Foxhunting Life with Horse and Hound

A good whipper-in can be the decisive ingredient in turning a mediocre hunting day into a brilliant one. If you need a better authority before agreeing with my premise, how about Peter Beckford? Here’s what he had to say in 1781.

“In a country full of riot, where the covers are large, and where there is a chase full of deer and full of game....I should prefer an excellent whipper-in to an excellent huntsman.... The whipper-in, if he have genius, may show it in various ways: he may clap forward to any great earth that may, by chance, be open; he may sink the wind to halloo, or mob a fox, when the scent fails; he may stop the tail hounds, and get them forward; and has it frequently in his power to assist the hounds, without doing them any hurt, provided he should have sense to distinguish where he may be chiefly wanted.”

I recently witnessed a great example of Beckford’s “without doing them any hurt” admonition. It was just a simple thing, yet after forty-five years of hunting it still made me shake my head in admiration.

David Norman photo

Whipper-in and pet fox out for a stroll? Not really. To capture this intriguing image, photographer David Norman used a long lens which foreshortened the perspective. The fox, he says, moved out smartly!

Posted September 25, 2012

Steve Price and Frosty test their mettle at Old Dominion / Tom Sullivan photoI wouldn’t consider myself a real foxhunter.

True, I’ve ridden to hounds several times, but always more like a spectator than a participant. This September, however, I had an awakening!

Thanks to the good graces of my friends Betsy Parker, proprietor of Hunter’s Rest in Flint Hill, and Norman Fine, of Millwood (and Foxhunting Life), I’ve been wending my way for the past four years from my New York City home to steep myself in semiannual Virginia equestrian sprees. Trail riding on Betsy’s school horses and on one of Norm’s hunters, Guitar, is the primary lure. In addition, Norm has taken me hunting with the Blue Ridge Hunt in the hilltopping field.

Huntsman Ken George (foreground) and whipper-in Bill Sipp  / John Webber photoThe Moingona Hunt (IA) had a great start to the season. I joined Steve Satterly, ex-MFH, and Matt Lange—local cowboy turned foxhunter and whipper-in—for the season’s very first cub hunt on a hot, dry day in the Flint Hills of Kansas. Huntsman Ken George took out twenty-two-and-a-half couple of hounds.