The HAs picking up a trophy at the Virginia Hound Show today.
What a day for the Iroquois Hunt’s English hounds! The houndbloggers were not in attendance this year at the Virginia Foxhound Show, but we got updates throughout the day from the English ring, where our hounds showed–and we’re pleased to say they brought home some of the silver! The show draws some 800 hounds from across North America, a real feast for the hound lover’s eyes. If you’ve never been, we encourage you to attend next year!
We’ve been following the HA puppies since their birth (and they were born, auspiciously enough, just before Blessing Day in 2010, when the annual Blessing of the Hounds kicks off the formal hunt season). They are sons and daughters of two hounds we imported from the Cottesmore in England, the doghound Hawkeye and the bitch Baffle, who also is the dam of our much-vaunted BA litter. The HAs have matured into an exceptionally regal group, and the houndbloggers had high hopes for this pride of young lions, who will join the hunting pack this coming fall.
Hawkeye, sire of the HAs. Photo by Dave Traxler. Courtesy of Iroquois Hunt.
Perhaps the most notable victory of the day was Hawkeye’s in the class for stallion hound and three get. Shown alongside his sons Halo, Hawksbridge, and Hanbury in front of judge Henry Berkeley from the Berkeley Hunt, Hawkeye scooped the trophy from a highly competitive class that also featured Live Oak Maximus, the Virginia Foxhound Show’s grand champion foxhound back in 2010, just a few months before the HAs were whelped. Hawkeye’s win is a big thumbs-up for the Iroquois Hunt’s breeding program, which already has seen success from the BA litter, Baffle’s first for us, on the hunt field.
Baffle and the HA pups back in the day.
Some of the hounds and volunteers taking pre-show exercise Sunday at Morven Park, scene of the prestigious Virginia Foxhound Show.
We’ll have to wait until fall to see how the HA puppies perform on the hunt field, but here’s how they did in Virginia:
Halo won his single doghound-unentered class.
Halo, Hawksbridge, Hardboot, and Hanbury, all unentered, won their two couple of doghounds-entered or unentered class.
Thanks to his victory in the unentered doghound class, Halo moved on to the unentered championship against the day’s top unentered bitch and placed second, making him the show’s reserve champion unentered hound.
A bath before the big day.
To see the HAs cover some ground, see the video below, taken in January at Boone Valley. A video from February is here.
HA puppy walk Jan 14 2012
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Another winner at Virginia was Samson, our entered red-and-white doghound who is a big asset on the hunt field and the sire of our new BO litter out of Bonsai. He won his single doghound-entered class. We think Samson’s puppywalker in England, Nina Camm, will be especially thrilled with that news! To see Samson’s baby pictures that she sent us, click here. To see our adventures bringing the very talkative Samson and Hawkeye with us by air from England (where they hunted with the Cottesmore) to Kentucky, click here. Yes, it was worth it!
The likeable red-and-white Samson, photographed in 2010.
In the afternoon’s bitch classes, another member of the HA litter, Hackle, finished second in the unentered bitch class, and Dragonfly, a North Cotswold import and the mother of our famous doghoundasaurus Driver, placed second for the second consecutive year in the brood bitch class. To see a video of her (and the other Iroquois hounds) in action at last year’s Virginia Hound Show, click here. Dragonfly is at about the 2:20 mark.
Another houndblogger favorite, the powerful North Cotswold import Banker, also finished third in his class, the entered doghound class that Samson won.
Banker at his first meet in Kentucky back in October 2010.
We understand that the Iroquois joint-Masters Jerry Miller and Jack van Nagell, huntsman Lilla Mason, kennel manager Michael Edwards, and the passel of hound volunteers led by Cice Bowers arrived back at the hotel exhausted but understandably pleased with the day’s results.
Iroquois joint-Master Jerry Miller does the honors. A toast to the Iroquois hounds and their supporters!
We know how much work went into making this day happen, and the hounds’ success was richly deserved. Congratulations, everyone, and safe home!
THE Iroquois hunt season ended in late March, but we didn’t want to let it get away entirely without looking back on some good days out with the hounds! Personally, the houndbloggers love the summer hound-walking season, but it’s always nice to keep in mind the point of the exercise: preparation and training for the hunt field next fall. So with that in mind, after a long pause, we return to our computers with a look over our shoulders at the hunt season that was in our featured video today (above).
Meanwhile, the focus is on getting hounds ready for the Virginia Foxhound Show this Sunday at Morven Park near Leesburg, Va. Among the hounds Iroquois will take to the big show are members of the leonine HA litter, Baffle’s second litter for us, who have matured into magnificent, graceful, statuesque creatures very much resembling their sire, Hawkeye.
The HAs are featured in the video above, taken back in February, and we have more recent footage of them on a post-season hound walk that we’ll try to post before the show on Sunday. In the meantime, let’s turn on the Wayback Machine, to October 2010, when the HAs were very wee indeed!
And a little video of the little HAs:
My, how they’ve grown! We wish the HAs and all the Iroquois hounds the very best of luck at the Virginia show!
Clear Creek Beagles huntsman and joint-Master Buck Wiseman. Photo by Brian Blostica.
Recently, while writing a short description of foot packs at the Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, I made the mistake of wandering off task and shedding some thoughts about pack cohesion and pack response, both to a huntsman and to one another. Mrs. Houndblogger picked up the line and reminded me that I had told her, well over a year ago, that I’d write something on the subject. She’s now run me to ground, I suppose.
What follows may be a lot of nonsense, and, for the most part, it certainly isn’t science, but having hunted packs of hounds, foxhounds, beagles and bassets, mostly beagles, with a couple of short reprieves, since the mid-1960s, I do have views, and, right or wrong, I’ve never been overly restrained in expressing them, so here goes.
Rapport, hound sense, the “golden thread” is no one thing. It is a complicated amalgam of hound breeding, hound management, practice and, I believe, a certain genetic component on the human side as well. Of the terms, I prefer “rapport” which is defined as “relationship, especially one of mutual trust or emotional affinity”, which is about as close as one can come to my view of this subject, especially as to mutuality, and it is particularly appropriate that it derives from Old French “raporter” meaning “to bring back.”
"Biscuits, lots of biscuits!" one early mentor advised Buck when he formed his first pack. Houndblogger photo.
We have all seen huntsmen for whom hounds just “do.” They seem to have the touch, the right body language, to hit the right note of voice or just have a feel for hounds and seem to have always had it. They can hunt a large pack of hounds without resort to a whipper-in, walk out the entire kennel likewise and pick up the horn with a strange pack almost without missing a beat. In many cases, I believe that they may not know exactly how they do what they do, may be puzzled that others cannot duplicate their results and may take years to really analyze what it is that they do. At this point, we’ll put that subject largely aside because the purpose here is to look at intentional and conscious acts with the goal of approaching, if not equaling, the results that those huntsmen achieve.
The right personality in the pack helps. A good huntsman can get response from a gaggle of thick-headed independent types, but we all know that some hounds are more responsive to a huntsman and to one another than others. I believe that the two are clearly linked. As an example, if hounds need to be moved from one spot to another across a field or within sight or sound of the huntsman, the entire pack need not see or hear the huntsman. If the pack is responsive both to the huntsman and to one another, it’s only necessary to catch the attention of the hounds nearest you as you call and point to where you want them, the other hounds will respond to the first who have responded to you and stream over.
Buck and the beagles at Shaker Village in March. Houndblogger photo.
I often walk out hounds by myself. Puppies need to learn to walk with the pack, but you can’t discipline them until they understand what it is that they are to do and to not do. When I got my first pack of beagles, many of the hounds came from the Nantucket Treweryn Beagles of Bun and Becky Sharp. Becky knew that I would be largely handling my new little pack alone and gave me one of the best tips of all time: “Biscuits, lots of biscuits.”
I make a concentrated effort to address each young hound, every hound for that matter, frequently by name and to toss a biscuit to catch. Each must not only learn his name, but also learn that response to your voice and to your hand brings good things. Only when a hound has learned those things should you touch them with the whip and chastise them. Each has to understand that the discipline is the result of ignoring someone who otherwise dispenses blessings. It’s also at this point that the pack sense is important. If, say, two couple of puppies start up the road bank on their own little mission, if you can, with an encouraging voice, swing one couple to you, with the right sort, the other will turn right with them. Have the biscuits ready when they reach you.
Lilla Mason (and the biscuit bag) with some of the Iroquois hounds. Houndblogger photo.
If you have the luxury of assistance in walking out and of whippers-in in number when you hunt, teach yourself not to rely on them. A whipper-in should be viewed by a huntsman as the last, not the first or even the intermediate resort. If hounds are always or even frequently put to you by your whippers-in, then, in some measure, their return to you is a response to the threat of the whipper-in, not to their rapport with you. It is better to have the sometimes slightly slower response deriving from rapport with the huntsman than the faster coerced response. In fact, when walking out with whippers-in, discourage them from being more than a reminder of the possibility of reproach unless that whipper-in is pretty well endowed with hound sense or knows the hounds very well. Whippers-in tend to want to be helpful and, if overly so, are not helpful at all. This is especially true if you have puppies out. Develop rapport and trust it. Whippers-in should do likewise.
When hunting, I do not want my whippers-in even near me. Ideally, they should be eyes and ears, your distant early warning and spotting system. The title “whipper-in” should relate to their function only in difficult circumstances. The goal is that rapport will fill the gap.
Studies in animal behavior and language have shown that certain types of sounds have similar effects across a wide range of mammals. Without going into a great deal of detail, suffice it to say that higher-toned, excitable sounds encourage, soft tones soothe, growls caution or chastise. It works for hounds and humans. Your voice must change constantly to match your message. Cheer them on, cheer them in, growl and crisply bark warnings. Again eye contact and body language is also critical. Many times, when getting the attention of a particular hound to return into the pack while walking out, I will not only call the hound’s name, but once he looks at me, point directly and growl “Yes, you” or “You know your name.” Recent scientific work has, in fact, shown that the dog is one of the few non-primate species which will follow the point of a human hand. They do. If you can get eye-to-eye contact, you’ve got him, at least as long as you are the dominant personality in the pack, not the hound. If you are not, go for a softer sort.
Modulate your voice at all times in tune with the circumstances. When walking out, a conversational voice is probably just right. Talk to your hounds. If you are drawing cover, suit your voice to the way the hounds are drawing. If they are quite close, not much above conversation is necessary. If hounds are drawing widely, as mine typically do, the volume must increase. The goal is that all of your hounds can always hear you when drawing because you must be at the center of that process, if you are going to direct it.
Huntsman Lilla Mason with the Iroquois hounds on summer walk.
When calling hounds in from a distance, don’t yell for them. Instead, go for a deep in the chest, rolling tone of encouragement. They will respond. It’s not unlike the signaling howl of a coyote or hounds singing in kennel. Hounds being put on to a line, once they have reached the huntsman, should be put on quietly with low encouraging sounds and with the arm, hand and body motion directing them in the direction that they should go. Rapport is bi-directional. Watch every hound for the body language and focus that tells you when they are “with” you.
Also watch hounds for the signals, sometimes very subtle signals, that hounds can give you–and trust them if they do. Hounds may appear to be simply drifting from a check. The temptation is to pull them back, but if watched closely, slight body signals may indicate that, while they are not speaking or even visibly feathering, they are focused on some slight scent, perhaps even air scent on a bad scenting day, to which they are drawn and which may result in a recovery. Even if those hounds fall in with the movement of the pack and return, if the line is not recovered, go back to where they went, if it is the only message that the hounds have sent you, and a more diligent cast in that direction may work. It has before.
In the houndbloggers' experience, some hounds are beyond controlling, even if you have a rapport with them! Houndblogger photo.
Try never to give a command which you do not believe will be obeyed. Your voice will convey your hesitancy. When calling hounds, say out of covert, you must believe that they are coming to you even though you may curse their dawdling under your breath. If hounds start to break as we are walking back to the trailer, if you can rate them just as they start when you see the first change of focus from you to the trailer, they’ll stop. If you can’t because you were distracted and didn’t catch the first hints, let them go and make a mental note that next week they’ll come in packed up behind you until they get that foolishness out of their minds. If they go away on deer and do not stop at the first rate, turn your attention at once to how you and the whippers-in are going to get to their heads. Roaring at them futilely merely teaches them that your voice is “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
With that thought, I’m going to leave rapport because, in a real sense, I already have and drifted, like hounds losing the check, on to the role of dominance in working with hounds which is a subject better left to another day.
Many thanks to Buck for contributing this great piece! If you’d like to read more from Buck, please click here to read his earlier piece on hunting over game-rich restored native grasslands.
Mr. Houndblogger occasionally likes to peruse the Daily Mail, and he sometimes turns up some fun hound-related stories. Today we offer you one about an otterhound litter. Cute Puppy Warning!
We were not entirely surprised to learn that the otterhound, one of the houndbloggers’ favorites, is considered a rare breed and that there are (at least according to this article) only about 1,000 left, of which about 300 live in Britain.
Peterborough 2011
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To see a couple of otterhounds in motion, check ‘em out in our 2011 Peterborough video above. The otterhounds are at about the 4:22 mark.
Regular readers of the hound blog will recognize Buck Wiseman as the joint-Master and huntsman of the Clear Creek Beagles (from which, incidentally, the Beagle House Hounds Mr. Box and Eider hail). He’s also a hunting historian and a thoughtful writer on a variety of hunting topics. Every year, the Clear Creek Beagles and several other footpacks convene at Shaker Village in Mercer County, Kentucky, for a long weekend of sport chasing cottontails. The houndbloggers have followed the beagles and bassets at this fine venue annually; to see video from previous years, click here and here and here.
We’ve followed the Clear Creek pack several times this season and have compiled a video (below) of some of their best moments from the hunts at Shaker Village in February and March. Meets in both months were hampered by conditions that should have been fatal to good sport: in February, the wind howled through the tall native grasses with gusts so strong that I found it very difficult to hold the camera steady, and in March we had a blistering heat wave that took the temperatures up into the mid-80s. And yet, on both occasions, the Clear Creek pack found scent and ran rabbits, and not just in short, lucky bursts, but for stretches that we found truly surprising, given the conditions.
Without further ado, we give the floor to Buck:
The Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill has been the venue for beagle and basset packs for almost 30 years since the Rocky Fork Beagles of Columbus and the Fincastle Beagles and Rollington Foot Beagles of Louisville fixed on it as a 3,000-acre location for a weekend joint meet. It had the soul-soothing grace of the Shaker architecture together with rolling open fields divided by the dry stone walls which grace the Bluegrass. It had comfortable rooms in the village and good food in the inn at the Trustee’s House. It lacked only one thing: rabbits. [Note to our Trans-Atlantic friends: these are not your rabbits, but American cottontails: solitary, territorial, ground dwelling and non-burrowing].
The Shakertown property was then heavily grazed by cattle and quite clean. Despite the extent of acreage, finding game was very difficult. However, the few rabbits around were very hard- and wide-running and gave tremendous hunts. For many years, although packs hunted the property, most of the hunting had to take place off the property at venues as far away from Shakertown as Woodford and even Clark Counties.
Buck Wiseman and the Clear Creek pack in some of Shaker Village's tall grass. Photo by Brian Blostica.
Over time, however, some of the rougher areas were allowed to become brushy, and rabbits moved in. The sport improved. The hunting weekend evolved over time with the number of packs rising and falling depending mostly on the energy level of the Clear Creek Beagles, the amalgamation of the Fincastle and the Rollington Foot, to deal with the organization of the weekend. Over time, the Rocky Fork disbanded, and the Farmington Beagles and the Sandanona Harehounds became consistent participants.
The gift to Shakertown of what is known as the Chinn-Poe Wildlife Area began a major change. The Area was planted in native grasses, and the hard-running rabbits of Mercer County were suddenly present in greater numbers.
Photo by Brian Blostica.
What then followed was a decision by Shakertown to phase out cattle and to manage the property for wildlife and bird watching. Over a few years, the native grass areas expended to almost 1,000 acres while the rabbits ran as well as ever. In fact, the new problem of hunting a large pack, in the range of eight to 12 couples, was to keep hounds on the hunted rabbit or to hunting only one at a time as, in the native grasses, a switch is not always easily determinable, although a consistent pattern over an extended time is a pretty good indication that hounds haven’t switched. It’s the reverse which may not be true; an inconsistent pattern may simply mean a change in tactics under pressure.
Photo by Brian Blostica.
The most apparent answer to keeping hounds from splitting under these conditions would be a slow and close hunting pack, and that is, in fact, a factor, but it seems to me that another trait is more essential. That is the element of pack sense, or, as it’s been termed, cohesion. A pack, whether close or wide hunting, with a distinct tendency to independence among its members, will split and break up where game is plentiful. A pack which is pack-oriented and harks, almost without question, to the first hounds to speak or to the larger group, will hold together or quickly re-converge where the more independent hounds will not. Biddability is also a factor as the pack which harks in to a huntsman’s cheers toward hounds opening will also more quickly converge and drive on, but that’s icing on the cake, and probably a trait closely linked to pack sense generally. The real hope, and beauty when it happens, is to see hounds far out, beyond the reach or control of staff, who hunt on as a pack, spreading into their checks, picking them, harking in to the hounds who first open, and driving on. In fact, as I, with increasing age, am with hounds at fewer checks each year, it’s not only beautiful, it’s necessary.
This is, quite simply, one of the most gorgeous slideshows we’ve ever seen. There are fearsome Irish banks, sly foxes, and mud-splattered hounds, and much more. It’s from sporting photographer David Ryan, and it’s not just the photographs that make this piece so evocative. It’s also the glorious audio. Click play, turn your volume up a bit, and let yourself be carried through an Irish hunt season, from puppy show to hunt ball.
A Puppy For Everyone! The BO puppies back in December with friends Hannah Emig, Mary Hicks, Nancy Clinkinbeard, Maggie Wright, Eloise Penn, and Christine Baker. The BO puppies are by Samson out of Bonsai. Photo by Gene Baker.
The puppies of the Iroquois Hunt foxhound pack have been keeping busy these days, as you can see in the videos below. The younger set, the SA and BO litters, even went on their first “hunt” for unusually wooden quarry! Luckily, the chase–with good cry, we might add–was captured by huntsman Lilla Mason, who put together the first video. And, no, that sound was not dubbed in! Those are the puppies themselves taking charge of the soundtrack.
Meanwhile, the “big puppies” of the HA litter have matured into breathtakingly noble and elegant creatures. They might have stepped right out of a medieval tapestry.
It’s not many more months now before the HAs will join their elders in the pack, where the BA litter, the first puppies the hound blog started following back in 2009, are now leaders. More on that later. For now, please just relax and enjoy some warm puppies on a winter afternoon!
