I REMEMBER a conversation from long ago during which I expressed a desire to write. ‘I’d rather be a participant than a spectator,’ my companion responded, somewhat disparagingly. However, for those privileged to write about fieldsports, the roles of participant and commentator are often combined. That is especially true of hunting, where riding strange —frequently brilliant and, occasionally, downright dangerous—horses across country or tramping for miles behind a pack of beagles is all part of the job.
There is no fieldsport more suited to our green and beautiful countryside, nor more compatible with Britain’s cool, damp climate, than hunting with a pack of hounds. From dew-drenched early September mornings to frigid February afternoons, when black hedges beckon beneath snow-flecked skies, scent lies stronger here than anywhere else on earth. I’ve enjoyed hunting on assignment with English foxhounds all over the world— Africa, America and Australia, even Trinidad —yet nowhere can completely replicate the supreme hunting environment of Britain and Ireland. Hunting has transported me into the heart of diverse and glorious landscapes best appreciated from the back of a horse— from Scotland’s Kingdom of Fife to high Leicestershire, liberally sprinkled with thorn fox coverts, to the steep pastures and tall beeches of Laurie Lee’s Cotswolds and the starkest moorland vistas of upland Britain.
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