Leading from behind

When watching a really good pack and their huntsman, you will notice that the hounds are always in front of him. Frank Houghton Brown explains why, and how it is done

ÒPOOR scent” or “no smell” is so often the reason espoused for a moderate day’s hunting, but lack of scent doesn’t always have to be the death knell of a good day.

“Concentration is the key,” explains Ian Farquhar, longserving master of the Beaufort.

“If the hounds are really concentrating and sniffing like hell for the line, it’s amazing how well they can hunt on a poor scenting day. In fact, many of the best hunts come after a slow start.”

In Goodall’s Practice: A Huntsman’s Guide — the 19thcentury treatise on how to hunt hounds, still widely read and valued now — it describes perfectly how Will Goodall would cast the Belvoir hounds so brilliantly, “in a body, a 100 yards in his front, every hound busy before him, with his nose snuffling the ground, each hound relying on himself and believing in each other”.

The antithesis of this is “when the huntsman trails his hounds behind him, four-fifths of his best hounds will be staring at his horse’s tail, doing nothing”.

Hounds in front of the huntsman is the way, and Ian points out the bond which allows this is formed at hound exercise.

“As you take hounds down a road, they should be ahead and, as a village or potential hazard approaches, the whipper-in comes past, quietly getting to the front until through the village, when normal progress resumes,” he says.

Neil Coleman, now huntsman of the Curre and Landgibby, recalls how Brian Fanshawe would allow his Cottesmore hounds to get ahead in a field or at a road junction and then would change direction. When they realised their huntsman was missing, they would hurry back to him. Inquisitive tendencies in a hound should be nurtured and excessive discipline can strangle a hound’s enthusiasm. If they are always tightly bunched around the huntsman’s horse, it becomes less instinctive for a hound to seek and try on its own. I have heard stories of how William Deakin, when he hunted the Warwickshire hounds, would sometimes hide in

a hedge or a ditch while on hound exercise and change his coat, so the hounds would look for their huntsman and the bond between them would be enhanced further.

NUDGING, NOT WALLOPING

ONE part of a hunt where the huntsman has a huge influence is how he draws a covert.

“A fox well found is halfway to being caught” was the adage, and the same principle applies with trail-hunting. Hounds should be ahead or parallel with their huntsman, given time to get away from him and enough encouragement by voice and horn never to feel lost.

“Hounds are like children, they do not like to be left behind,” was the 10th Duke of Beaufort’s opinion. “What often happens is that the huntsman will put his hounds into the covert and then trot away. The hounds, instead of attending to the job in hand, will stop, lift their heads to listen and then emerge on to the ride to follow their huntsman.”

“Dog wallopers” was the

IAN FARQUHAR

derogatory name used by Capt Wallace, illustrious master and huntsman of the Heythrop and Exmoor, for whippers-in used as sheepdogs by their huntsmen to keep pushing hounds on to them when casting. In Goodall’s Practice, it is described as a

“vulgar plan” when the whipperin chases hounds up to their huntsman and “the hounds are driving along with their heads up, their eyes staring at the huntsman’s horse’s tail, looking to their huntsman for help, disgusted and not relying upon themselves. It never can occur when the huntsman moves his hounds in his front with their noses down”.

Ian Farquhar calls this type of cast “the nudge” and he was the past master of keeping his hounds ahead of him, slowly shunting them in the right direction without a word, allowing them to keep their concentration as they picked at the line.

“If you can keep them going like that,” he explains, “it’s amazing how the hounds seem to tune in and the pace increases after a while.”

HELPING HOUNDS HELP THEMSELVES

CONFIDENCE is an integral part of it — both the confidence of the hounds in their huntsman and the huntsman in his charges. It was said of Goodall that “in handling his hounds in the open, he never had them rated or driven to him by his whipper-in: when he

‘If the hounds are really concentrating and sniffing like hell for the line, it’s amazing how well they can hunt on a poor

scenting day’

wanted them, he invariably went himself to fetch them, anxiously watching the moment the hounds had done trying for themselves and felt the want of him”.

With regard to Ian Farquhar’s “nudge”, Goodall used to use exactly the same tactic: “all the hounds in his front, making every inch of ground good; while with a poor scent he would do it in a walk, regulating his pace by the quality of the scent.”

“If the hounds are habitually checked and meddled with in their natural casts, they will learn to stand still at every difficulty and wait for their huntsman,” states Goodall’s Practice, “for every once the huntsman can help them, 19 times the hounds must help themselves.”

I remember the Bicester hounds visiting the Cottesmore country in the 1980s and pulling off a great day’s hunting from a meet at Braunston in the Tuesday country. I overheard someone ask a local subscriber about the Welsh-cross hounds.

“What do you make of those funny woolly hounds?” he said.

The reply came bouncing back: “I don’t know, because we haven’t got close enough to see them.”

That must be the highest accolade a huntsman can be paid — that his services were not required, but it comes only through painstaking hours of cementing that golden thread between the huntsman and his hounds.