Matthew Higgs
Beagles Column
Matthew Higgs
What a difference a year makes! Last year the rain never seemed to stop through the early part of harvest and it was completed only with difficulty. This year, in our country, we have had no significant rain in September and the countryside is hopelessly dry.
We started hunting in August and since then have watched every trail started with baited breath as we wonder which hound we’ll lame this time!
I’m a firm believer in getting hounds out as early as possible for two reasons; firstly in a “tight” country it is often possible to get to places early on which, because of pheasants or some other pressure, will be out of bounds later on and secondly I feel hounds will learn more in the field however hopeless the scenting conditions than they will in kennel.
Having said that I quite understand that some masters, able to get their hounds to a good scenting country fairly early on in the season, will delay their start until then in the knowledge they can then enter the young hounds with a rush of good sport. Either way the important thing, of course, is not to over face hounds by prolonging a poor scenting day or asking too much of them. There is little benefit in dragging tired and foot sore hounds around to get through a draw or complete the planned number of trails.
We meet early in the morning in order to make the best of scent (although perversely the best scent we’ve enjoyed this season was on a sweltering afternoon!). Evening meets are fun and for foxhounds ensure a larger turn out, which can help funds, but it has always struck me as a bit odd to more or less ensure you will be going home as scent improves. I can remember several occasions when hounds were only stopped with difficulty as dusk fell and one memorable occasion, pre ban, when they were not until long after dark having got away on a fox that bolted from an earth he was not meant to leave!
Like many packs of lowland beagles we are lucky enough to travel to the hills for a week in the Autumn and we can only bow to the generosity of the home packs in that area who so generously share their countries with us. The opportunity to educate young hounds and, in our case, student whippers in away from the pressures of our own country is a privilege beyond value.
The Trinity Foot have been going to Northumberland for over a hundred years and it is lovely to return to an area with so many links to the hunt’s history. In previous years the undergraduates travelled from Cambridge by train and stayed up in the hills with hounds to hunt at dawn. Sadly those times are past but there is still an album of photos at the Bridge of Aln pub from those days. The landlady Mrs Beveridge can remember her in laws preparing grouse and bilberry pie for the hungry hunters and has many stories of more recent jaunts.
Although scent was not outstanding this year we had enough good hunting to enthuse us for the rest of the season and I was pleased with hounds. It was nice to have Keith Restall, joint master of the Newcastle and District, pick out Rainbow ’08 as one of the front runners on the day he visited us. Rainbow was one of three puppies in a litter I opted not to hunt after the first half of last season as they seemed so immature and slow to enter. It is something I have not tried before so it was gratifying to find it appears to have worked in her case. She, like her sisters is quite small so I hope will be able to stick it back home. It was also nice for farmer and puppy walker Andy Beechener to see his puppies enter successfully. Blackjack put the pack right twice on a memorable hunt at Alnham and he appears to have inherited his mother Blackbird ’04’s nose. Her mother Trinity Foot Wriggle’99 was a remarkable bitch whose blood I am keen to replicate.
Blackjack and his brother Blueprint were quite a handful at walk and Andy who was used to walking Aldenham harriers up to their disbandment was quite in awe of beagles by the time he returned them to kennels. The couple he is walking for us at present are much calmer and I suspect he is quite relieved to not have another couple quite so determined to hunt as last year’s!
It was very good to share our week up north with the Christchurch and Farley Hill, our counterparts at Oxford, whose tyro masters made a good job of their first chance to hunt hounds. They have not made the trip for the last two seasons, two years ago due to the Foot and Mouth outbreak and last year because hounds succumbed to the cough. One could but feel for their master over that period, Susan Dixon, who had organised meets both years only to be robbed of enjoying them at the last minute. Visiting Northumberland for the first time to hunt this year was a bittersweet experience for her as she began to fully understand the missed opportunity.
It was also great to get an opportunity to see the Newcastle beagles, the impressive resident pack in the county. James Pound is in his first season hunting hounds having come from the Chilmark and Clifton Foot and he has certainly hit the ground running. We were lucky to see him handle hounds on two successful trails, the first fast and furious and the second a tremendous display of slow hound work. I was not, I suspect, the first to be reminded of Richard Brown when he hunted the NDB in the way hounds were handled which can only bode well for the future.
Good hunting to you all wherever you may be, let us hope for a good scenting and trouble free season and that when it does start to rain it knows when to stop!
NB: I should apologise to the Palmer Marlborough Beagles for the error in my report from Honiton hound show. It was their Vinter (not Vintage) that was local champion beagle dog and not reserve as I reported. RAC Charlton who I had reported champion was not in fact eligible.
Matthew Higgs