First Hunt

View from a Chase Truck...

Time was, when all Americans, not just the elite, were directly familiar with horses, their needs and nature. That utilitarian science remains as no more than a vestige of what was once a necessity of life when the country exceeded the city as the focus of domestic life.

For most, the only place to experience that unusual bond between man and horse, is in a large animal vet practice, or among dedicated chapters of an old book.

This one, for example.

There are now metropolitan suburbs, high-density neighborhoods that extend across several states. Meanwhile, the agrarian countryside such as remains, has become a travel destination for life-long apartment dwellers who seek another, simpler environment, and the peace of growing, living things once known to the majority who lived on farms.

It is uncommon, but in some areas of the nation, riding as simple or competitive exercise, has survived the invention of the internal combustion engine by Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler in work that reached the pragmatic stage of patent application in 1886.

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Whether obvious or not, we all share an equestrian past in this nation as in all others. Sadly, few are acquainted with it. Life occasionally offers a momentary glimpse.

The requirement for owning horses not shared with automobile ownership, is land. Where there are vast tracts of land, there will be horses, not addressing the pragmatic needs of transportation or agriculture, but as an indulgence.

The opportunity arose in a field often passed along what some consider one of the most exuberating stretches of improved country road that can be driven in a brand-new recently washed European sports car.

Nearby, we frequently come across hidden evidence of the past, buried and heavily rusted horseshoes at our place although none of us ride.

However, during the hunt season (approximately March through November), those who own and ride gather, by permission of the land owners, on large private tracts of farmland.

I had the opportunity to ride the chase vehicle Sunday with an old friend who, with his wife, has ridden for years, but that Sunday was assigned the truck.

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During the ensuing two hours late Sunday morning, half of which was open field among the pack, I heard from my friend far more than I could possible absorb, of Virginia horse and hound lore.

Here, the fox is chased but not hunted down: he gives the hounds sport, but escapes unlike sporting of the past that ended with the end of that individual fox.

This is a continuing process of education of a technical man and photographer interested but not involved as a rider…