Fox Huntin’

by Dale Grubaugh

As I sat on the front porch enjoying the late summer evening, off in the distance I heard the bawl of a hound on trail. I don’t know what that dog was a trailin’ but the sound was like music in my ears.

Hearing that hound reminded me of a family keepsake I’d been giben after the passing of my Uncle Jones Stovall. I went to my gun cabinet and pulled out an old steer’s horn that my uncle has used as a fox horn. The horn was not used to call foxes but rather to call his dogs in after a night of fox huntin’.

Holding that horn in my hand reminded me of the many nights Uncle Jones took me with him fox huntin’.

What good times those were.

Huntin’ was more of a social event for us. The dogs did all the work and the hunters did the listenin’ as the hounds chased that fox. We would meet the other hunters on some back-country road.

After every’body got there and the howdys were exchanged, the dogs were taken out of their carriers. Most of the dogs were carried in dob boxes in the back of pickup trucks.

One fella brough his dogs in the trunk of his car.

Another old man brought his dogs inthe front seat of his station wagon. Those dogs looked mighty funny sittin’ up their like a couple of kids.

The hounds were all released at the same time. Then the real fun began.

While we waited for the dogs to strike scent, there as always a lot of good food to eat. There was usually a camp fire built along the side of the road with a big dutch oven full of ham and beans suspended over it. A large pot of boiled coffee, cornbread, home-canned pickles and them desserts were provided by the spouses of those hunters fortunate to be married.

There was always a bottle of some kind of liquor to be shared. Because of my young age, I was never allowed to partake of this part of fox huntin’. But that didn’t matter to me. The part I liked best was comin’ up: story telling.

Those old fellers would get to sharing the news of the week. They’d swap dogs and guns.

Then they would commence to telling stories — stories of other hunts and the good dogs they used to own. Most of those stories got more elaborate each time they were told but I loved to sit and listen.... hanging on to every word.

Finally, the dogs would strike scent and start trailing. The visiting stopped and the hunting began. Those old men would be a’whoopin’ and callin’ to their dogs, encouraging them on. And they’d be trying to identify whos dogs were in lead and which way the fox was headed.

A fox is a smart critter. Most of the time a fox doesn’t run from the dogs because he is scared.

He runs to have fun.

That fox’ll take a pack of hounds up and down the same holler half the night just a’runnin’ them in circles. Twice in my young life, I saw foxes lead the hounds right through our camp, upsetting everything and everybody that got in the way. It was comical!

A fox will run ’till he gets tired of being chased. When he has had enough, that fox will run up a tree and then jump from tree to tree ’till he gets back to his den.

The dogs will bark “treed” and the race is over. The horns would be blown and the dogs called in.

Funny thing about fox huntin’ .... I never saw a fox captured or killed.

They were always left unharmed to run another race.

’Till next month.

Elias Tucker

September 13, 2009