Goshen Hunt
1212 Buckeystown Pike,
Adamstown, Maryland 21710.
Established 1957.
Recognized 1960.

For mid-February in Maryland, it was a strange day. The weather was almost balmy; the sky was overcast, and the forecast predicted a significant shift to cold and rainy later in the day.

The footing was quite deep too–so much so that several of the neighboring hunts had cancelled. To add to the difficulties, both of our joint masters were away. Obviously, it was to be a day for the hard-core hunters!

Huntsman Robert Taylor greeted me at the kennels with Gary and Aimee Weiss, with Ruth Ann and ex-MFH Pat Witty joining us. A quick discussion developed a plan, with Pat taking the field and me whipping-in. Why not?

Robert put hounds in the first covert, not far from the kennels, and drew east along a creek bottom and through an old trash pile that in years past had been a reliable holder of quarry. For some reason, this season it has been reliably blank!

We continued drawing east toward “redneck park” with no result. The only difficulty came when the whipper-in held the hounds to this draw while several of them wanted to move to a covert to the south.

When informed of the hounds’ desire to go south, Robert suggested that we have a look. He took the rest of the pack into the covert and sent me to the east side. As he drew down below, I rode parallel, but considerably higher.

We were quickly greeted with the high-pitched clarion voice of Goshen’s Coffee. A nice bitch in her second season, Coffee is out of the outstanding bitch Comet. Coffee has never been a star and rarely speaks. This time she was screaming!

Robert called, “They’d better be right,” telling me to watch for riot. With a clear view of the pack below me, I watched for a minute as Coffee led the pack with nose hard to the line, twisting and turning through the woods. Although I confess to not seeing the fox, I’ve never seen a deer run in such a twisting fashion. With a silent prayer, I hollered to Robert, “They’re right, and they’re all on!”

Hounds flew into the back of Waredaca, with Robert and I following over the coop and into the pasture. Hounds then turned to head east, and we followed over the next coop and back into the woods. As we worked our way at a gallop down the woods trail, hounds burst out to the north. Knowing we didn’t have the luxury of staying to the trails if we were going to keep in touch, we turned and beat our way through the woods for about 50 yards to open ground.

With the full pack screaming ahead, Robert and I galloped on with little thought that we hadn’t seen the field since the first coop. Not to worry–they’d surely catch up.

Our pilot led hounds on a tricky run for nearly three-quarters of a mile, mostly along a boggy creek bottom. It’s seemed this season that our foxes all want to get to the neighboring hunt’s territory as quickly as possible. Robert and I both thought, “Here we go again,” as we headed for the river and Howard County.

But when we paused to check, we realized we’d apparently succeeded in getting ahead of the pack, since we could now hear them behind us. Where were they going, and where was the fox?

As we watched and waited, the lead hounds burst out with noses hard on the line, now heading west.

Then, as we watched and listened, lead hounds made a full circle and headed back into the stream bottom we’d just come through. Back down the hill we flew, with the slower hounds coming with us. Again, Coffee could clearly be heard above the roar of the pack.

Now heading east, Robert and I proceeded again at the gallop into the parkland behind Rolling Acres Farm–home of long-time hunt supporters Bud and Janice Nicholson and family. This parkland, known to us as the “bird sanctuary,” has few trails and very heavy briar cover in a mixed forest that extends over almost 1,000 acres of river basin. Unfortunately, its eastern border is a major highway. As we watched and listened, it was clear that hounds had not gone to the road, but were running their fox hard.

When the cry of the pack turned to the south, Robert and I charged through the woods and over the coop at the back of Rolling Acres.

Hounds worked their quarry through the briars with full cry, again with the notes of Coffee clearly leading the way, as Robert and I sat and listened for at least 15 minutes. As we reveled in our private hunt, we heard hounds coming closer and moving again to the west.

Back over the coop we went again as hounds made for Howard Chapel Rd. Finally, on the road, we were greeted by regular whipper-in Leslie Happ in her vehicle and the field. As we quickly renewed acquaintances, hounds suddenly shut off.

We rode into the dense covert and found that after a screaming run for 75 minutes, our hounds had accounted for their fox. They waited patiently for the richly deserved praise they knew would be coming from Robert.

As seems to happen so often, the best run of the season had just been witnessed by the most minimal of hunt members. Even ex-MFH Witty had been forced to withdraw since the horse he was trying for his daughter just wasn’t up to the task. Hardy toasting was left to the hardy band of five, plus “road whip” Leslie.

But these hounds weren’t finished yet. The weather turned decidedly nasty, with rain and a sudden drop in temperature. Robert drew back through much of the covert we’d skirted on our way out with no result, until we returned to the same area where we had started our fox two hours earlier. Once again, a fox broke covert. But this time, it was Gameboy owning the line.

This fox had no intention of the long trip taken by his predecessor and stayed in the several hundred acres of swamp bottom, woods and pasture edge between Waredaca and the neighboring farm to the west, Tusculum. At one point, it looked as if the fox might break toward the south and another busy road, so Gary Weiss and I were dispatched to stop hounds, but they stayed with their quarry and worked through the heavy undergrowth.

Suddenly, Robert shouted, “Tally-ho, over the coop!” From a distance at which I couldn’t even see the coop, Robert had viewed the fox.

We picked up the stragglers and went away again. This fox was much more interested in staying close to home, so hounds worked in a small circle for the next half hour until Robert, with the agreement of all, called hounds in and blew for home, all hounds on.