How do you end one of the most outstanding seasons of hunting in the 50-year history of your hunt club? Easy! Just invite the good folks from Tennessee Valley Hunt (Tenn.) to come up and join you for two days of hunting.

Goshen enjoyed nearly five months of the most exhilarating sort of hunting imaginable. With a pack of American hounds that are lovely to look at as they gather around huntsman Robert Taylor to start a day’s hunting–all showing the results of years of careful breeding and months of training toward this objective–a foxhunter has to feel the same kind of anticipation of fun to come.

This is a young pack of hounds, with nearly half of the 20 entered couple in their first season, but by March they’d clearly learned their lessons well.

A field swelled by 16 riders from Tennessee Valley rode off on March 17 with a fitting tribute to St. Patrick and all the Irish descendants present. As we hacked for 15 minutes to the first planned covert so that we could make the draw away from the more developed areas, conversation and greetings flowed easily.

MFHs Carla Hawkinson and Maribel Koella rode with MFH Holly Hamilton, who was leading the field. TVH Huntsman Lugene Askins and whipper-in Dick Askins rode with Taylor and the Goshen staff.

We were pleased also to be joined by Huntsman George Harne from Middletown-New Market (Va.) with several of his whippers-in and ex-MFH Rick Jones out for a day with his old friends. This is a collection of some of the most fun-loving but dedicated foxhunters that could be assembled.

In Typical Goshen Fashion
Robert put hounds into the first covert, a briar-covered hillside facing east to be warmed by the morning sun and overlooking a small grass meadow. Often it’s home for several foxes, and this season it has even produced a gray fox or two, a rare occurrence in our territory. Not on this day, though. Taylor kept his hounds in the covert and asked them to work it repeatedly, but to no avail.

He then moved hounds a short way to the much larger woods covering a small stream bed and separating two large grain field areas. This time success came quickly. Hounds spoke, and the chase was on.

We refer to this fixture as a “flat” or “non-jumping” fixture because there are no fences in the entire area. Of course, there are plenty of deadfall trees, and in typical Goshen fashion, this must be done at speed if one is going to stay with these hounds.

For the next hour and a half our pilot found his way up and down the sides of the stream valley, occasionally bursting across an open grain field before ducking back to the safety of the forest. We continued in hot pursuit.

Finally, recognizing that we were committed to hunt again on the next day, Taylor and the masters decided to give this fellow best and return to kennels.

Liz Lavine, one of our outstanding whippers-in, as well as an outstanding hostess, provided the perfect setting for a wonderful party where we could really regenerate the friendships that had begun with MFH Hawkinson several years ago, had grown with the Goshen contingent’s trip to TVH last year, and had now become solid with the return visit.

An Additional Treat
We all gathered at the Goshen kennels the following morning with elevated expectations for a great day’s sport. Today’s hunt was planned for our most productive covert, where it seems foxes cannot resist waiting for the sound of hounds to start their daily exercises.

Before we left, we had an additional treat. Todd “Doc” Addis and his wife, Happy, came down from Pennsylvania for a visit with “his children”. Doc had been an enormous influence during TVH’s formative years, and he obviously enjoys seeing the fruits of his considerable labors.

We began the day by hacking out from the meet, but instead of turning south, we headed to the north side of the territory. There were a few members from each club who preferred to not jump, so I was nominated to lead this group around the first part of the territory. Lucky for us!

As we waited on the west side of the covert, visiting whipper-in Dick Askins viewed two foxes away directly in front of us. Needing no human encouragement, hounds quickly sorted out which way they should go. Working through the woods along a streambed heading north, hounds spoke with authority.

As the jumping field went streaming by, I announced to those following me that there would be no more fences in our way. Consequently, we were free to rejoin the main field. Good that we did, for what followed was an incredible pursuit across open cornfields at a racing pace. We soon came to the edge of the cornfields and entered what we call “the Big Woods”.

This was where it got interesting. Because of the frequent high winds and the soaking rains we’ve had this year, the deadfall is far more than our trail-clearing efforts can keep up with. Consequently, negotiating these trails is tricky. MFH Hamilton did her utmost to keep with hounds as we wended our way over, around, or through all sorts of obstacles.

Most of this part of the hunt was along the south edge of the Patuxent River, one of the most important bodies of water to Maryland foxhunters since no fewer than four hunts claim some part of this river as their territory. At the headwaters of the river Howard County-Iron Bridge has their kennels. For the next several miles the river forms the natural boundary between Goshen on the south side and Howard County-Iron Bridge to the north. As the river wends its way south and east, it soon comes to the Marlborough kennels and then finally as the river joins the Chesapeake Bay the Patuxent forms the northern and eastern part of the De La Brooke W country. (And, no, there are no disputes or disagreements.)

On this day, as he often does, this fox took us across the river into Howard County-Iron Bridge territory. We climbed out of the river bottom into their country only to realize that the fox was still running hard and heading west. This took us even deeper into Howard County as we continued in pursuit. For much of the next hour we continued in this fashion until Taylor picked up hounds and headed back to our own country.

Not content to leave well enough alone, we drew yet again. This time, thankfully for many of us seasoned citizens, without result except that we were now in real “coop territory.” As we finally cleared our umpteenth coop and I assured my by now good friend “Liz” from TVH that there would be no more “just one more coop” (as I had told her repeatedly earlier), we finally headed back to the trailers with smiles and laughs all around.