four that just disappeared, twenty-​​ one in all.47 Another sort of confessional article also appeared in the magazines, however—announcements by previous quitters who could not stand it and had gotten back in the chase. Rev. Vern Cannon of Norman, Arkansas, told a typical story of the early 1980s. Cannon had had numerous hounds stolen, 194  

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run over, or gone missing in action. He grew tired of hound tragedies, tired of the trouble of taking care of them, tired of being told that “it looks bad for a preacher to fox or wolf hunt,” and finally he became so disgusted that he gave his hounds away to a friend, sold his dog trailer, and quit. Then, however, as he reported, “I have never been so restless in my life.” A few months after quitting, he had finished preaching in a rural church one morning, with another man taking the pulpit, “when out of the east came two of the better-​​mouthed hounds of our time, ‘Tell Mr. Coyote he had better get it in gear.’ ” The cry of the wild Walker rang more insistently than the Word of God, and Rev. Cannon gazed pointedly across the church at a known hunter, but the old man silently shook his head that the bugle-​​mouthed hounds were not his. After the service ended, Cannon began a search to find out whose hounds they were and ended up back in business, his dog pen full of foxhounds, some of which came from Hinkel Shillings of Shelby County, Texas, who had claimed to be quitting over wolf poison put out at Bone Hill twenty years before. Rev. Cannon had considered his critics and the theologies of Christianity and of foxhunting and had concluded: “I love the sound of a good race, and I can’t find any fault in it. So, if it’s wrong to do this, then I’m wrong.”48 Many hound-​​dog men did quit for good during the last decade of running outside, but the ones that did not quit, or the ones like Vern Cannon, who reentered the sport, practiced various strategies to cope with modern circumstances. Foxhunting in both its fox and its “wolf ” variants changed and evolved at the end in desperate attempts to adjust and survive, and—for a time, at many places—it succeeded to some degree. Hunters’ strategies often separated along the lines of the game species pursued, coyote, gray fox, or red fox. In coyote country, or in the many places that had become coyote country after the coyote came east, hunters took advantage of increased restrictions on the use of poison and cyanide guns to persuade ranchers to allow them to fill the predator-​​control gap and try to thin coyote numbers with the sporting chase. Landowners, especially the ones with smaller deer herds, sometimes went along with this, although in time they might become displeased with the low number of coyotes the hunters actually caught and displayed on their fences, or even grow suspicious about whether they tried to catch them at all. In order to be allowed continued access to running country, some local groups finally did develop true coyote-​​catching packs and even became reluctant gunmen. Around Waverly, Missouri, in 1984 and 1985, for example, Dick Christopher and his hunting friends killed eighty-​​three coyCoyo te s, Deer , a n d Endgames  }   195

otes between the months of December and February, “with the dogs catching and killing about one-​​third of these.” Christopher reported this coyote bloodbath without a qualm to Hunter’s Horn, but surely many readers of the magazine saw it as an odious violation of hunting tradition. Foxhunters had long disagreed on whether the game should die, but all of them rejected use of firearms. In their efforts to stay in the field, Christopher and his hunting buddies had evolved into “gun hunters,” a very bad thing for hound-​​dog men.49 Gray-​​fox and red-​​fox hunters went in a different direction from coyote hunters during the last years of running outside. They restricted their hunting to certain areas and tried even harder not to catch the fox. Rural people had long regarded the fox as a chicken-​​catching vermin, or, as one angry Missouri farm woman wrote the editor of Red Ranger, “a predator little better than a wolf.”50 The hunters’ public relations campaign that the fox is the farmer’s friend never entirely convinced American small farmers, but after the farmers left the land and had been replaced by recreational country-​​dwellers and commuters from the city, the fox gained an improved reputation. The new countrymen agreed with the fox chasers’ view of the fox; they thought both species were beautiful, loved to see them cross the roads, liked to have them around, and did not want any of them harmed. Sensitive to these changes in public opinion (and especially so in multi-​​ use areas like national and state forests), foxhunters altered what they did to oblige. They pursued foxes so as to reduce the dangers to both foxes and foxhounds. Eastern hunters, most of them, had preferred to run red foxes, but now some had second thoughts. As an endgame strategy, a good many hunters now began to breed slower, more noisy, track-​​running, thicket-​​ busting American foxhounds specialized to run grays, and dogs less likely to catch the fox. Gray foxes, especially in heavy cover, ran tighter races that with a little luck remained entirely in safe areas, away from such latter-​​day hazards as roads, trappers, or hunting clubs. Grays did not like open pastures or county roads, and they often preferred to twist and turn in creek bottoms, briar patches, and thickets around two or three hundred acres for a few hours before going up a tree. Even with modern dangers all around beyond the boundary fences, a local hunting group might launch a gray-​​fox race in the middle of a several-​​hundred-​​acre private property with a reasonable expectation that it would begin and end inside the fences. Hunters sought out grays by their choice of casting sites and sometimes by close knowledge of where individual foxes had their territories, but the strategy remained inexact. Red foxes, coyotes, or deer might always jump up to lead a person’s 196  

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trained gray-​​fox pack far away. By around 1980, however, certain hunters actively bred for hounds that were very disinclined to do that—for gray-​​fox packs that mixed American foxhounds with coon hounds—black-​​and-​​tans, blueticks, redbones, or treeing Walkers—or even with beagles. Beagles were rabbit dogs, but many ran the slower gray foxes very well, often pursuing them through briars and thickets better than full-​​size hounds. Hunters also adjusted to modern circumstances by making greater efforts at fox management, but with grays this usually only meant putting out food at traditional hunting sites. Grays ate chicken heads and feet discarded by the local poultry-​​processing plant, spoiled fruits and vegetables from the nearby wholesaler, and a great many other things, including in one instance stale jelly rolls. Grays rather easily became accustomed to hanging out in certain areas awaiting their periodic baits of food—areas where fox chases seemed least likely to result in dead hounds. Some hunters even set up automatic barrel feeders that dropped a certain amount of food at timed intervals for their pet gray foxes—feeders filled with Purina Fox Chow instead of deer corn. Fed foxes sometimes became semi-​​tame, although hunters claimed they ran from dogs as well or better than completely wild foxes. Chicken parts in particular provided high-​​energy fox food, and one hunting group that fed chicken heads reported that its pampered foxes often circled back close to the casting (and feeding) site during races looking for pick-​​me-​​ up tidbits.51 Other hunters, refusing to abandon the red-​​fox chase, took fox management to much greater extremes. They adapted to dangerous modern circumstances by purchasing out-​​of-​​state foxes and raising these semi-​​domesticated red foxes close to their foxhounds and often running right from their dog pens. An air almost of desperation hung over these endeavors, as the wild, free, nocturnal fox chase, classic hilltopping, became more and more difficult. One snowy Kentucky day when the temperature dipped to 17 below, Trigg breeder and fox fancier Hubert Shipley drove out to check on his red foxes, most of them planted. “I made several hours of surveillance of the fox population in my little Luv truck while the snow was on the ground and found several crossings that red foxes had made,” Shipley noted. “It was interesting to find that one fox had seemed to check out the kennels at the park.” Even hunters who had decided they no longer could take the risk of running local red foxes might try to find them a good home. Foxhunting friends from North Carolina came to visit the Tedler family in Grayson County, Virginia, bringing with them seven small red foxes for the Tedlers to raise and release. The North Carolinians had reluctantly converted to the Coyote s, De er , a nd End games  }   197

gray-​​fox chase. Bobbie Tedler explained, “They said they would rather run the gray foxes where they live than the red. The red foxes run on the highways a lot and are subject to getting dogs killed.” Tedler’s father and brother fed and housed the young red foxes until they were about five months old, then released them on the farm. One fox began coming up to the house to play with Bobbie’s five young foxhound puppies. They took turns chasing each other for a few weeks, but in the end the fox and dogs figured out what they were supposed to do and launched a proper fox race.52 Hunters had purchased, raised, and released red foxes since the origins of the American foxhound during the mid-​​nineteenth century (Larry Birdsong once had brought back a wagonload of young foxes for his Georgia running country), but now they became even more attentive. Hunters who believed they had inadequate red-​​fox populations in the places they hunted often purchased a few young reds each year from den diggers in fox-​​rich states such as Iowa, Minnesota, and North Dakota, or else they bought them from northern fur farms. Fox raisers kept red foxes primarily for one of their three coat-​​color variants, the so-​​called “silver fox.” “Cross foxes” (brownish-​​ red with a dark pattern across the shoulders and down the spine) and the common red fox had much less valuable pelts, and fur breeders often sold them south to freedom. In northern climes, all three color variants might show up in a single litter of red foxes, but this almost never happened in the principal foxhunting states, where the red foxes were red. For more than half a century, a large number of foxhunters—perhaps even thousands of them—purchased five to ten young foxes for local release, put them out near some natural den sites (or else dug dens for them), fed them for weeks and months, then ran them with their hounds. The early “pet” status of such foxes (and their not inconsiderable cost) strongly inclined hunters not to catch them, and fox-​​chaser attitudes predominated. As the young foxes grew nearly to adult size, hunters rather commonly took pains to run them several times with nearly harmless adolescent foxhounds, so both foxes and dogs would become accustomed to the chase. The pups would be trained, and the foxes rendered nearly uncatchable.53 The procedures of Ohio hunter George Rambo typified the minimal fox management of many other men. Rambo bought six to ten fox pups a year, usually from Minnesota, usually in May. He never penned them up, but put them out immediately in the vicinity of an existing den, such as an old sawmill debris pile or an unused groundhog hole. He made certain to put out plenty of feed close to the den, such as cracklings, food scraps, and chicken parts, so that the young foxes would stay around for at least two or three 198  

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critical days to become accustomed to the den. After that, they would not leave. Rambo fed two or three times a week for a couple of months, then once a week for the rest of the year. In late summer the blackberry season arrived to supplement the foxes’ cracklings and chicken-​​parts diet with high-​​ calorie vegetable fare, much beloved by foxes. He began running his foxes only in late October or early November, and he always knew where to find them. Running with dogs in no way alienated them from the home den with its associated food handouts. Rambo informed readers of Hunter’s Horn, “Keep the crackling feeding up, as you can always start a fox where the feeding is done just like turning to a den in May.”54 During the last few years of red-​​fox hunting outside of fenced hunting clubs, hunters intensified and elaborated their fox management practices, and the red fox sometimes became almost a semi-​​domesticated species. Certain pioneers had managed foxes for a long time. Beginning in 1923, fox importer J. F. Manning of Greensboro, North Carolina, brought in several hundred red foxes a year for three decades to distribute to his fellow hunters for planting. Manning developed a special fox den that was easy to build and included plans for the den with each batch of red foxes. Later, he cleverly devised a shipping crate for the young foxes that did double duty as their initial den. Manning’s directions were simple and invariably worked. Hunters carried their crate of six little foxes to a good location, immediately released four of the six and put out generous fox food inside and outside the crate. The loosed four always remained close to the food and their two fellows inside the den. After two weeks the fox manager cut a fox-​​sized hole in the wire of one side of the packing crate/den, covered one end of the crate with a small tarp as shelter, and began to feed only inside. All the foxes now came and went through the hole, as they wished.55 By the late 1970s, hunters had numerous deer and few safe places to run, and a good many hard-​​core red-​​fox men followed a variation of the Manning method. A common strategy was to kennel the hounds in a remote location on your own land, leased land, or the land of a friend—somewhere relatively safe to have a race—then to raise and release red foxes nearby. Young fox cubs might be purchased each year and raised and fed in a wire pen for several weeks, sometimes even in sight of the foxhound kennel. After that, holes might be cut in the wire of the pen or the gate left open, releasing the foxes to come and go, but feeding continued. Not surprisingly, hot red-​​fox chases normally began very close to the kennel door, somewhat precluding hounds’ trashing on deer or coyotes. Also, red foxes raised in such circumstances tended to run tighter and safer circles within their home territories, Coyot es, Deer , a nd Endgames  }   199

perhaps reluctant to get too far from the abundant chicken heads or Purina Fox Chow. Hunters had no great insight into what foxhounds and foxes thought about each other, but the pen-​​raising of red foxes led to some strange relationships. A Georgia hunter had raised two red-​​fox cubs in a pen adjacent to his puppy pen, which at the time had only one pup in it, a gyp called Snowball. Pup and cubs became very friendly, smelling back and forth through the fence. Clandestine fraternization continued after the two young foxes got their freedom, and the owner once saw Snowball eating from the same bowl of scraps with one of the foxes. Later, after the gyp was an adult, he was almost certain that Snowball had held back at the end of a race to allow one of her red-​​fox buddies to escape unharmed into a sawmill debris pile.56 Hunters reluctant to spend a lot of money on out-​​of-​​state foxes sometimes dug dens or trapped foxes in other local hunters’ running countries, then relocated them to their own, and from the 1920s on the injured parties sometimes complained to the magazines. In 1956, for example, Friendship, Arkansas, hunter James Fisher told about steel-​​trapping six young foxes in one week from the Ouachita River bottoms, keeping them around until their feet healed, feeding them on cracklings, then releasing them close to his home. If they happened to learn of it, Ouachita bottoms hunters probably regarded this fox abduction with displeasure. Steel traps invariably injured foxes, but by the late 1970s, a long-​​running ad of L. O. Miller of Price, Texas, offered fox men a humane alternative that nobody disagreed with. Foxhunters hated trappers, but Miller offered a different kind of trap for a different purpose. His ad showed a live chicken and a live coyote inside a large wire trap, noting: “I have a trap that the Mexicans in South Texas use to catch the sly coyote and fox. If you have fox on the highways and in town where you cannot run them, trap them and move them to your camp or hunting grounds. This ensures you of plenty game to run.” Coyote and fox were sly indeed, but many could not resist investigating the live chicken (safely enclosed in its own internal “bait” cage), and the idea of catching game from the many places where you did not dare to run and moving it to the few places where you did proved equally irresistible to hunters. L. O. Miller must have sold many of his expensive traps, since his ad ran in the magazines for years.57 As Miller’s ad implied, most hunters adapted to modern circumstances by drastically limiting the places where they hunted. That was the primary strategy of endgame times, the last few years of free-​​range fox and coyote chasing. If there was one casting site within driving distance of their homes 200  

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where they could be reasonably certain that their hounds would avoid deer and steel traps, get after approved game, and come back alive, they went there. This led to overcrowding, to what might be called “the Froglevel phenomenon,” with so many hunters and hounds piling into small areas that initially tolerant locals might have second thoughts about allowing hunters to continue to run on their properties. Arkansas hunter Fred Walker noted in 1984: “Most of our local hunting is in and around a little community called Froglevel. It is common to have forty to sixty dogs on any Friday night with good weather. The coyotes run most of the time, and deer are scarce, and for Arkansas that is rare.”58 Hunters took special care about their relationships with landowners at the rare “Froglevels” where they could still run their hounds. Carl Dupree of Angelina County, Texas, had a gentlemen’s agreement with the fur trappers of the Bellview community where he hunted. If a red or gray fox got in a steel trap and the trapper released it alive and informed Dupree, he took the man’s word and paid him the going price for the fox pelt. This not only saved foxes but kept Dupree in Bellview’s good graces. Before R. C. Wadley and his friends drove out to their usual casting grounds a few miles outside of Luray, Tennessee, in 1976, Wadley always made two crucial phone calls. One went to a rural widow who lived nearby, warning her that hunters would be out that night. Wadley cautioned the widow not to be alarmed by all the hounds baying and politely suggested that she might wish to move her own dog inside so the dangerous foxhounds would not bother him. The real reason, of course, was that the pet’s incessant barking often interfered with the hunt. As local hunters knew all too well, the widow’s potlicker would participate in the race as a babbler, no matter how tied up he was. Then Wadley placed an even more important call, asking another neighbor to please turn off his electric fence for the night, since “those things can make the best hound you’ve got quit a race if he gets the full voltage.”59 Many of the existing “Froglevels” required this sort of neighborly calling around before the hunt by the late 1970s—social contacts, friendly conversations, polite warnings and reminders, and in some cases, and in keeping with a rather long tradition, thinly veiled threats. Hunters’ rights had always been maintained with some application of social pressure, up to and including threats of stock shooting and arson, and such matters sometimes came to the fore during the last days of hunting outside. Nor were all the threats just empty words. H. I. Jenkins of Etterville, Missouri, reported in 1977: “Was it ‘poetic justice’ or what, that the day a man killed some hounds not far from me that his barn and most of his farmland burned that night? There C oyo te s, D eer , a nd Endgames  }   201

has been two or three other dog killings or near killings recently. Looks like a case for ‘Super Dog.’” Some hunters of the latter days waxed histrionic to the magazines, beating their breasts and vowing retaliations. In 1974 Richard Rochowiak of Wisconsin told readers of Hunter’s Horn that only a few local places were left to hunt and that hunters tended to congregate there in large numbers with far too many hounds. Latecomers, often driving in from jobs in town, wanted to throw their fresh dogs into a race several hours old, and some people resented that. Hunters needed to remember who their real enemy was, Rochowiak believed. Speaking for himself, he intended to cast his hounds three to five days a week to the last gasp. “So long as a wood patch remains standing, the chase will go on for me. Shoot my hound if you will and in a short time there will be five beneath your window bellowing their cry of the chase. Kill the five and I’ll bring a dozen!”60 Many local hunting groups, or remnant assemblages of local hunting groups, spent their last days of running foxhounds outside within national forests, state forests, government military reservations, or other public lands. Hunts might not be entirely contained within the government commons, but hunters could at least begin the race in such public areas, well away from landowners’ fence lines. In 1984, for example, the Southeastern Kentucky Fox Hunters Association held its hunts and field trials in a fortunate running country centered on their small private property and clubhouse in the midst of thousands of acres of public land between the Cumberland River and Lake Cumberland. At about the same time, hound-​​dog men from the Beaumont, Texas, area tried much the same thing within the Angelina National Forest of southeast Texas. The Texas hunters leased private land in the national forest and established the Vernon School Hunting Club, an organization named for a defunct rural school but dedicated to foxhunting, although game law officials by this point in the ongoing deerhound wars almost did not believe in such a thing and assumed that all foxhunters were really outlaw deer hunters in disguise. The Vernon School Hunting Club, led by the Bean family of Vidor, near Beaumont, built dog pens and brought in out-​​of-​​state red foxes for raising and release, and (if you can believe the game officials) began a program of intimidation to establish their authority across a wide swath of the national forest, the club’s de facto running country. They warned deer hunters not to shoot foxes, ordered some men out of their blinds, and felled trees across forest service roads to limit gun-​​hunter access to their part of the woods. Eventually all this swimming upstream against the waves of the future did not work, and the Vernon School Hunting Club disbanded, much to the relief of local game warden Billy Platt, who 202  

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summarized: “They just come up and tried to take that country. If somebody came into their territory, they’d whip ’em, threaten ’em—it was a bad situation. I’ve had more hell out of that than alligators did when the pond went dry.”61 The local hunting group studied by folklorist Mary Hufford in the New Jersey Pine Barrens at the very end of fox chasing outside seems to have maintained a much better relationship with government officials, mostly administrators of the Wharton and Lebanon state forests, where hunters customarily ran gray foxes. Hufford participated in hunts with the Pine Barrens men for several years during the mid-​​1980s and got to know them well. Hunters proved willing to talk to her about the inner game of what they did. Folklorists often study “stories” and the story-​​telling process among social groups, and Hufford had been drawn into her project by certain language of the foxhound men. The dogs, they said, told the story of each chase—if you knew how to listen to what they said. A hunter friend explained, “You sit there and you listen and you concentrate, and it’s developing a whole story.” After a chase is over, you can know everything that happened in it, and you can recount its story in human language to other hunters, and if the story is memorable enough, it may be passed down from hunter to hunter across the years. You were not out there running through the woods with the hounds to know exactly what happened in the storied chase, but, as the hunter told Hufford, “you were there in your mind.”62 To some degree Mary Hufford learned to be a real hilltopper, to go out there in her mind, and her book Chaseworld (1992)—although it has its own theoretical preoccupations, deriving from folklore and cultural anthropology—often gives a sense of the hilltoppers’ strange world seen from the inside. Hufford joined hounds and hilltoppers running wild and free at about the last moment to do so. Most local hunting groups had either quit or gone inside the fox pens by the time Hufford began accompanying the New Jersey hunters. In 1985 the Pine Barrens hunters chased gray foxes in daylight with packs of slow, extremely manageable foxhounds and followed them about the landscape in pickups linked by citizens band radios. The hilltoppers’ traditional campfire listening station had, in a sense, become a mobile pickup truck, and hunters might describe hunts by how many pickups had participated— might say, “We had a seven-​​truck chase.” With little doubt, hunters at other places where men still pursued foxes and coyotes with hounds after 1975 did much the same as the Pine Barrens men, as hilltopping passed through its ultimate “pickup-​​and-​​CB-​​radio” stage of development, the last before going Coyo tes, Deer , a n d Endgames  }   203

Texas hunters following the race by car stop to listen to the hounds, 1960s (Courtesy of F. E. Abernethy)

inside the fox pens. Pickups allowed hunters to have closer monitoring of the dangerous chase while remaining entirely on public roads, and the radios allowed them to split up but still remain in contact. Mobility, splitting up, and constant communication all brought increased control of the hunt and increased protection for hounds and the fox. The passive days of standing around the fire had gone, and hunters now followed the hunt by pickup, stopping to turn off their engines and listen from time to time, anticipating what would happen next, then driving on to stop and listen again. They directly participated in their chases almost as much as had Peter Beckford and his huntsman and whippers-​​in two centuries before. Mary Hufford’s interviews established that Pine Barrens hunters had not always hunted this way. Most of them were elderly men at the time of her participation in their hunts, and their fathers and grandfathers had often hunted foxes for pelts with hounds in the “Yankee” manner. The Yankee 204  

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fur hunter pursued the fox with a slow and noisy hound or two, and rather often with snow on the ground. The hunter started the fox, listened to the chase and made judgments about its direction and where the fox might pass as it circled back, then moved cross country to set up a shotgun ambush. If he misjudged on the fox’s first circle, he tried again on its second. Slow dogs often worked best, since they encouraged foxes, which did not wish to leave their territories and had little fear of the plodding hounds, to make short circles. By the childhood of the oldest hunters Mary Hufford knew, Pine Barrens foxhunting had evolved into a version of ordinary hilltopping, but still with a considerable emphasis on catching the fox. Pine Barrens foxes were mostly the slower grays, with a scattering of reds, so death of the fox sometimes proved hard to avoid. Hunters had the usual ambivalence about this, and over time they tended to intervene more and more to try to save the fox. An elderly man named John Earlin, dead before Hufford’s arrival on the scene, self-​​recorded a series of foxhunting stories during the 1970s in keeping with his own ideas about what should be put on tape, and catching or not catching the fox emerged as a major theme. In one instance, a tired fox came by Earlin just before the pack reached it, and acting on sudden impulse he picked it up to save it, only to be struck from behind, knocked down, and covered up by the pack of onrushing foxhounds. Even in their ultimate excitement, the hounds distinguished Earlin from fox, and not one tooth went into John as the fox perished. But he had come as close as any hunter could to experiencing the death of the fox.63 By 1985, however, all had changed, and the Pine Barrens hunters had gone completely “green” on the fox issue. They avoided injuring the fox by every means possible—usually by breaking off the hunt at the first road crossing after their refined hearing discerned a tiring quarry. New Jersey’s bounty on foxes had ended in the 1970s, steel trapping became illegal in the early 1980s, and the many recreational users of the state forests now liked nothing so much as the sight of a wild fox. Red or gray, foxes had been rehabilitated in the public mind, and the Pine Barrens hunters readily went along with this, even suggesting that foxes were deer hunters’ and hikers’ friends because they often killed and ate poisonous snakes (a dubious claim). Local hunters in 1985 built artificial dens for foxes, raised and released foxes, and foraged for fox food to put out, including stale produce, over-​​code jelly rolls, and even roadkills. If local foxes appeared mangy and despondent, sympathetic hunters spread used motor oil in certain places, assuming the foxes would get in it to heal themselves.64 C oyo tes, Deer , a n d End games  }   205

A typical Pines Barrens foxhunt of the 1980s began with group of pickups “road hunting” some part of the Wharton or Lebanon state forest, sometimes several miles apart. Foxes were few and hunters needed to spread out to find one. Men usually drove at walking speed down a forest road, their strike hounds ranging in front of the pickup, sniffing to find fresh fox scent. The younger dogs, and all dogs in any way uncertain on deer, remained in the dog cages. New Jersey, one of the most urbanized states in the country, might seem an unlikely place for a fox chase, but the Pine Barrens were different and had always been different. This area of lightly populated countryside in southern New Jersey was a crazy-​​quilt expanse of state and private land, including pastures, cranberry bogs, cedar swamps, hardwood swamps, small ponds, brush and briar patches, a good bit of commercial pitch-​​pine forest, and big areas of dwarf woods, where full-​​grown trees reached only a little higher than a man’s head. Humans had come and gone many times across the Pine Barrens, a place where the distant lights of New York City lit up the northeastern sky on moonless nights. The landscape remained scattered with abandoned cabins, old town sites, and derelict industrial sites of various sorts, including sawmills, charcoal kilns, glass and iron workings, quarries, and others. A maze of sandy roads twisted about everywhere across the countryside, and only foresters and foxhunters knew where they all went. Deer hunters and other casual users of the area often became lost. The wild Pine Barrens even had a legendary monster, though hunters’ hounds had never jumped it—the “Jersey Devil,” a pointy-​​eared, demonic, winged creature of evil disposition, reputed to move around only on especially dark nights. Hunters drove slowly while their strike hounds searched the road for fox scent some way ahead. When a man came to a crossroad, or turned off on a side track, he honked his horn so hounds out of sight of his pickup knew of his change of direction and got with him. Hounds had been trained to orient themselves to the pickup and to come to its horn, which hunters often customized to make a sound unique to their specific pickup. Hounds in general related to the pickup almost as if it was an “alpha hound,” identifying it by sight from long distances away and harking to its special horn. As the hunter drove slowly along, he listened all the time to the snap and pop of his CB radio, and at some point the call came in that someone—Yellow Bird, or Green Fox, or Brown Jug (the hunters all had CB names, usually based on the color of their pickups)—had struck a fox in such-​​and-​​such a location, perhaps even miles away. At that point the chase was on, beginning with 206  

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a road race. The hunter honked his horn repeatedly to summon his start hounds, flung them into the dog cage (or they self-​​loaded), then roared away on the sandy roads to join the other hunters, who were all doing the same. Hard driving on sandy roads had added a flavor of danger to the hilltop fox chase, and just as equestrian hunters sometimes fell off their horses at jumps, pickup hunters sometimes crashed on curves. Green Fox, otherwise known as Donald Pomeroy, died in a Pine Barrens auto accident during Mary Hufford’s research. His funeral had been held at an old graveyard in Lebanon State Forest, with his pickup and cage of foxhounds in attendance. Like Pomeroy, many dead hounds also lay in marked graves in the state forests. Arriving at the location where the fox had been struck, men cut off their pickup motors and stood around listening intently like classic hilltoppers around their campfire, interpreting the race. They strained to determine its direction, whether hounds cold-​​trailed or ran the fox, the sort of country the chase moved through, and the likely nature of the fox. Not only could hunters distinguish a red from a gray by the sound of the chase, but they knew individual foxes by location and by how and where they ran. All these thoughts raced through their minds as they stood listening, and then they jumped in their pickups and rushed to loose hounds into the race at some strategic point on a road, which might not be the same point on the same road. This was their first major play in the day’s fox game. Hunters competed with each other to make the most accurate interpretation of the chase and to see the fox and hounds cross roads, and they also competed in what they called “dogmanship,” in how well they handled their hounds and how well the hounds obeyed their commands. The hunters did not use Walkers in the chase—in fact, they did not even use pure American foxhounds. Having the same deer problem as Benjamin Hardaway, and not wishing to own dogs that were fast enough to easily catch the slower gray fox, Pine Barrens hunters had converted to another sort of dog, which they called the “Maryland Hound”—a manageable, intelligent, track-​​running variant of a regional strain of English foxhound often known as the Penn-​​Marydel from the three states where it had its origin—Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware. It was nothing more than the old Pennsylvania or Eastern Shore gray-​​ fox hound in modern guise. It had long floppy ears and in general looked more coon-​​dog-​​like than an American foxhound, it bayed loudly and ran relatively slowly, it came to call, and it often could be persuaded not to chase “the antlered menace.” Although they remained in constant contact on their CBs, hunters now moved around the countryside individually and positioned themselves to lisC oyo tes, D eer , a nd Endgames  }   207

ten in terms of their own judgments about the chase, and although no man’s hounds ran much to the fore anymore, competition had not died. After a time a triumphant cry would come over all the hunters’ radios, “Tallyho!” The first hunter had correctly positioned himself for a crossing and had seen fox and hounds cross a road. Then, for two or three hours, the game continued across the complicated Pine Barrens countryside, a sort of multidimensional chess match among fox, dogs, and men, all moving around in space and trying to anticipate each other. The fox drove the action, and men projected themselves into the mind of the fox to try to determine—considering its position in the landscape and its array of options and strategies at any given moment—what it would do next. The fox circled and circled, playing its usual tricks: backtracking, running briefly on hard-​​surfaced roads, jumping from log to log across a hardwood swamp, running in a sandy creek, breaking its scent trail and hiding to let hounds overrun it, and all the rest. Besides the time-​​gaining tricks, the small fox also periodically took hounds on a tour through briars and thickets that gained it more time by slowing down the larger dogs. Hunters remained in constant contact, although usually apart, and alternated suspenseful listening to the chase with rushing around in their pickups to position themselves to try to see it cross the road. Sometimes they made the same guess and congregated for a time to see if the chase went by where they were, then made other judgments and moved away somewhere else. At the end of the day the hunter with the greatest number of “crossings” won, although no prizes were given and victory remained informal. Finally, tightening fox circles or an increase in doubling back warned hunters that the gray fox was tired and had had enough. Hunters moved in for a last extreme exercise in dog control. Conferring on their radios, they agreed to meet at a certain anticipated road crossing to catch the dogs off. On location, the fox seen to cross, hounds heard coming, hunters rushed in to break off the hounds—whooping, snapping whips, some men honking car horns. Hounds reluctantly obeyed, the scent of the failing fox still strong in their noses, allowing themselves to be stopped and caught. They did not behave like Walkers. Every man grabbed whatever hounds came to hand first and threw them in his dog cage, to be sorted out later.65 Then hunters drove home, back to what Mary Hufford called “the Ordinary,” the everyday world that most men lived and died in, but that these men inhabited only part of the time. Part of the time they lived in a magic “Chaseworld,” where men took the names of animals, animals took those of men, and men projected themselves into animals in the chase. 208  

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Fox chasers (and the photographer) guess right about the direction of the race and see a “crossing”—the fox and hounds crossing a road (Courtesy of F. E. Abernethy)

The Ordinary soon triumphed, even in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, where by around 1990 the wild, pickup-​​racing foxhunters soon joined the Jersey Devil as one of the obsolete mythic traditions of the place, their only monuments the hound graveyards near certain sandy crossroads in the state forests. Foxhunters elsewhere reluctantly had been moving into the fenced hunting clubs that they unfortunately had named “fox pens,” at least since 1983, when the first ad for a pen appeared in Hunter’s Horn. Hunters still trying to run outside on public lands finally gave up under the onslaught of old enemies and new—deer hunters that shot hounds and put out poison in the woods and animal-​​rights activists that brought lawsuits against dog-​​ hunters’ use of the multi-​​use public lands. Every man could give a litany of reasons for why he quit, including deer, deer-​​hunting clubs, game seasons in which no dog could legally run, poison, traps, systematic harassment and/ or outright persecution (most hound men believed) by state game and fish Coyot es, Deer , a nd End games  }   209

departments, social conflicts with newcomers to the countryside, highways, and dead hounds. Especially dead hounds. In a confessional note of 1977, H. I. Jenkins described how he felt about the last problem. He wrote lightly but in the words of a man about to quit the game. I ain’t chicken, I just got hen house ways in that I chickened out going hunting this past Thursday night. After losing the three dogs to the highway and slowly recovering from the jolt of losing Al W. Hays, I couldn’t bring myself to the point of casting my hounds or hauling any away to hunt. I will probably build up my nerve time my days off roll around but I’ll be a nervous wreck until they all show up.66

North Carolina hunter V. O. Sine lost eight hounds to automobiles during 1956, and early in 1957 he wrote Chase speculating about the future of hilltopping. He did not believe it could go on much longer in the traditional way. Many parts of the United States had become too thickly settled with too many roads to safely run foxes, Sine believed, and foxhunters were having to drive greater and greater distances to do so. He predicted a new sort of foxhunting club, and he owned a 400-​​acre property at Anderson Mountain about thirty miles from Charlotte, North Carolina, that might serve as a test case. He told the readers of Chase that he was considering putting a fox-​​proof fence around the property, cutting observation lanes through the second-​​growth timber and underbrush, generously stocking it with red foxes, and renting it out to hunters with packs of young hounds or stud dogs too valuable to lose. He might establish this Anderson Mountain facility himself, but at other places groups of hunters could join together to buy or lease land for such a hunting club, then recoup their costs through rental fees. One hunter in residence could easily run such an operation. Simple clubhouses and perhaps playgrounds could be built, so that wives and families might join in. Tickets might be sold to spectators who wanted to watch the daytime fox races. Stud dogs could be kept on the premises and their semen harvested, frozen, and shipped all over. Recordings of great fox races could be made and sold, and “movies could also be made of the races.”67 Many hilltoppers may have shuddered or laughed when they read this in 1957, but, except for the stud-​​dog semen, spectators, and fox-​​race movies, V. O. Sine of North Carolina had everything right about the future of hilltopping in the United States. It just took another thirty years to get there. In November of 1983, the first ad for a fenced fox-​​hunting club appeared in Hunter’s Horn, an ad from Willard, Kentucky, not far from where the 210  

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Walker brothers had made the Walker hound. The ad read: “Fox Hill. A foxhunters’ paradise. 800 fenced acres of beautiful land stocked with red fox just waiting for a chase. You will have the most exciting chase you have ever seen or heard. You can see your dog and the fox 75 percent of the time. No way to lose your dog. No fear of traps or deer. Guaranteed fox race. Call now for your appointment for fox race or your field trials.” Seventeen pages later another ad appeared, this time from Kossuth, Mississippi. “Foxcliff. Safe, pleasant hunting. Excellent running terrain. See and hear the entire race from the highest point in Alcorn County. Plenty of red fox. No traps. No lost dogs. No dogs run over. 250 fenced acres for your enjoyment. Scheduled opening date, October 1, 1983.”68 After that, more and more similar ads appeared in the pages of Hunter’s Horn, Chase, and (until it ceased publishing) Red Ranger, as American hilltoppers gave up and moved into the pens. Some regarded them as the salvation of the sport and a God-​​given alternative to murdered hounds, social trouble, and the horrors of running outside. Others saw them as the death of the soul of hilltopping, a mystic ritual in which listening hunters had projected themselves into the bodies of hounds and foxes running in the dark. Hunters felt reluctant to criticize the fox pens, as they came to be called, even the ones that chose to quit hunting. N. S. Hodges of Louisiana wrote, “There are several fox pens in this area, and I have mixed emotions about them. For people without deer proof hounds they are a blessing, turn them loose and let them run until they get enough. I know it is my imagination, but it just doesn’t sound as good to me where the fox and the hounds are penned as a race in wild where a hound has to work and prove its mettle.” Likewise, Curley Trettler, an old-​​time hunter from Shelbyville, Indiana, mentioned a six-​​hundred-​​acre pen in his vicinity, and while he recognized that hunters would have to run in such places or quit, he did not like it: “Fox dogs used to have to know how to jump and run a fox in the wild, but now all they have to know is how to follow the other dogs and bark. It is like running a tomcat in the back yard. I am 84 years old and set in my ways.”69 Some who felt like Trettler hunted on the outside for a few years more. Every man ran his hounds until he could not stand the anxieties of running them, and the heartbreak of burying them, anymore. Then he quit or he began to hunt in the fox pens: those were the two choices, and for most both were unpleasant—even intolerable. Wiley Prewitt’s Mississippi interviewees had not been willing to quit, and so all had taken their hunting behind fences into private clubs, finally aligning themselves with the rising tide of rural private-​​property rights. Not being able to beat the private hunting Coyot es, Deer , a n d End games  }   211

clubs, hound men had joined them. One pen hunter told Prewitt: “It’s got its good and bad points in a fox pen, but it’s all we got, you know. And it’s either this, or our sport’s gone, you know. And we don’t want it to go.” Another said: “It’s nothing perfect, it’s the best we got. If I had the choice, I’d run outside. You know, if wasn’t any problem, I’d run outside to where you could just run fox.” However, Lauren Matthers spoke for all when he added: “That old kind of hunting like we had back then, that’s just yesterday, that’s gone. It ain’t coming back.”70

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There’s something that happens to a man inside when he hears his dog bark. —J. R. Cockrell , 1992

“

E pi l o g u e



H

Thought Foxes

umans do a great many things with animals,” British anthropologist James Howe observed. They “put them in cages, squeeze milk from them, ride on their backs, harness them to plows, castrate them, gather their droppings, put them in mines to smell out gas, teach them to speak or point their feet at hidden birds, put sweaters or armor on them, arrange affairs and unions for them, and of course kill and eat them.”1 But what were hilltoppers doing with foxes and coyotes? Certainly they chased them with their hounds, but to what purpose? Hilltoppers did not adequately explain themselves, although they penned millions of words for Hunter’s Horn, Chase, and Red Ranger. Oscar Wilde is the source of the definition of foxhunting as “the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable,” but the first noun seems best changed to “inscrutable.” Much of what hilltoppers said about why they did as they did amounted to nothing more than a verbal throwing up of hands. In 1974 hound man Richard Rochowiak of Wisconsin typically observed that the only ones who could appreciate and understand the fox chase were “those blessed with an inborn trait. It is impossible to tell or attempt to explain the chase to someone who does not have this given quality! This is a contributing factor to our problems because, to most, our sport makes but little sense.” Fox chasers simply wrote the magazines and told what they did and how they felt, assuming a readership blessed with an inborn trait to understand them. Some of their brief communications became stranger the longer one considered 213

them. L. H. Hudson, for example, told about a fox chase he had listened to from a rented room in Tazeville, Virginia, back in 1945. Hudson worked in a mine at Bishop, Virginia, and had caught a bus to Tazeville and checked into a cheap hotel on his Saturday night off. Back to his room sometime after ten in the evening, he recounted: “Before I could get in bed I heard hounds running, and I raised a window and sat on the floor by the window and listened at one of the best fox chases I ever runned in my life. They never got out of hearing. I sat there from 11 pm until 3 am. There must have been at least 20 hounds. That was the best weekend I spent the two years I worked at Bishop mines.” Ordinary people, the ones who lacked the inborn trait, surely would not understand how L. H. Hudson could spend four hours of his precious Saturday night listening to dogs bark, or why he called this “one of the best chases I ever runned in my life.” It seems that, in a way, Hudson had not been in his rented room at all. Like Mary Hufford’s hunter, he had been out there in the woods in his mind.2 The British hunt-​​club foxhunting that anthropologist James Lowe wrote about in his essay “Fox Hunting as Ritual,” is in many ways more understandable than American hilltopping, which—as we have seen—obscurely developed from the older equestrian practice during the mid-​​nineteenth century. British foxhunting made obvious social and psychological sense. Hunters swept across the landscape on horseback in broad light of day, wearing boots, hard hats, and colorful coats of black and red, jumping dangerous obstacles as they followed the chase. They practiced an equestrian thrill sport, one only peripherally focused on fox and hounds. The rider-​​ steed relationship dominated the action, permeated on the human side of things with a mixture of fear and excitement. Horses were one of those animals that men rode on the backs of, but horses rather often threw men off or fell on them and sometimes did both. Risking life and limb, with flash and dash and huntsman’s horns, British hunters made a brave show across the countryside. Lowe took as his point of departure a famous 1960 paper by Edmund Leach, who described British equestrian foxhunting as “a barbarous ritual surrounded by extraordinary and fantastic taboos.” Howe criticized Leach but mostly agreed with him, believing that British hunt-​​club foxhunting did indeed function to reaffirm the traditional rural social order.3 European equestrian hunting had arisen as an upper-​​class sport and expression of social power. Over time, such hunting developed elaborate rituals to socially amplify it, including special riding attire, hunting languages, elaborate horn calls, and all the rest. It was a public spectacle of sorts, in214  

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tended to overawe the underclasses. For centuries, the two noble animals of the chase had been the wild boar and the red deer. First the boar and then the red deer disappeared from England because of forest clearing and over-​​ hunting, leaving only the speedy red fox—upgraded from vermin status— as a substitute game animal for prolonged pursuit on horseback. In Howe’s opinion, foxhunting in its heyday in eighteenth- and nineteenth-​​century Britain was a countryside ritual that “conceded legitimacy to the social hierarchy,” one of various “conventional signs of assent” that rural social relationships between nobility, landed gentry, yeomanry, and agricultural renters remained strong and good. Even rich townsmen, with their new money, could be worked into the game.4 British foxhunting might seem trivial to some nonparticipants, as Peter Beckford noted, but it made important statements about social realities; it was a form of what anthropologist Clifford Geertz termed “deep play.” Geertz analyzed the social function of the deep play of cockfighting in Balinese society and concluded that this informal (and often illegal) national sport was anything but trivial. He concluded that cockfighting was a “cultural text” that conveyed “stories”—deep, important stories that the human participants in the collective cultural activity told themselves about themselves in the process of play. “As much of America surfaces in a ball park, on a race track, or around a poker table, much of Bali surfaces in a cock ring,” he wrote. The cockfight is “a combination emotional explosion, status war, and philosophical drama of central significance to the society. . . . Its function, if you want to call it that, is interpretive: it is a reading of Balinese experience, a story they tell themselves about themselves” (emphasis in original).5 In Geertz’s judgment, cockfights functioned to remind the Balinese of the importance of status relationships in Balinese society, and that such things were matters of life and death. Looked at as a form of deep play, the British equestrian foxhunt also made important statements, asserting by its flamboyant run across the countryside that rural society had rank and order, with the elite classes firmly in the saddle and in command, that the various ranks cooperated in the ritualized foxhunt, and that British power dominated nature, man, and territory. Nineteenth-​​century British foxhunting had a wild exuberance. It expressed the importance of the British upper class at the height of that class’s power and control across the globe. From Geertz’s point of view, playing its deep game told them this good news about themselves. You might even say that foxhunting reminded Englishmen of empire. In America, George Washington’s eighteenth-​​century equestrian fox purEpilogue : Though t Fo xes  }   215

suits across his Mount Vernon running country also expressed elite status and rightful dominance over men and territory, but somehow, between the time of Washington and the Civil War, another kind of fox chasing developed in the United States. Hilltopping emerged from two historical roots— the elite equestrian sport, as practiced in America, and the frontier custom of varmint hunting with dogs at night—but its inner game—its deep play, in Geertz’s terms—went in its own direction. If hilltopping was a reading of American experience, “a story they tell themselves about themselves,” then it told a far stranger story than British foxhunting did. It may be that American hilltoppers did such a poor job of explaining themselves not because they had no speculations but because they did not care to express them in print. They only hinted, as did Mason Houghland in 1933, who described hilltopping as “not merely a sport—it is a racial faith that harks back to the clear and simple outlook of our tribal gods,” and as did Bob Lee Maddux in 1956, who spoke of strange emotions aroused by the sound of hound voices riding on the wind and of a sense of “something lost and never to be found.”6 What was the something lost? Maddux did not elaborate on this comment made in his 1956 eulogy for friend and mentor Woods Walker, son of Ed Walker, one of the four famous Walker brothers. In any case, certain general observations can be made about hilltopping—generalizations that must be taken into account in any attempt to interpret it, anthropological or otherwise. These summary statements derive from the reading of thousands of personal accounts from the magazines, but they remain speculative. Hilltoppers practiced their demanding sport in a zealous and committed way, almost as an obsession, often going out to hunt for several hours two or three times a week and at considerable cost to jobs, families, and personal finances. Kennel maintenance took a lot more time, especially if a hunter cooked his own dog food. Many saw their hounds and hunting buddies as many hours of the week as they saw their wives and children. Men hunted no other game as passionately as they hunted the inedible fox. They usually began doing this at a very early age, often in childhood. Hunters had many cross-​​generational relationships. Fox chasers themselves believed that there were some born foxhunters and that these born foxhunters naturally congregated. The true hunters realized their lifelong calling at first exposure to the chase. More may have been involved, but the born foxhunters seemed to have a greater acuity of hearing than normal individuals and perhaps also a heightened capacity to visualize the chase—to convert sound to sight. Their ability to identify with animals also may have been greater. 216  

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These hunters learned to use a specialized, esoteric language to communicate with each other about the chase. Outsiders often could not understand what they were saying, and that may have been part of its purpose, along with allowing a technical discussion of the hunt. Hilltopper language seems more an insider’s code than a public display, an amplification of the public hunt, as in the elite European tradition. As with the Eskimos and snow, words proliferated for important matters. Hilltoppers employed, for example, a great many words describing mouth, the voice of hounds in the hunt, and another array of specialized terms describing variations of a common event, the hounds’ loss of the scent trail of the fox (“check,” “loss,” “out,” “lose,” “miss,” “fault,” “blow-​​by,” “run-​​over,” “throw,” “trick,” “bother”). Hilltopping was egalitarian; the born foxhunters might be anybody, from any family, socioeconomic class, or occupation. The “brotherhood of blood and cause” might include anyone. Hunter behavior often emphasized this. People standing around the fire were dressed functionally and informally, with bank president and blue-​​collar worker looking much the same. Hunters ignored daytime status and interacted as equals during the chase. As Mary Hufford noted, the “Chaseworld” and the “Ordinary” were quite distinct social realities. Many people—probably most people—those who were not born hunters, did not understand hilltopping or hilltoppers and looked upon them with a mix of puzzlement, amusement, disdain, or outright contempt. Hilltopping tended to be a socially disapproved activity within the rural community, although mildly so. Most critics simply saw it as a waste of time. Hound-​​dog men knew all this and were to a degree defensive and secretive about their hard-​​to-​​explain activity. Perhaps partly because of the mild social disapproval, in any given rural community foxhunters remained relatively few in number. Some hilltoppers hunted in daylight, but the activity tended to be nocturnal and almost clandestine. Hunters did not go around announcing themselves. Because they could not determine the direction or extent of the chase, they often hunted on other people’s land in an exercise of traditional hunters’ rights for man, hound, and fox to cross private property. During their heyday, such customary use rights did not require the asking of permission from landowners. Fox chasing thus reasserted older frontier land-​​use practices in the daily wilderness of night. Hilltoppers usually competed for the lead with other man/hound units in their pursuit of the fox. What equestrian hunters termed a foxhunt American hilltoppers called a fox race. Two competitions were built into the Epilogue : Though t Foxes  }   217

hilltopper hunt—the competition between pack and fox to account for the fox by treeing, denning, or catching it, and the competition between hounds (and men) within the pack to take the lead in its pursuit. Hilltoppers strongly valued foxes at a time when most rural people regarded them as chicken-​​eating predators or potential carriers of hydrophobia. They assisted the local foxes in various ways and often practiced conservation and/or game management of the fox. Hunters profoundly disagreed among themselves about whether the death of the game should be the appropriate outcome of the fox chase ritual. Hilltoppers imaginatively projected themselves into both hounds and fox during the hunt, and often tried to anticipate the direction of the chase across the landscape by thinking like a fox. Hilltoppers identified with their hounds in keeping with Webster’s most extreme definition of the term, “to make oneself one with another or others.” In this case the others were animals—specifically, foxhounds. (And possibly, perhaps not so uncommonly, foxes.) Many lines of evidence point to this conclusion. As noted above, in the standard hilltopper fox race, competition went on not just between dog and dog but between contesting hunter/foxhound teams. Hunters rather often “whooped” at their hounds during the race to goad the dogs on and to increase their human participation in the hunt, and a few men went beyond that to run with their hounds, even at night. Many more wished they could join their packs. Hounds in a hunter’s pack had been carefully made—bred across several generations, with the hunter playing matchmaker, doting paterfamilias, and—should the need arise—righteous executioner. Hunters rather often named such hounds for themselves—sometimes with the possessive, as if it was a treasured chattel (“Sitton’s Best Boy”), sometimes as if it was a hound son or daughter (“Best Boy Sitton”). Some men felt slightly uncomfortable doing this and somewhat disguised the last name, as in the case of Hinkel Shillings’ champion stud dog “Mark S.” Stud dogs seemed more likely to be named for their owners than other hounds. Hunters often attributed human traits—virtues and vices—to their hounds, and some even went so far as to watch what they said around them, as if the hounds could understand their words and be offended by gross profanities. Owners often practiced the voices of their favorite hounds until they could imitate them, sometimes perfectly. They might imitate a living dog’s bay to other hunters when they talked about it or described one of its races, and they memorialized its voice in frequent repetitions after it had passed on. Outsiders observing foxhunters in action saw many signs of identifi218  

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Jack Stanly and Hinkel Shillings at the National Foxhound Hall of Fame Cemetery, Shelby County, Texas. The large granite monument on the left marks the grave of Shillings’ champion foxhound Mark S (Courtesy of Jack Stanly)

cation with personal hounds during the chase (foremost among them, of course, was rapt, intent listening), and Mary Hufford noted the same telltale pronoun-​​shift evidence as that illustrated by L. H. Hudson in his rented room. “I’m crossing Crawford’s Field,” a man might cry. To change a canine “he” or “she” to a human “I” was not a minor matter. Hunters profoundly valued certain hounds, and after their death from old age or their all-​​too-​​ common demise in the line of duty, the hunters treated them almost like close blood relatives. They held formal funerals for them and buried them in marked graves. Some speculated about meeting them in the afterlife. Hinkel Shillings, devout Christian and choirmaster at his rural church for half a century, perhaps had some faint reservations about the theology of these foxhound funerary practices, but two of his stud dogs received the grand treatment initiated by other hunters. Dawson Stride became his first hound interred with pomp and ceremony at the Foxhound Hall of Fame Cemetery in Shelby County, Texas, and later Dawson’s champion son Mark S followed him, taking a position on the other side of his father’s large granite monument. In each case there had been eulogies, speeches, horns sounded, flowers, and other formalities, including a prayer. All of this evidence of hunters identifying with their hounds may be conE pilogue : Though t Fo xes  }   219

strued as falling within conventional definitions of reality, but it is worth noting that rather often in their personal accounts hunters hinted at something more than that, at closer relationships between men and dogs. This evidence is an assemblage of small things that collectively present a noticeable pattern. For example, in one race Emmett Adams noted, “I was leaning way over trying to get my Little Bill, Ginger, or Gill up where Queen was,” and Ottis King of Groveton, Texas, reported an old hunters’ saying: “If you go to bed, your hounds will go to bed with you.” This was a saying, but King repeatedly witnessed the event. One man King often hunted with could never stay up all night, and invariably—every time this man quit his hunter’s duty of listening, lay down in his bedroll, and went to sleep—his hounds quit the race far away in the dark and came back to the fire.7 Hilltoppers seemed to form deeper relationships with some of their foxhounds than those of pet owners with their pets—relations of a different and more mysterious nature. Folklorist Mary Hufford observed hunters and hounds in action in free-​​world chases for several years, and she wrote: “Outside the foxchase, hunters and their hounds are separately quartered. Deep within it their identities converge. . . . Within the Chaseworld the self of the hunter is an expanded self that incorporates his hounds. Taking on his Chaseworld persona, a hunter projects himself into the foxchase via his hounds. The Chaseworld exists in an alternate space and time, described by hounds’ voices and experienced by hunters sharing the same flow of experience in inner time.”8 Such strong identifications in the chase created powerful bonds between the two species that hunted together, and evidence of this closeness often comes up in the personal accounts printed in Hunter’s Horn, Chase, and Red Ranger. For example, after Pennsylvania hunter J. Ripper’s stud hound Jimmie D went through the ice over a deep strip-​​mine pit and drowned, Ripper spent days trying to recover his body for proper burial. He rented three pumps and pumped continuously for more than forty-​​five hours, then called in a team of YMCA divers to recover the corpse from deep below the ice. What was Jimmie D to J. Ripper? And what was Pencil, the wonderful gyp dying of incurable leukemia that Kenneth Hager allowed to run herself to death in a fox chase, to Hager? He lost his interest in hunting after Pencil’s passing.9 The special relationship between man and hound—and the fox—formed in the hunt, and no one has written more suggestively about the possible meanings of the hunt than Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset. He argued that what he called “sportive hunting” was not a sadistic quest for dead animals, meat, or trophies but a return to nature in one of the authen220  

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Proud owners Mr. and Mrs. Thad Grace of Texarkana, Arkansas, with field trial winner Grace’s Sam (Courtesy of Hunter’s Horn)

tic ways—perhaps the only one—that humans can return to it: the hunt. Hunting offered man nothing less than a “vacation from the human condition,” and in a way was a religious act. “Man cannot re-​​enter nature except by temporarily rehabilitating that part of himself which is still an animal,” Ortega y Gasset asserted. “Strictly speaking, the essence of sportive hunting is not raising the animal to the level of man, but something much more spiritual than that; a conscious and almost religious humbling of man which limits his superiority and lowers him toward the animal.”10 Of a certainty, hilltopping involved intimate and unusual relationships between animals—man, hound, and fox—and if it was in any way religious, it had little to do with standard Judeo-​​Christian belief. A good many thoughtful hunters recognized that and avoided certain speculations in print about the nature of hilltopping because of it. Hilltopping had a “cult” aspect. In time, money, and emotional energy expended for no material gain, hilltopping resembled only one thing in the vanished rural world, and that was evangelical Protestantism. But hilltopping was not conventionally Christian. In his study of Southern hunting, anthropologist Stuart Marks argued that while in many preliterate societies people have identified with the wild aniE pilogue : Thought Fo xes  }   221

mals they hunted and “through their rituals celebrated the interrelatedness of life,” Christianity attacked these older attitudes as “animal idolatry.” It asserted a rigid distinction between the world of spirit, including man, and the world of nature, including all other animals, which was material grist for man’s mill.11 And it would have disapproved of men naming hounds as their animal sons and daughters and somehow, through “identification,” riding their consciousnesses into the wild chase like witches riding spirit familiars. Was the fox chase a powerful ritual for “rehabilitating that part of [man] that is still an animal,” a precious lost thing that could still partially be found? Viewed in this way, hilltopping seems a minor heresy of man and animal brotherhood and commingling, perhaps no more wicked than Saint Francis of Assisi’s failed doctrine of the animal soul or the way that many of us treat the animals we term “pets.” Hilltoppers appropriately committed their heresy in the dark night and silent groves, where conventional Christianity always had less power and authority, and out of sight of daytime authority. That a good many foxhunters were also preachers makes the matter even more poignant. And from the perspective of anthropologist Clifford Geertz, what kind of deep play was hilltopping, what cultural message did it assert, what story did playing its game tell hunters about themselves? Certainly it asserted the persistence of wilderness and wilderness ways, including the rights of hunters, hounds, and foxes to range far and wide across the countryside in the freedom of the chase. Against the rising tide of modernity, fences, and Posted signs, it asserted hunters’ rights, the free range, and the open woods, and the boisterous cry of the pack crossing private land carried a faintly implied threat. For the people who practiced it, hilltopping told that men are beasts as well as men; that men are natural hunters, akin to hounds; that hunters compete with other hunters for scarce resources; and that, in the rigor of this competition, men and hounds (and their remarkable quarry) share certain ultimate virtues of bravery, endurance, determination, honor, beauty, storytelling, and music.

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Notes

Chapter One 1. Maddux, “Towles T. Walker,” 18. 2. O. M. Johnson, quoted in Bryant, “More Honest Sellers Needed,” 32. 3. Page, “Foxhunters Vary from Rich to Poor,” 17. 4. Jordan, “Ten Good Reasons,” 25. 5. Jenkins, “Trigg Notes,” 19. 6. Hayden, “Calm Hunter,” 43. 7. Stephens, “Mississippi,” 6; Strickland, “They Say,” 48. 8. Palmer, “Buck,” 51. 9. Benbow, “Regarding Early Day Stock,” 14. 10. Dillard, “Always a Foxhunter,” 7. 11. “The Kennel Man,” 25. 12. Milam, “Through My Eyes,” 53. 13. Arnow, Hunter’s Horn, 86. 14. Williams, “Foxhunting in Arkansas,” 8. 15. Rawlins, “They Say,” 40; Schroder and Ellington, “At the End of the Race,” 19; Fooks and Fooks, “At the End of the Race,” 19; Whittington, “Best Races Ever at Ages 70 and 72,” 33; Sitton, Harder Than Hardscrabble, 226. 16. Graham, “A Wayne County Fox Hunter,” 72. 17. Arnow, Hunter’s Horn, 108. 18. Crockett, “Notes from Wayne County, West Virginia,” 65; Craft, “Gulf Coast Notes,” 42; Maddux, “History of the Walker Hound, Part Two,” 75; Mason Houghland, quoted in Mackay-​​Smith, The American Foxhound, 4; Hayden, “Calm Hunter,” 43. 19. F. E. Abernethy, personal communication to Thad Sitton, April 10, 2007.

223

20. Beckford, Thoughts on Hunting, 230; W. C. Boone, quoted in “The Kennel Man,” 25. 21. Abernethy, “Running the Fox,” 146–150; Marks, Southern Hunting in Black and White; Kantor, The Voice of Bugle Ann; Arnow, Hunter’s Horn. 22. Howe, “Fox Hunting as Ritual,” 278–300. 23. Mason Houghland, quoted in Mackay-​​Smith, The American Foxhound, 4. 24. Hufford, Chaseworld. 25. Ibid., 51. 26. Bryant, “Washington as a Fox Hunter,” 14–15. 27. Ables, “The Ecology of the Red Fox in North America,” 47. 28. Meek, “Raise Your Own Game to Run,” 39–40; Suddeth, “Running Imported Fox,” 6–7; Rambo, “Advice on Planting,” 20. 29. Smith, “Alabama River Fox Threatened by Dam,” 25; Thraves, “Protect the Fox and the Farmer, They Are Our Finest Sportsmen,” 11. 30. For explorations of the historical significance of customs of the free range, open woods, and hunters’ rights, see Hahn, “Hunting, Fishing, and Foraging”; McDonald and McWhiney, “The Antebellum Southern Herdsman.” 31. For an extended discussion of the Southern stock-​​raising tradition as practiced in the early twentieth century, see Thad Sitton, Backwoodsmen, 194–232. 32. Ibid., 233–273. Also see King, “The Closing of the Southern Free Range.” 33. Hull, “They Say,” 6. 34. Edwards, “J.R. Didn’t Make It Home,” 71. 35. Stephens, “In Running Condition,” 3. 36. Williamson, “The Story of Great Bolivar,” 28–29. 37. Hinkel Shillings interview, July 21, 1992; Aubrey Cole interview, July 9, 1992. 38. Anon., quoted in Adams, “Losses and Pickups,” 19. 39. Strahan, American Foxhunting, An Endangered Sport, 147.

Chapter Two

1. Longrigg, The History of Fox Hunting, 48. 2. Ibid., 24; Cummings, The Art of Medieval Hunting, 144. 3. Longrigg, The History of Fox Hunting, 61. 4. Ibid., 106. 5. Ibid., 74. 6. Ibid., 134. 7. Ibid., 100–101. 8. Ibid., 60. 9. Ibid., 79. 10. Beckford, Thoughts on Hunting. 11. Ibid., 56. 12. Ibid., 232. 13. Ibid., 235. 14. Mackay-​​Smith, The American Foxhound, 163.

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15. Ibid., 250–251; Sawyer, “The Origin and the History of the American Foxhound,” 20–31. 16. Cultural geographer Terry G. Jordan discussed the importance of the dog as a woodland survival tool in Jordan and Kaups, The American Backwoods Frontier, 121– 125, and in Jordan, Trails to Texas, 9–10, 118–144. Also see Sitton, Backwoodsmen, for discussion of the many uses of the dog in herding, hunting, and home defense, especially pp. 194–232. 17. Longrigg, The History of Fox Hunting, 169. 18. Mackay-​​Smith, The American Foxhound, 249–250. 19. Ibid., 14. 20. Ibid. 21. Robert Brook Taney, quoted in Mackay-​​Smith, The American Foxhound, 1–2. 22. F. G. Skinner, in ibid., 27. 23. Trapp and Hallberg, “Ecology of the Gray Fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus),” 164–178; Wooldridge, “Kennel Notes,” 5. 24. Stevens, “Crafty Import,” 21. 25. Henry, Red Fox, 21. 26. Ables, “The Ecology of the Red Fox in North America,” 216–236; Grzimek, Grzimek’s Animal Life Encyclopedia, 246; Powell, “Fox Fools Hound,” 9; Walker, Mammals of the World, 9. 27. Stout, “Crazy Like a Fox,” 34–35. 28. Bryant, “ ‘Foxy’ Foxes and Their Tricks,” 23. 29. Trigg, “The American Fox-​​Hound,” 73. 30. Bryant, “Color in Hounds, a Little History,” 22–23; Bryant, “Diary Reminders of Unusual Hunts,” 46–48. 31. Rostad, “The American Foxhound,” 54–73; Bryant, “Sugar Loaf Blood Has Colorful Past,” 14–16; Garrett, “Rambling Reminiscences,” 17. 32. Mackay-​​Smith, The American Foxhound, 20–36, 249–252; Longrigg, The History of Fox Hunting, 172–178. 33. Larry Birdsong in 1867 letter to Haiden C. Trigg, quoted in Bryant, “The Red Fox and His Way,” 22–33. 34. Mackay-​​Smith, The American Foxhound, 25. Also see Birdsong, “The Birdsong Dog,” 49–69. 35. Maddux, “History of the Walker Hound, Part One,” 62. 36. Maddux, “History of the Walker Hound, Part Two,” 65. 37. Maddux, “Old Time Walker Hounds,” 18–19, 22. 38. Maddux, “History of the Walker Hound, Part Two,” 66–68. 39. Walker and Huyler, “A Description of Some of the Walker Foxhounds,” 22. 40. Kilgo, “Hi Ball,” 6; Maxwell, “Old Raider Had Endurance,” 7; King, “The Old Line Walker Hound News,” 35–37; Adams, “The Plime Blank Truth,” 30–32; Ogden, “Mississippi,” 6. 41. Walker and Huyler, “A Description of Some of the Walker Foxhounds,” 17–21. 42. Sawyer, “The Origin and History of the American Foxhound,” 20–31; “Fifty Years with the National Woods Walker,” 2–4. 43. John Fox, Jr., “The First National,” 58–68.

Notes to Pa ges 3 4– 59  }   225



44. Ibid., 58. 45. Ibid., 66. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid., 68.

Chapter Three 1. Hays, “A Cold Weather Hunt,” 47–49. 2. Walker, “Notes on Hounds and Men,” 7. 3. King, “The Old Line Walker Hound News,” 13. 4. Shipley, “Trigg Notes,” 38; Smith, “Homecoming Ghosts,” 14; Hart, “Nostalgia,” 41. 5. Maddux, Hilltopping, 3. 6. Maddux, “A One Man Race,” 12. 7. Ibid., 13. 8. “Hounds and Hunting of Yesteryear,” 41. 9. Roquemore, “Old Timers’ Page,” 76; Bryant, “After 85 Years, Looking Back,” 33. 10. Aubrey Cole interview, July 9, 1992. 11. Sitton, Backwoodsmen, 134–136. 12. Cheek, “Around the Campfire,” 38–40. 13. Rucker, “The Sponge,” 27–28; Stradley, “The Baker’s Dozen Pack,” 68; Bush, “Old Texas Hounds Ate Snakes, Toads,” 41; Hinkel Shillings interview, July 21, 1992. 14. Hinkel Shillings interview, July 21, 1992. 15. Cochran, “Reminiscing with Nolan Cochran,” 51; Barlow, “At the End of the Trail,” 8; Everett, “The Front Cover,” 12. 16. Bennett, “The Ozarkian,” 19–20. 17. Humes, “Fox Hunting Has Changed,” 6, 21; Sprague, “Hunted with Glade Warrick,” 25. 18. Barnes, “Lou’s Last Race,” 5; White, “O. S. Carlton, Retired Insurance Executive, Dies at Hunting Lodge Famed for Southern Hospitality,” 2, 11; Lister, “Camp Rozzum and Its Hounds,” 66–68. 19. Stewart, “They Say,” 58. 20. Cheek, “Around the Campfire,” 42; Childers, “Trials of a Hunter’s Wife,” 24. 21. Worley, “Preacher’s Pen: The Last Hunt,” 48–50. 22. Jones, “Old Shine and White Flank,” 26–28. 23. Nardini, “The Hunting Horn,” 22. 24. Meriwether, “Trained Ears,” 5; Adams, “Doc and Three-​​Legged Steve,” 3–4; Adams, “The Plime Blank Truth,” 23–25. 25. Collier, “The Kinniconick Creek ‘Breeze,’ ” 58–59; Palmer, “Buck: The Foxhunter and His Infallible Ear,” 51; Perry, “At the End of the Race,” 6. 26. Stout, “Birthday Party,” 8–9. 27. Mundorf, “Blacksmith Shop Races,” 19. 28. Full, “Experience with Three Strains,” 20; Gray, “The July Notes,” 32–33.

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{  N ote s t o Pages 60– 89

29. Adams, “Losses and Pickups,” 32. 30. McHolmes, “Life Study of Foxes,” 4. 31. Rawlins, “Too Many Road Runners, Cutters,” 26. 32. Masters, “A Fox Race on the Detheridge Farm 35 Years Ago,” 6. 33. Martin, “They Say,” 19; “Elkhorn City Notes,” 36; Holland, “Shannon County Notes,” 36. 34. Harris, “Shooed, Not Shot,” 1; Baldridge, “Some of My Experiences with Fox Dogs and Foxes,” 53; Cooper, “Communications to the Chase,” 15. 35. Bryant, “Fox Hunting for the Love of It,” 5–6. 36. Barrett, “The Four Purpose Hound,” 11; Hays, “The Virginia and National Meetings,” 4; Hubbartt, “Dogs Have to Do Job Up There,” 13. 37. Faires, “N.W. Alabama, S. Tennessee Is Real Testing Place for Hounds,” 25. 38. “Do We Expect Too Much Endurance?” 21. 39. Hinkel Shillings interview, February 18, 1994. 40. Rudasill, “Texas Chatter,” 52. 41. Clark, “Central Arkansas News,” 30–31; Clark, “Central Arkansas News,” 69. 42. Sweat, “Back after 176 Days,” 27. 43. William, “Ghost of Eight-​​Mile Creek,” 15; Bell, “Throaty Melody Chilled Spines as White Ghost Roamed Hills,” 4, 14; Adams, “The Plime Blank Truth,” 38. 44. Shillings, “Texas Notes,” 21. 45. Bryant, “Lost Hounds and Where They Go,” 24–25. 46. Bryant, “Strange Foxhounds and Their Habits,” 28–29. 47. Adams, “The Plime Blank Truth,” 30–32; Adams, “The Plime Blank Truth,” 47. 48. “Multiple Dog Collars Found in Alligator,” Miami Herald, August 29, 1995. 49. Harmon, “Ice Claims Meggs Harmon,” 11; McGee, “One of His Best Ones Gone,” 3; Williams, “Fox Hunting in Arkansas,” 11, 15; Ketcham, “Random Shots from Long Island,” 6. 50. Norval Barnes, “Old Lou’s Last Race,” 5. 51. Maddux, “A One Man Race,” 12–13; Worley, “Preacher’s Pen: ‘Stranger,’” 62–63; Garrett, “Rambling Reminiscences,” 20–21. 52. Halterman, “Poison in Tennessee,” 13; Ober, “A Welcome from the Stump Ranchers to the Dust Farmers,” 7. 53. Rawlins, “Southeast Missouri Notes,” 18–19. 54. Clark, “Central Arkansas Notes,” 38. 55. Slaughter, “Central Louisiana Notes,” 42; Stephens, “Open Letter from Mississippi,” 8. 56. Maddux, “The Character Witness Dead,” 6.

Chapter Four 1. Robson, “Researchers Seek to Demystify the Metabolic Magic of Sled Dogs,” New York Times, May 6, 2008. 2. Wadley, “That Tie Pile Red,” 23; Underwood, “A Dog Killer,” 31.

Not es to Pages 90– 11 2  }   227

3. Hamilton, “Raymond M. Fountain, 1904–1978,” 6; Singleton, “Raymond Fountain: The Fox Hunt Is His World,” 12–13. 4. Maddux, “A Fox Hunters’ Field Trial,” 19. 5. King, “A Tribute to C. M. Davis,” 6; Hicks, “H. P. Purtle,” 72; Dillard, “They Say,” 46. 6. Hunt, “Harvester—No? Alice’s Old Tom,” 18; Bennett, “Balem Brought to Leash,” 37. 7. Hussey, “Proven Crosses Getting Scarce,” 44; Box, “They Say,” 31; Hoyqle, “Green Acres,” 7. 8. Baucom, “Buys Liberty Dawson,” 32. 9. Advertisement from HyGrade Kennels, Hunter’s Horn 41, no. 6 (March 1962): 6; Roan, “They Say,” 40. 10. Benbow, “Regarding Early Day Stock,” 14; Hinkel Shillings interview, July 21, 1992; Delbert H. Hanson in advertisement, Hunter’s Horn 61, no. 12 (March 1983): 72. 11. Washburn, “Central Louisiana Notes,” 19; Adams, “The Plime Blank Truth,” 27; McKenzie, “Down South,” 29; Forsythe, “The Story of Big Strive and Pearl Strive,” 4. 12. Wilson, “Carolina Notes,” 8. 13. Ellis, “Fox Hunting Stranger,” 26–27. 14. Rignon, “That Little Extra,” 46; Stewart, “Tribute to a Great Hound,” 60. 15. King, “Hunting and Trailing,” 33; Stuckey, quoted in Clark, “Field vs Show,” 18. 16. King, “Hunting and Trailing,” 33–34. 17. Strahan, American Fox Hunting, 31. 18. Shillings, “Texas Notes,” 9. 19. Roach, “Communications to the Chase,” 16; “Goodwin’s Jane, 1971 U.S.O. Champion,” 14; Steward, “Notes from the Delta,” 32. 20. LeGore, “They Say,” 38–40; Stradley, “They Went That’a Way,” 60; Stradley, “Hounds and Hunting,” 67. 21. Sawyer, “An Interesting Visit,” 3; Murphy, “The Foundation Stock of the Baldwin Hounds,” 6. 22. “Herefords for Hounds,” 58; Ridgeway, “Southeast Oklahoma Notes,” 44; Jaster, “Central Texas Notes,” 40; Blystone, “On Varied Phases of the Sport,” 60; Faires, “A Ten-Hour Toenail Puller,” 25; Rochowiak, “Severe Testing Retires Trainer,” 63. 23. Hinkel Shillings interview, June 21, 1992; Clark, “Field vs Show,” 18. 24. Shillings, “Texas Notes,” 60–64; Shillings, “Texas Notes,” 61–62; Shillings, “Texas Notes: Dawson Stride,” 3–4; Hinkel Shillings interviews, July 21, 1992; February 18, 1994; March 12, 1994. 25. Advertisements from Hunter’s Horn 56, no. 1 (October 1976): 20, 27, 70. 26. Smith, “Fox Hunters and Their Dogs,” 5–6. 27. Stout, “A Dead Fox,” 29. 28. Maddux, Hilltopping, 12. 29. Stout, “Old Hickory,” 3–4; Stout, “Barking Bet and the Wild Goose,” 4; Stout, “A Dead Fox,” 29.

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{  Note s to Pages 113– 135

30. Hodges, “Old One Eye,” 23; Walker, “From a Texas Trigg Breeder,” 5–6; Carter, “Old 517,” 22–23. 31. Green, “Black Bear and Red Ranger,” 28–29. 32. Williamson, “Puddin’ Foot of Southern Illinois,” 73–76. 33. Lister, The History of the Texas Fox and Wolf Hunters Association, 15–27. 34. Power and Fightmaster, “53rd Annual National Field Trials and Bench Show,” 23. See also Wooldridge, “The National Winners,” 3–4. 35. Advertisement in Chase 27, no. 3 (September 1946): 11. 36. Skinner, “This N’That,” 43. 37. Dugy, “They Say,” 42; Gilmore, Ozark Baptizings, Hangings, and Other Diversions, 233; Winget, “Indians Add Color at Barnsdall,” 11. 38. Jones, “Oklahoma State Elects Officers; National Rules Reiterated,” 84–85. 39. Walker, “Notes On Hounds and Men,” 7. 40. Hornburger, “The East Texas,” 11; Smith, “Near 500 Cast at Florida State,” 9. 41. Thomas, “Youpon Association Plans Night Field Trial,” 9; Thomas, “Four Out of 62 Finish Youpon,” 22–23. 42. Forbis, “Mississippi State Notes,” 23; Wilkerson, “At the End of the Race,” 60. 43. Crane, “History of Evelyn Kortz No. 15346,” 8; Branton, “At the End of the Trail,” 6, 8. 44. Lindsey, “The Dry Creek Hunt,” 19. 45. Ibid.; Maddux, “Towles T. Walker,” 18.

Chapter Five 1. Cook, “With the Lady Hunters,” 6. 2. Keathley, “July Notes,” 75; Bray, “Pure Coyotes—Coyotes Hybrid,” 12. 3. Quammen, Wild Thoughts from Wild Places, 92. 4. Cheek, “Around the Campfire,” 34–36; Bunger, “From a Kansas Wolf Hunter,” 17. 5. Dobie, The Voice of the Coyote, 20. 6. Ibid., 152–161. 7. Ibid., 72. 8. Skipper, “Some Pronounce Him ‘Ki-​​ot,’ Others Wolf, but All Pronounce Him Clever and Useful,” 3. 9. Dobie, The Voice of the Coyote, 48–49. 10. Smelser, “Predator Control—An Unsavory Mess,” 11–17. 11. Robert Crabtree, quoted in Quammen, Wild Thoughts from Wild Places, 97. 12. Gier, “Ecology and Behavior of the Coyote (Canis latrans),” 261. 13. Smith, “Whirlwind’s Pups,” 54–56. 14. Cornelius, “Uncle Jack and Buster,” 57; Floyd, “To Catch a Wolf,” 30–31. 15. Bennett, “There’s Minor Pleasures, Too,” 22. 16. Bennett, “They Say,” 18; L. M. Newton, “Newton County Wolf Story,” 47; W. C. Newton, “Notes from the Old Bachelor,” 14; Anderson, “Desire of a Foxhunting Father,” 16.

Notes t o Pages 136– 169  }   229

17. David Nield advertisement in Hunter’s Horn 58, no. 1 (April 1979): 43; Harland Stonecipher advertisement in Hunter’s Horn 56, no. 19 (March 1978): 7; Krantz, “The Krantz Goodmans,” 17. 18. Bailey, “Persistence Pays Off,” 51. 19. Hinkel Shillings interview, July 21, 1992; Stout, “Beginner’s Luck,” 4; Watkins, “Likes Trigg Dogs, Sport of Hunting,” 9; Faires, “My First Coyote Race,” 21. 20. Bates, “El Coyote,” 60. 21. Bennett, “The Coyote—A Fast Runner,” 67; Bennett, “The Ozarkian,” 14. 22. Jenkins, “Trigg Notes,” 41. 23. Page, “Oakland,” 69; Casper, “Kentucky Gleanings,” 4. 24. Proctor, Bathed in Blood, 7. 25. Sitton, Backwoodsmen, 223–236. 26. Wiley, “Going Inside: The Transformation of Fox Hunting in Mississippi.” 27. Ibid. 28. Wiley, “The Best of All Breathing: Hunting and Environmental Change in Mississippi, 1900–1980,” 54–59. 29. Jacobs, “They Say,” 46; “Oppose Release of Deer,” 13. 30. Shillings, “They Say,” 44–45; advertisement in Hunter’s Horn 43, no. 12 (September 1964): 5. 31. Bates, “Retirement—Good!” 58; Decker, “Hunters Petition for Refuge Transfers,” 9. 32. Adams, “The Plime Blank Truth,” 14–15; Adams, “Losses and Pickups,” 42. 33. Lowery, “Dangerous Bill Hits Georgia Dogs,” 23. 34. Billy Ball interview, May 27, 1992. 35. Advertisement in Hunter’s Horn 64, no. 1 (April 1985): 17. 36. Frank Ashby, quoted in Sitton, Backwoodsmen, 269; Champeau, “Hound Haters and Hound Lovers,” 21. 37. Helle, “Deer Problems,” 74. 38. Hardaway, Never Outfoxed, 109–151. 39. Gingery, “This Is the Fox Hunters’ Hour,” 1. 40. Pepper, “A Fast Wolf Race in Poison and Traps,” 44; McCullar, “They Say,” 47. 41. Adams, “The Plime Blank Truth,” 56–57. 42. Page, “Oakland,” 61. 43. Hinkel Shillings interview, July 21, 1992; Shives, “The Virginians,” 71. 44. Felton, “Notice,” 42. 45. Shives, “The Virginians,” 73; Casper and Wooldridge, “Trapping,” 2; Ireland, “International Sportsman’s Committee,” 18–19. 46. Bennett, “Paucity of Foxes Abhorred: Shirley’s Biscuits Adored,” 14; Bells, “Dear Mr. and Mrs. Baumann,” 15; Adams, “The Plime Blank Truth,” 17; Bennett, “Fur Prices Catasterous,” 48–49; Adams, “The Plime Blank Truth,” 56; Slankard, “Editorial,” 4; advertisement in Hunter’s Horn 58, no. 10 ( January 1980): 10. 47. Adams, “The Plime Blank Truth,” 56–57. 48. Cannon, “Right or Wrong,” 63. 49. Christopher, “They Say,” 6. 50. Jamison, “War on Predators,” 6.

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{  N ote s to Pa ges 170– 196

51. Oldaker, “They Say,” 46. 52. Shipley, “Trigg Notes,” 48–50; Tedler, “Some Hounds Don’t Harm Foxes,” 11. 53. Porch, “Cold Trailing from the Front Porch,” 35–36. 54. Rambo, “Cracklings a Help in Fox Plantings,” 22; Rambo, “Advice on Planting,” 20. 55. Sudderth, “Running Imported Fox,” 6–7. 56. Stuckey, “The Liberated Red,” 13. 57. Fisher, “Cracklin’ Cornbread and a Red Fox Race,” 21; advertisement in Hunter’s Horn 56, no. 1 (October 1976): 81. 58. Walker, “All American Notes,” 62. 59. Carl C. Havard interview, May 8, 1992; Watley, “Thrills at the Big White Oak,” 29. 60. Jenkins, “Trigg Notes,” 42: Rochowiak, “Mr. Rochowiak Writes Again,” 25. 61. Cheek, “Southeastern Kentucky Casts 153,” 50; Billy Platt interview, July 10, 1992; Ed C. Walker interview, July 20, 1992. 62. Hufford, Chaseworld, 9. 63. Ibid., 200. 64. Ibid., 89. 65. Ibid., 15–41. 66. Jenkins, “Trigg Notes,” 53. 67. Sine, “Foxhunter’s Future,” 13–14. 68. Advertisements in Hunter’s Horn 62, no. 8 (November 1983): 53, 70. 69. Hodges, “Miss-​​Lou Notes,” 63; Tetler, “They Say,” 6. 70. Unnamed hunter, quoted in Wiley, “Going Inside.”

Epilogue 1. Howe, “Fox Hunting As Ritual,” 280. 2. The quote about foxhunting comes from Act 1 of the play “A Woman of No Importance”; Rochowiak, “Mr. Rochowiak Writes Again,” 25; Hudson, “A Fox Chase I Listened To,” 26. 3. Leach, “Anthropological Aspects of Language,” 23–63. 4. Howe, “Fox Hunting As Ritual,” 296. 5. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 447. Geertz’s essay was first published as “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.” 6. Mason Houghland, quoted in Mackay-​​Smith, The American Fox Hound, 4; Maddux, “History of the Walker Hound, Part Two,” 52–76. 7. Adams, “Losses and Pickups,” 29; King, “The Old Line Walker Hound News,” 13–15. 8. Hufford, Chaseworld, 43, 51. 9. Ripper, “Ice Claims Jimmie,” 23; Stewart, “Tribute to a Great Hound,” 60–62. 10. Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Hunting, 110, 139. 11. Marks, Southern Hunting in Black and White, xv.

Note s to Pages 197– 222  }   231

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Bibliography

author’s note: The editors of Red Ranger, Chase, and Hunter’s Horn sometimes made mistakes in the volume and number listings for certain issues of their magazines. In this bibliography, volume and number appear exactly as in the magazines. Month and year listings are presumably more accurate. Abernethy, Francis E. “Running the Fox.” In The Sunny Slopes of Long Ago, edited by Wilson Hudson and Alan Maxwell, 146–150. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1966. Ables, E. D. “The Ecology of the Red Fox in North America.” In The Wild Canids: Their Systematics, Behavioral Ecology, and Evolution, edited by M. W. Fox, 216–236. New York: Van Nostrand, 1975. Adams, Emmett. “Doc and Three-​​Legged Steve.” Red Ranger 33, no. 4 (November 1943): 3–4. ———. “Losses and Pickups.” Red Ranger 61, no. 6 (February 1976): 19–21. ———. “Losses and Pickups.” Red Ranger 64, no. 3 (October 1979): 29. ———. “Losses and Pickups.” Red Ranger 64, no. 4 (November 1979): 42. ———. “Losses and Pickups.” Red Ranger 64, no. 5 (December 1979): 32. ———. “The Plime Blank Truth.” Hunter’s Horn 43, no. 8 (May 1964): 26–29. ———. “The Plime Blank Truth.” Hunter’s Horn 43, no. 12 (September 1964): 23–25. ———. “The Plime Blank Truth.” Hunter’s Horn 44, no. 2 (November 1964): 30–32. ———. “The Plime Blank Truth.” Hunter’s Horn 46, no. 5 (February 1967): 30–32. ———. “The Plime Blank Truth.” Hunter’s Horn 46, no. 6 (March 1967): 38–40. ———. “The Plime Blank Truth.” Hunter’s Horn 47, no. 2 (November 1967): 47. ———. “The Plime Blank Truth.” Hunter’s Horn 56, no. 4 ( January 1977): 14–15. ———. “The Plime Blank Truth.” Hunter’s Horn 56, no. 5 (February 1977): 17.

233

———. “The Plime Blank Truth.” Hunter’s Horn 57, no. 11 (February 1979): 56–57. Anderson, Walter. “Desire of a Foxhunting Father.” Hunter’s Horn 21, no. 7 (April 1942): 16. Arnow, Harriette. Hunter’s Horn. New York: Macmillan, 1949. “At the End of the Race.” Hunter’s Horn 39, no. 7 (April 1960): 19. Bailey, E. G. “Persistence Pays Off.” Hunter’s Horn 42, no. 1 (October 1962): 50–51. Baldridge, Herbert. “Some of My Experiences with Fox Dogs and Foxes.” Hunter’s Horn 55, no. 4 ( January 1976): 53. Ball, Billy. Taped interview with Thad Sitton, May 27, 1992. Barlow, Chester. “At the End of the Trail.” Red Ranger 64, no. 3 (October 1978): 8. Barnes, Norval. “Old Lou’s Last Race.” Hunter’s Horn 46, no. 8 (May 1967): 5. Barrett, A. B. “The Four-​​Purpose Hound.” Chase 24, no. 11 (May 1944): 11. Bates, Bill. “El Coyote.” Hunter’s Horn 58, no. 1 (April 1979): 59–60. Bates, W. F. “Retirement—Good!” Hunter’s Horn 57, no. 10 ( January 1979): 58–59. Baucom, R. G. “Buys Liberty Dawson.” Hunter’s Horn 18, no. 81 (October 1938): 32. Beckford, Peter. Thoughts on Hunting. 1781; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926. Bell, Ed. “Throaty Melody Chilled Spines as White Ghost Roamed Hills.” Red Ranger 38, no. 4 (November 1949): 4. Bells, K. C. “Dear Mr. and Mrs. Baumann.” Red Ranger 62, no. 9 (April 1977): 15. Benbow, J. Thomas. “Regarding Early Days Stock.” Hunter’s Horn 39, no. 5 (February 1950): 14. Bennett, Lyman. “Balem Brought to Leash.” Hunter’s Horn 52, no. 9 ( June 1973): 36–37. ———. “The Coyote—A Fast Runner.” Hunter’s Horn 56, no. 1 (October 1976): 67. ———. “Fur Prices Catasterous.” Hunter’s Horn 56, no. 5 (February 1977): 48–49. ———. “The Ozarkian.” Red Ranger 59, no. 3 (October 1973): 19–20. ———. “The Ozarkian.” Red Ranger 60, no. 4 (November 1974): 13–14. ———. “Paucity of Foxes Abhorred: Shirley’s Biscuits Adored.” Hunter’s Horn 55, no. 5 (February 1976): 14–15. ———. “There’s Minor Pleasures, Too.” Hunter’s Horn 53, no. 10 ( July 1974): 22–23. ———. “They Say.” Hunter’s Horn 53, no. 11 (August 1974): 18. Birdsong, George L. F. “The Birdsong Dog.” Hunter’s Horn 57, no. 4 ( July 1978): 49–69. [1863] Blystone, R. H. “On Varied Phases of the Sport.” Hunter’s Horn 30, no. 5 (February 1951): 60. Box, W. E. “They Say.” Hunter’s Horn 42, no. 1 (October 1962): 31. Branton, Earl A. “At the End of the Trail.” Red Ranger 63, no. 8 (March 1978): 6, 8. Bray, John W., Sr. “Pure Coyotes—Coyotes Hybrid.” Red Ranger 63, no. 5 (December 1977): 12. Bryant, H. E. C. “After 85 Years, Looking Back.” Hunter’s Horn 37, no. 7 (April 1958): 32–33. ———. “Color in Hounds: A Little History.” Hunter’s Horn 35, no. 1 (October 1955): 22–23. ———. “Diary Reminders of Unusual Hunts.” Hunter’s Horn 41, no. 12 (September 1962): 46–48. ———. “Fox Hunting for the Love of It.” Red Ranger 27, no. 1 (August 1937): 5–6.

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———. “ ‘Foxy’ Foxes and Their Tricks.” Hunter’s Horn 35, no. 9 ( June 1956): 23. ———. “Lost Hounds and Where They Go.” Hunter’s Horn 37, no. 12 (September 1958): 24–25. ———. “More Honest Sellers Needed.” Hunter’s Horn 46, no. 5 (March 1967): 18–19. ———. “The Red Fox and His Way.” Chase 12, no. 6 (December 1931): 22–33. ———. “Strange Foxhounds and Their Habits.” Hunter’s Horn 36, no. 4 ( January 1957): 28–29. ———. “Sugar Loaf Has Colorful Past.” Hunter’s Horn 41, no. 7 (April 1962): 14–16. ———. “Washington as a Fox Hunter.” Hunter’s Horn 37, no. 3 (December 1958): 14–15. Bunger, C. T. “From a Kansas Wolf Hunter.” Hunter’s Horn 18, no. 181 (February 1938): 17. Bush, A. E. “Old Texas Hounds Ate Snakes, Toads.” Hunter’s Horn 37, no. 5 (February 1958): 41. Cannon, Vern. “Right or Wrong.” Hunter’s Horn 63, no. 12 (March 1985): 63. Carter, J. W. “Old 517.” Hunter’s Horn 51, no. 12 (September 1972): 22–23. Casper, M. “Kentucky Gleanings.” Chase 11, no. 12 ( June 1931): 4. Casper, M., and S. L. Wooldridge. “Trapping.” Chase 12, no. 8 (February 1932): 2. Champeau, Orvil A. “Hound Haters and Hound Lovers.” Red Ranger 64, no. 6 (December 1977): 21. Cheek, N. “Around the Campfire.” Hunter’s Horn 41, no. 12 (September 1962): 38–40. ———. “Around the Campfire.” Hunter’s Horn 43, no. 10 ( July 1964): 42–43. ———. “Around the Campfire.” Hunter’s Horn 43, no. 11 (August 1964): 34–36. Cheek, William. “Southeastern Kentucky Casts 153.” Hunter’s Horn 63, no. 4 ( July 1984): 50. Childers, Mrs. G. C. “Trials of a Hunter’s Wife.” Hunter’s Horn 18, no. 182 (November 1938): 24. Christopher, Dick. “They Say.” Hunter’s Horn 64, no. 1 (April 1985): 6. Clark, Bob. “Central Arkansas News.” Hunter’s Horn 52, no. 9 ( June 1973): 30–31. ———. “Central Arkansas News.” Hunter’s Horn 56, no. 1 (October 1976): 69. ———. “Central Arkansas Notes.” Red Ranger 63, no. 11 ( June 1978): 38. Clark, Leroy. “Field vs Show.” Chase 35, no. 10 (April 1955): 8, 18. Cochran, Nolan. “Reminiscing with Nolan Cochran.” Red Ranger 64, no. 8 (March 1979): 51. Cole, Aubrey. Taped interview with Thad Sitton, July 9, 1992. Collier, Shirley. “The Kinniconick Creek ‘Breeze.’” Hunter’s Horn 53, no. 12 (September 1974): 58–59. Cook, Mrs. Hobert. “With the Lady Hunters.” Hunter’s Horn 36, no. 10 ( July 1967): 6. Cooper, S. P. “Communications to the Chase.” Chase 11, no. 11 (May 1931): 15. Cornelius, Percy. “Uncle Jack and Buster.” Hunter’s Horn 58, no. 8 (November 1979): 85. Craft, N. D. “Gulf Coast Notes.” Hunter’s Horn 58, no. 1 (April 1979): 40–42. Crane, Stone J. “History of Evelyn Kortz No. 15346.” Chase 35, no. 11 (May 1955): 8. Crockett, Charlotte. “Notes from Wayne County, West Virginia.” Hunter’s Horn 58, no. 10 ( January 1980): 65.

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“Goodwin’s Jane, 1971 U.S.O. Champion.” Hunter’s Horn 51, no. 4 ( January 1972): 14–15. Graham, David Wayne. “A Wayne County Fox Hunter.” Hunter’s Horn 63, no. 3 ( June 1984): 72–73. Gray, Richard. “The July Notes.” Red Ranger 54, no. 7 (February 1969): 32–33. Green, Oscar. “Black Bear and Red Ranger.” Hunter’s Horn 41, no. 1 (October 1961): 24–28. Grzimek, Bernard. Grzimek’s Animal Life Encyclopedia. Vol. 12. New York: Van Nostrand, 1975. Hahn, Steven. “Hunting, Fishing, and Foraging: Common Rights and Class Relations in the Postbellum South.” Radical History Review 26 (1982): 37–64. Halterman, John C. “Poison in Tennessee.” Red Ranger 33, no. 12 ( July 1944): 13. Hamilton, Neal. “Raymond M. Fountain: 1904–1978.” Red Ranger 63, no. 12 ( July 1978): 6. Hardaway, Benjamin H., III. Never Outfoxed: The Hunting Life of Benjamin H. Harda­way III by Himself. Columbus, Ga.: Privately published, 1997. Harmon, Carl S. “Ice Claims Meggs Harmon.” Hunter’s Horn 40, no. 7 (April 1961): 11. Harris, C. J. “Shooed, Not Shot.” Hunter’s Horn 17, no. 178 ( July 1938): 1. Hart, H. E. “Nostalgia.” Hunter’s Horn 56, no. 1 (October 1976): 41. Havard, Carl C. Taped interview with Thad Sitton, May 8, 1992. Hayden, Glen. “Calm Hunter.” Red Ranger 65, no. 3 (October 1979): 43. Hays, Hugh E. “A Cold Weather Hunt.” Hunter’s Horn 58, no. 1 (April 1979): 47–49. Hays, R. L. “The Virginia and National Meetings.” Chase 13, no. 7 ( January 1933): 4. Helle, Kenneth. “Deer Problems.” Hunter’s Horn 58, no. 10 ( January 1980): 74–75. Henry, J. David. Red Fox: The Catlike Canid. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996. “Herefords for Hounds.” Hunter’s Horn 53, no. 10 ( July 1974): 58. Hicks, Aldon. “H. P. Purtle.” Hunter’s Horn 45, no. 7 (April 1966): 72. Hodges, Grady. “Miss-​​Lou Notes.” Hunter’s Horn 63, no. 7 (October 1984): 63–64. ———. “Old One Eye.” Hunter’s Horn 41, no. 4 ( January 1962): 23. Holland, Rod. “Shannon County Notes.” Hunter’s Horn 64, no. 1 (April 1985): 36. Hornburger, Walter. “The East Texas.” Chase 27, no. 2 ( January 1947): 11. “Hounds and Hunting of Yesteryear.” Red Ranger 55, no. 9 (April 1970): 41. Howe, James. “Fox Hunting As Ritual.” American Ethnologist 8 (1981): 278–300. Hoyqle, Wayne H. “Green Acres.” Red Ranger 54, no. 8 (March 1969): 7–8. Hubbartt, F. O. “Dogs Have to Do Job Up There.” Hunter’s Horn 17, no. 171 (December 1937): 13. Hudson, L. H. “A Fox Chase I Listened To.” Red Ranger 54, no. 8 (March 1969): 25–26. Hufford, Mary T. Chaseworld: Foxhunting and Storytelling in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. Hull, A. E. “They Say.” Hunter’s Horn 64, no. 1 (April 1985): 6. Humes, Mary. “Fox Hunting Has Changed.” Red Ranger 38, no. 4 (November 1949): 6, 21. Hunt, William Carl. “Harvester—No? Alice’s Old Tom.” Chase 36, no. 10 (April 1956): 18.

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Hussey, Winfred. “Proven Crosses Getting Scarce.” Hunter’s Horn 42, no. 1 (October 1962): 44. Ireland, C. J. “International Sportsman’s Committee.” Red Ranger 61, no. 11 ( June 1976): 18–19. Jacobs, Ralph. “They Say.” Hunter’s Horn 41, no. 1 (October 1961): 46. Jamison, Mrs. L. M. “War on Predators.” Red Ranger 38, no. 4 (November 1949): 6. Jaster, Paul. “Central Texas Notes.” Red Ranger 64, no. 10 (May 1979): 40. Jenkins, H. I. “Trigg Notes.” Red Ranger 58, no. 7 ( January 1973): 18–19. ———. “Trigg Notes.” Red Ranger 62, no. 2 (September 1977): 50–53. ———. “Trigg Notes.” Red Ranger 62, no. 6 ( January 1977): 40–43. ———. “Trigg Notes.” Red Ranger 63, no. 5 (December 1977): 40–42. Jones, B. S. “Old Shine and White Flank.” Hunter’s Horn 39, no. 4 ( January 1960): 26–28. Jones, Earl. “Oklahoma State Elects Officers; National Rules Reiterated.” Hunter’s Horn 52, no. 9 ( June 1973): 84–85. Jordan, L. A. “Ten Good Reasons.” Hunter’s Horn 37, no. 8 (May 1958): 25. Jordan, Terry G. Trails to Texas: Southern Roots of Western Cattle Ranching. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981. Jordan, Terry G., and Matti Kaups. The American Backwoods Frontier: An Ethnic and Ecological Interpretation. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. Kantor, MacKinlay. The Voice of Bugle Ann. New York: Coward-​​McCann, 1935. Keathley, Lee. “July Notes.” Hunter’s Horn 52, no. 9 ( June 1973): 75. “The Kennel Man.” Hunter’s Horn 43, no. 9 ( June 1964): 24–25. Ketcham, Hiram P. “Random Shots from Long Island.” Chase 13, no. 3 (September 1932): 6. Kilgo, J. W. “Hi Ball.” Red Ranger 35, no. 11 ( June 1936): 6. King, J. Crawford. “The Closing of the Southern Range: An Exploratory Study.” Journal of Southern History 48 (1982): 53–70. King, Ottis. “Hunting and Trailing.” Red Ranger 55, no. 9 (April 1970): 35–37. ———. “Hunting and Trailing.” Red Ranger 58, no. 11 ( June 1978): 33–34. ———. “The Old Line Walker Hound News.” Red Ranger 56, no. 8 (March 1971): 13–15. ———. “A Tribute to C. M. Davis.” Red Ranger 58, no. 11 ( June 1973): 6–7. Krantz, Theodore. “The Krantz Goodmans.” Hunter’s Horn 53, no. 7 (April 1974): 17. Leach, Edmund. “Anthropological Aspects of Language: Animal Categories and Verbal Abuse.” In New Directions in the Study of Language, edited by Eric H. Lenneburg, 23–63. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1960. LeGore, Rondel. “They Say.” Hunter’s Horn 57, no. 7 (October 1978): 38–40. Lindsey, Ben. “The Dry Creek Hunt.” Hunter’s Horn 46, no. 5 (February 1967): 18–19. Lister, John R. “Camp Rozzum and Its Hounds.” 1931; Hunter’s Horn 57, no. 10 ( January 1970): 66–68. ———. The History of the Texas Fox and Wolf Hunters Association. Houston: Texas Fox and Wolf Hunters Association, 1935. Longrigg, Roger. The History of Fox Hunting. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1975.

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Lowery, H. O. “Dangerous Bill Hits Georgia Dogs.” Hunter’s Horn 46, no. 6 (March 1967): 43. Mackay-​​Smith, Alexander. The American Foxhound: 1847–1967. Richmond, Va.: American Foxhound Club, 1968. Maddux, Bob Lee. “The Character Witness Dead.” Hunter’s Horn 17, no. 173 (September 1938): 5–6. ———. “A Fox Hunters’ Field Trial.” Hunter’s Horn 41, no. 4 ( January 1962): 18–20. ———. Hilltopping. Sand Springs, Okla.: Hunter’s Horn Publishing, 1951. ———. “History of the Walker Hound, Part One.” Hunter’s Horn 57, no. 6 (September 1978): 59–74. ———. “History of the Walker Hound, Part Two.” Hunter’s Horn 57, no. 7 (October 1978): 52–76. ———. “Old Time Walker Hounds.” Hunter’s Horn 30, no. 3 (December 1950): 18–19. ———. “A One Man Race.” Hunter’s Horn 53, no. 10 ( July 1974): 12–13. [1937] ———. “Towles T. Walker.” Hunter’s Horn 46, no. 5 (February 1967): 18–19. Marks, Stuart A. Southern Hunting in Black and White: An Interpretation of Hunting Roles and Rituals in a Southern Society. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991. Martin, Clifton. “They Say.” Hunter’s Horn 47, no. 2 (November 1967): 19. Masters, Tom. “A Fox Race on the Detheridge Farm 35 Years Ago.” Hunter’s Horn 50, no. 7 (April 1950): 6. Maxwell, Rexie. “Old Raider Had Endurance.” Hunter’s Horn 29, no. 10 ( July 1950): 7. McCullar, Loyd. “They Say.” Hunter’s Horn 37, no. 12 (September 1958): 47–48. McDonald, Forrest, and Grady McWhiney. “The Antebellum Southern Herdsman: A Reinterpretation.” Journal of Southern History 44 (1975): 147–166. McGee, A. S. “One of His Best Ones Gone.” Hunter’s Horn 17, no. 178 ( July 1938): 3. McHolmes, Jim. “Life Study of Foxes.” Red Ranger 36, no. 4 (November 1946): 4. McKenzie, Henry. “Down South.” Hunter’s Horn 40, no. 7 (April 1961): 29. Meek, Bill. “Raise Your Own Game to Run.” Red Ranger 62, no. 11 ( June 1977): 39–40. Meriwether, Hewitt. “Trained Ears.” Hunter’s Horn 21, no. 7 (April 1942): 5. Milam, Stephen. “Through My Eyes.” Hunter’s Horn 55, no. 6 (March 1976): 3. Mullins, Bascom. “Elkhorn City Notes.” Hunter’s Horn 64, no. 1 (April 1986): 36–38. “Multiple Dog Collars Found in Alligator.” Miami Herald, August 29, 1995. Mundorf, Fred. “Blacksmith Shop Races.” Hunter’s Horn 29, no. 9 ( June 1950): 19. Murphy, Charles F. “The Foundation Stock of the Baldwin Hounds.” Chase 24, no. 10 ( July 1944): 3. Nardini, Lewis R. “The Hunting Horn.” Hunter’s Horn 41, no. 2 (November 1961): 22–24. Newton, L. M. “Newton County Wolf Story.” Red Ranger 59, no. 2 (September 1973): 47. Newton, W. C. “Notes from the Old Bachelor.” Red Ranger 54, no. 7 (February 1969): 14. Ober, Roland. “A Welcome from the Stump Ranchers to the Dust Farmers.” Red Ranger 25, no. 9 (April 1936): 6–7.

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Rucker, Carl. “The Sponge.” Red Ranger 63, no. 12 ( July 1978): 27–28. Rudasill, D. C. “Texas Chatter.” Hunter’s Horn 45, no. 7 (April 1966): 52. Sawyer, Braxton B. “An Interesting Visit.” Chase 24, no. 10 (April 1944): 3. ———. “The Origin and the History of the American Foxhound.” Hunter’s Horn 55, no. 10 ( July 1976): 20–31. Schroder, William A., and Leslye H. Ellington. “At the End of the Race.” Hunter’s Horn 40, no. 4 ( January 1961): 49. Shillings, Hinkel. “Texas Notes.” Chase 35, no. 7 ( January 1955): 9. ———. “Texas Notes.” Chase 37, no. 2 (August 1956): 21. ———. “Texas Notes.” Hunter’s Horn 57, no. 9 (December 1978): 61–62. ———. “Texas Notes.” Hunter’s Horn 63, no. 2 (May 1984): 60–64. ———. “Texas Notes: Dawson Stride.” Chase 34, no. 5 (November 1953): 3–4. ———. “They Say.” Hunter’s Horn 41, no. 7 (April 1962): 44. ———. Taped interviews with Thad Sitton, July 21, 1992; February 18, 1994; March 12, 1994. Shipley, Hubert. “Trigg Notes.” Hunter’s Horn 40, no. 7 (April 1961): 38. ———. “Trigg Notes.” Hunter’s Horn 63, no. 12 (March 1985): 48–50. Shives, Betty. “The Virginians.” Hunter’s Horn 47, no. 1 (October 1967): 70–73. Sine, V. O. “Foxhunter’s Future.” Chase 37, no. 5 (February 1957): 13–14. Singleton, George B. “Raymond M. Fountain: 1904–1978.” Red Ranger 52, no. 9 ( June 1973): 12–13. Sitton, Thad. Backwoodsmen: Stockmen and Hunters along a Big Thicket River Valley. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995. ———. Harder Than Hardscrabble: Oral Recollections of the Farming Life from the Edge of the Texas Hill Country. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003. Skinner, Opal. “This N’That.” Red Ranger 60, no 9 (April 1975): 43. Skipper, B. A. “Some Pronounce Him ‘Ki-​​ot,’ Others Wolf, but All Pronounce Him Clever and Useful.” Chase 24, no. 11 (May 1944): 3. Slankard, George. Editorial. Hunter’s Horn 58, no. 10 ( January 1980): 4. Slaughter, N. W. “Open Letter from Mississippi.” Chase 34, no. 11 (April 1954): 8–9. Smelser, Maurite A. “Predator Control—An Unsavory Mess.” Hunter’s Horn 41, no. 12 (September 1962): 11–17. Smith, Basil C. “Near 500 Cast at Florida State.” Hunter’s Horn 40, no. 3 (December 1960): 9. Smith, Frank. “Homecoming Ghosts.” Hunter’s Horn 52, no. 3 (December 1972): 14. Smith, Morris B. “Whirlwind’s Pups.” Hunter’s Horn 58, no. 1 (April 1979): 54–56. Smith, Robert J. “Fox Hunters and Their Dogs.” Hunter’s Horn 17, no. 173 (February 1938): 5–6. Smith, T. L. “Alabama River Fox Threatened by Dam.” Hunter’s Horn 40, no. 7 (April 1961): 25. Sprague, V. R. “Hunted with Glade Warrick.” Red Ranger 38, no. 4 (November 1949): 25. Stephens, L. W. “In Running Condition.” Chase 37, no. 4 (October 1956): 3–4. ———. “Mississippi.” Chase 30, no. 5 (November 1949): 6–7. ———. “Open Letter from Mississippi.” Chase 34, no. 11 (May 1954): 8–9.

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Index

Abernethy, F. E., 11 Adams, Emmett, 22, 57, 85, 89–90, 101, 103, 119, 131, 182–183, 190–191, 193–194, 220 American Kennel Club, 57, 58 Anderson, Richard, 169 Anderson, Walter, 169 Arnow, Harriette, 6, 10, 11–12, 80, 115–116 automobiles, effects on foxhunting of, 73, 77–78, 173–174, 203–204, 209– 210 Bailey, E. G., 170–171 Baldridge, Herbert, 93 Ball, Billy, 184 Ballew, Nunn, 10, 80 Barber, Ancil and Roder, 76 Barlow, Chester, 75–76 Barnes, Arthur M., 80, 104–105 Barren, A. B., 96 Bates, Bill, 171–172 Baucom, R. G., 117 Beckford, Peter, 11, 30–32, 215 Bells, K. C., 193

Benbow, Tom, 5, 118 Bennett, Lyman, 115, 168, 172–173, 193–194 Bentley, D. M., 165 Birdsong, George Larry F., 30, 50–51, 104 Blystone, R. H., 127 Boone, W. C., 11, 22 Boshell, Alford, 82 Brock, Albert, 152 Brooke, Colonel Robert, 33–34 Brunswick Maine Foxhound Club, 57 Bryant, H. E. C., 46, 47, 71, 94, 101–103 Burnette, Albert, 193 Bush, A. E., 74 Cannon, Vern, 194–195 Carlton, Oswald Snyder, 80–81 Casper, M., 174–175 Chase, The. See magazines, foxhunting Cheek, N., 74 Chenault, J. D., 97 Childers, Mrs. G. C., 81–82 Christopher, Dick, 195–196 Clark, Bob, 99–100, 108–109

245

Clark, Leroy T., 127–128, 131 Cochaine, Sir Thomas, 27 Cochran, Nolan, 75 Cockrell, J. R., 213 Cole, Aubrey, 71, 183–184 Collier, Shirley, 85–86 commons, use of land as. See customary use rights Cooper, S. P., 93 Cornelius, Percy, 167 coyotes, 107–108, 128, 144, 145, 147, 157, 160–162; effects on foxhunting of, 157–158, 160–174, 190, 195–196; predator control of, 163–166 Craft, N. D., 10 Crockett, Charlotte, 10 Custis, G. W., 37 customary use rights, 16–17, 34–35, 176– 178, 201–202, 211, 217, 222 Davis, C. M., 114 Dawson Stride (foxhound), 21–22, 71, 98, 129–130, 218, 219 Decker, Jack, 181 de Coverly, Sir Roger, 27 deer, 17, 173, 174–175; effects on foxhunting of, 178–189, 209–210; reintroduction of, 175, 178–179. See also foxhunting in North America: and conflicts over landowner’s rights and deer Dillard, C. P., 115 Dillard, H. D., 4, 7 Dobie, J. Frank, 163–166 dog food. See foxhounds, American breed of: feeding and care of Dupree, Carl, 201 Durham, Brad, 137–138 Durham, Jesse B., 154 Dutton, Wade, 194 Ebert, Claud “Doc,” 85 Edwards, Brent, 18 Ellis, Douglas T., 120 Everett, E. E., 129

246  

Faires, Granville, 96–97, 127, 171 field trials for foxhounds, 57, 59–62, 124, 139–156 Fisher, James, 200 Fleming, William, 53 Flowers, Bert, 129 Flowers, Percy, 126 Forester, George, 28 Fountain, Raymond M., 113 Fox, John, 59–62 Fox and Foxhound Protective Association, 190 foxes, gray, 33–34, 35, 38–41, 78, 196–197, 218; death of, as a major issue, 90–95, 151–152, 192, 205; named (“good running” or “dog killing”), 135–136; negative public attitudes toward, 9, 189, 196 foxes, red, 27, 29, 31, 32, 41–45, 78, 111, 173; death of, as a major issue, 30–31, 69, 75, 90–95, 151–152, 192; expansion south and west from northeast coast of North America, 14–15, 37–38; foxhunters’ positive attitudes toward, 9, 62, 218; game management and conservation of by hunters, 14–16, 197– 200; named (“good running” or “dog killing”), 6, 10, 29, 83–84, 94, 133–138; negative public attitudes toward, 9, 189, 196; requiring development of new breed of hound, 45–49, 60 foxhounds, American breed of: ancestor breeds of, 33, 34; breeding of, 18–19, 112–132; character of, 55–57, 95–101; culling of, 22, 94–97, 113; development (origins) of, 46–57, 60; feeding and care of, 69–71, 73–75, 76; field trials and match races of, 57, 59–62, 124, 139–156; hunters’ attitudes toward registration of, 69–71; hunters’ identification with, 13, 21, 214, 216, 218–222; importance of voice (“mouth”) for, 3–4, 22–23, 60, 118–119; lost strains of, 46–49, 115– 116; reactions to coyotes of, 157–158,

{  Gray Ghosts and Red Ra ngers

166–173; strains preferred by hunters, 46–57, 60, 87–90, 113; as stud dogs, 18–19, 55, 92, 119, 129–132, 139; tendencies to chase deer, 186–189; training of, 123–124, 186–189 foxhounds, British breed of, 30–31, 32–33, 55–56, 60, 61, 188–189, 207 foxhunting in British Isles, 11, 12; fully developed equestrian form of, 27–33, 214–215; medieval origins of, 25–27, 27–33, 214–215; obsessive nature of, 27–29, 214 foxhunting in North America: attitudes of non-hunters toward, 3–4, 5–7, 8–11, 13, 213–214, 217; before the automobile, 61, 69–71, 73–77; and conflicts over landowners’ rights and deer, 17, 178–186; contrasted with normal hunting, 8–9; and differing traditions of local hunting groups, 64, 65–66, 69–70, 73–77, 78–85, 86–87, 87–90, 90–97, 112, 203–209; egalitarian nature of, 2–3, 69, 79–80, 217; equestrian version of, 2, 35–38, 155; hilltopping version of, 2–3, 211, 213–214, 216–222; hunters’ justifications of, 2–3, 10, 11; individual beginnings in, 1–5, 76, 82–83, 216; obsessive nature of, 1, 4, 6–7, 13, 18–20, 76, 126–127, 213–214, 216; practiced by listening (“by ear”), 4–5, 64, 68, 84–87, 118–119, 204; pressures to quit, 7–8, 77, 173–186, 189, 194–195, 209–212; reasons for nocturnal, 33–34, 35, 61, 64–65; strategies of, practiced in the last years of running outside, 195–209 fox pens, 21–22, 209–212 Francis of Assisi, Saint, 22, 222 “free range.” See customary use rights Full, Frank, 88 fur trapping and bounty hunting, effects on foxhunting of, 173, 189–194 Garrett, George J., 48 Geertz, Clifford, 215, 222

Gier, H. T., 166 Gilstrap, Raymond, 75–76 Gingery, Lewis Francis, 190 Goodman strain of American foxhound, 47, 58, 87–88. See also foxhounds, American breed of: development (origins) of Grace, Mr. and Mrs. Thad, 221 Gray, Richard, 88–89 Green, Oscar, 136–137 Hager, Kenneth, 121, 220 Hanson, Delbert E., 118 Hardaway, Benjamin H., III, 187–189 Harmon, Karl S., 104 Harrell, Ledger, 125 Harris, C. J., 93 Harris, Miles G., 51 Hart, H. E., 65 Hayden, Glen, 4 Hayes, Hugh E., 64 Hays, R. L., 96 Helle, Kenneth, 186–187 Hellums David, 178 Henry, Dave, 108 Henry, J. David, 43 Henry, Thomas Y., 50–51, 104 Hensley, John, 115 Hicks, Adron, 114 “hilltopping” (“ridge running,” “moonlighting,” “fox racing”). See foxhunting in North America: hilltopping version of Hodges, N. S., 211 Holland, Rod, 93 horns, hunting (“blowing horns”), 26, 28, 71–73, 98, 206 Houghland, Mason, 10, 12, 216 Howe, James, 213, 214 Howgle, Wayne H., 116 Hubbartt, F. O., 96 Huff, Floyd, 109 Hufford, Mary, 12–13, 203–209, 219, 220 Hull, A. E., 18 Humes, Mary, 77–78

Index  }   247

hunt clubs, equestrian, 27, 29–30, 37 Hunter’s Horn, The. See magazines, foxhunting “hunters’ rights.” See customary use rights hunting, American utilitarian (“pot”), 34–35, 70–71, 177–179 hunting, medieval, 25–26, 33, 214–215 Jackson, Bolton, 50 Jacobs, Ralph, 179–180 Jaster, Paul, 127 Jenkins, H. I., 3, 201–202, 210 Johnson, O. M., 2 Jones, B. S., 83–84 Jones, Earl, 186 Jordan, L. A., 3 July strain of American foxhound, 48, 49–51, 113, 188–189. See also foxhounds, American breed of: development (origins) of Kantor, MacKinlay, 11–12, 91 Kent, Percy, 126 Ketcham, Hiram P., 104 Kilgo, J. W., 56 King, Ottis, 121, 122, 220 Krantz, Theodore, 170 Leach, Edmund, 214 Lee, William “Billy,” 37 Lindsey, Ben, 154–156 Longrigg, Roger, 26, 28, 54 Lord Fairfax (Thomas, Sixth Lord Fairfax), 36–37 Louisiana, 6, 18, 84 Lowery, H. O., 184 Maddux, Bob Lee, 1–2, 10, 18, 52–53, 58, 63, 65–68, 78, 106, 109–110, 114, 134, 216 magazines, foxhunting, 12, 17–30, 89, 143 Malugin, Leonard, 136–137 Manning, J. F., 15, 199–200 Marks, Stuart, 221–222

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Martin, Clifton, 92 Masters, Tom, 92 match races for foxhounds, 136–138 Matthers, Lauren, 212 Maupin, General George Washington, 51–53, 106–107 Maxwell, Rexie, 56 McCalpin, George, 126 McCullar, Loyd, 190 McCurry, Lennis, 127 McGee, A. S., 104 McHolmes, Jim, 90 Meriwether, Hewitt, 85 Milam, Steve (and Bill), 6 Miller, L. O., 200 Mullins, Bascom, 92–93 Mundorf, Fred, 88 Mytton, John, 28 Nardini, Louis R., 84 National Fox Hunters Association, 58–59, 140–144 National Hall of Fame Cemetery of Foxhounds, 22 New Jersey Pine Barrens, 203–209 Newton, L. M. “Goob,” 168 Nield, David, 169 night hunting, 33–34, 61, 63–68. See also foxhunting in North America: reasons for nocturnal North Alabama Foxhunters Association, 2 North Carolina Foxhunters Association, 2, 193 Ogden, E. G., 57 Ogle, Benjamin, 50 “open woods.” See customary use rights Ortega y Gasset, José, 220–222 Page, Frank, 2–3 Page, Rosewell, 191 Pennsylvania (Eastern Shore) hound, 34, 46, 48, 207 Perry, Loma Vernon, 86

{  Gray Ghosts an d R ed Ra ngers

Pittman-Robertson Act (Federal Aid to Wildlife Restoration Act), 179 Platt, Billy, 202–203 Plummer, Joe, 47–48 Pratt, George Washington, 7 Prewitt, Wiley Charles, 177–178, 211–212 Purtle, H. P., 114 rabies, 189–190 Rambo, George, 15, 198–199 Rawlings, Herschel, 7, 91–92, 108 Red Ranger, The. See magazines, foxhunting Rhodes, A. B., 57 Rigdon, W. L., 121 Ripper, J., 220 Roach, D. B., 124 Roan, J. T., 117 Robinson, Ben, 53 Rochowiak, Richard, 127 Roquemore, W. F., 70 Rucker, Carl, 74 Rudasill, D. C., 98 Sherrod, R. W., 129 Shillings, Hinkel, 20–21, 41, 71, 75, 79, 98, 108, 123–124, 127, 128–130, 139, 142, 144, 171, 180–181, 189, 191, 218, 219 Shipley, Hubert, 64–65, 197 Sine, V. O., 210 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 26–27 Skinner, F. G., 38 Skipper, B. A., 164–165 Slankard, George, 194 Smith, T. L., 15 Southeastern Kentucky Fox Hunters Association, 202 southern hound (British), 33, 48 Sprague, V. R., 78 Stanly, Jack, 149, 219 Stephens, L. W., 4, 18–19, 109 Stevens, Joe, 41, 131 Steward, Dudley, Jr., 124 Stewart, Wade, 81 stock laws, 16–17, 176–177

Stonecipher, Harland, 132, 169–170 Story, G. H. “Chick,” 7–8 Stout, B. Rule, 44–45, 86, 133–135, 171 Stradley, Jay, 125–126 Strickland, Carter B., 4 Stuckey, H. P., 121 Sugar Loaf hounds, 47–48, 107 Sweat, W. C., 100 Talbot hound (British), 33, 48 Taney, Robert Brooke, 38 Tedler, Bobbie, 197–198 Tennessee Lead (foxhound), 48, 51–52, 106–107 Texas Brush Country, 79, 166–167 Texas Fox and Wolf Hunters Association, 59, 81, 128, 140–141 thieves, dog, 105–107 Thoughts On Hunting, 30–31 Thraves, Robert, 15–16 Trettler, Curley, 211 Trigg, Hayden C., 46, 58 Trigg strain of American foxhound, 46, 58, 87–90. See also foxhounds, American breed of: development (origins) of Underwood, O. B., 112 United States Fish and Wildlife Service, 163, 165–166 United States Fox Hunters Association, 142, 144 Vernon School Hunting Club, 202–203 Virginia hound, 34, 46, 48 Voice of Bugle Ann, The, 11–12 Wadley, R. C., 112, 201 Walker, Edwin H., 54 Walker, Fred, 201 Walker, P. W., 150 Walker, Towles T., 156 Walker, Woods, 54–55, 216 Walker family of Kentucky, 31, 51–55, 60–62

Index  }   249

Walker strain of American foxhound, 51–57, 87–90, 99, 106, 122. See also foxhounds, American breed of: development (origins) of Washburn, James, 118–119 Washington, George, as foxhunter, 14, 36–37, 215–216 Watkins, A. L., 171 Watson, John B., 152–153 Whittington, Brown, 8

250  

Wilde, Oscar, 74–75, 213 Williams, R. D., 6–7, 104 Williamson, Hugh P., 20 Williamson, LeRoy, 137–138 Wilson, Bub, 120 Wilson, W. C., 168–169 Wiseman, John, 8 Wooldridge, Sam L., 143, 192–193 Worley, Marvin F., 82, 107

{  Gray Ghosts an d Re d Rangers