Leading From Behind

When watching a really good pack and their huntsman, you will notice that the hounds are always in front of him. Frank Houghton Brown explains why, and how it is done

- Houghton Brown

POOR scent” or “no smell” is so often the reason espoused for a moderate day’s hunting, but lack of scent doesn’t always have to be the death knell of a good day.

“Concentration is the key,” explains Ian Farquhar, long serving master of the Beaufort. “If the hounds are really concentrating and sniffng like hell for the line, it’s amazing how well they can hunt on a poor scenting day. In fact, many of the best hunts come after a slow start.”

In Goodall’s Practice: A Huntsman’s Guide — the 19th century treatise on how to hunt hounds, still widely read and valued now — it describes perfectly how Will Goodall would cast the Belvoir hounds so brilliantly, “in a body, a 100 yards in his front, every hound busy before him, with his nose snuffing the ground, each hound relying on himself and believing in each other”.

The antithesis of this is “when the huntsman trails his hounds behind him, four-fifths of his best hounds will be staring at his horse’s tail, doing nothing”. Hounds in front of the huntsman is the way, and Ian points out the bond which allows this is formed at hound exercise.

“As you take hounds down a road, they should be ahead and, as a village or potential hazard approaches, the whipper-in comes past, quietly getting to the front until through the village, when normal progress resumes,” he says.