An education in hunting

School and college packs of beagles have played a considerable role in teaching young people about hounds – and life – for many generations, as Andrew Sallis explains

- Andrew Sallis

MY parents’ horror was palpable. Their hunting-mad nine-year-old son was hopping with excitement at the ringside. A school pack of beagles was parading and what’s more, they were hunted by the boys. I couldn’t believe they had kept this secret.

Beagles, studies, boys, hunting – what could possibly go wrong? Within a year I had been packed off to choir school, far removed from any venatic distraction to my studies: that was to come later in my academic career.

For generations, “young gentlemen” (and now some ladies) have followed the well-worn path of masterships from school beagles to college beagles before taking a pack of foxhounds.

Pressures of balancing academic studies with co-curricular activities and shifting admission criteria, not to mention economic considerations, have re-aligned this route-map, but the merits and rewards offered by school and college packs, hunting within the law, remain as strong as ever.

Most packs had a humble naissance. A few “hounds” of dubious provenance and questionable breeding were acquired and lodged, sometimes illicitly, away from the eyes of Victorian schoolmasters. The keeping of “dogs” was contrary to rules at most schools, but this was a technicality generally bypassed in the interest of encouraging sportsmanship.

In the 1850s, the Eton began using a semi-trencher system. In the history of the Eton College Hunt, it is noted that “the rule was either to subscribe or bring back a couple of beagles… naturally, the result was a rather unlevel lot.”