Essay: Jack Bentley on foxhounds and hunting, undated

At that darkest moment before the dawn cast its mantel over the mountains around Deerfield, Virginia, I entered a hollow which runs back into the mountains about two miles. Preceding me was my pack as thrilled as I perhaps, for strange scents came to them from animals long since departed form our hills of Maryland. My thrill was to have miles of woods before me with no house dogs barking, no sleeping neighbors to be bothered by the cry of my hounds.

The weather was not so good, snow tickled my face and when dawn came I was well back in the mountains and not a dog had opened. Helen, my old bitch crossed ahead of me, from the right hand side of the ridge. She is the exact color of a deer and has a scar on the top of her head made by one. I saw her walk a log, raise her head, and her plaintive long note rolled from mountain to mountain. The trail was very cold and I had visions of one of those unending trailing contests with the mountain gray.

Standing there wondering how Helen could tell which direction the fox had walked that log, a wild beautiful note came from the top of the mountain, Phantom had jumped a fox on top. In two minutes he was out of hearing and I said to Harve Rowe, "We will have to climb that ridge." Now Harve will make a mountain goat int he spring time look like a draft horse, but he said, "Its not so steep back a ways", and I like a darn fool said, "Let's go up here." Them followed thirty minutes of wading through hell bare-footed, but we made it. It was the steppest I ever climbed.

At this point we were were very high and could see a whole lot of country, the dogs were just coming back in hearing, and running hard. For the next hour they ran, and were coming down a ridge opposite

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me all in a huddle, but shut up all at once. "Harve," I said, "he went in or up." "Yes," he answered, and we went down the ridge a lot faster than we came up. After we climbed to about where we thought the dogs had stopped, I found none of the hounds and Harve kept on up the ridge. Finally after I had looked in every tree on the mountain the dogs came to me. I looked at them and noticed some blood on ones nose. On opening his mouth there was a fox hair. Dela-Brooke started down the ridge and I followed her. She turned off the ridge and went down a hundred yards. She led me to the fox. He was laying in the water of a little mountain stream, and so ended a perfect morning.