The hounds of heaven
Martin Vander Weyer joins the Ampleforth Beagles for a blameless day of good company and brisk exercise Itook up beagling not as a political gesture but because my dog died. Having walked with him for 12 years, I found walking without him too sad, so I more or less stopped. Then I met a friend at a party — a stateschool teacher who had once been a Marxist agitator in the local bacon factory — and heard a glowing account of the eccentricities of a day on the North Yorkshire Moors with the Ampleforth Beagles. 'Lovely,' she said. 'It's like a big family outing. You just have to remember to keep saying "good morning", because that's how they all greet each other, even though it's mid-afternoon.'
In the long perspective of the history of hunting, it is later than that: it is two minutes to midnight On Saturday 19 February next year, even this least bloodthirsty — and, frankly, least efficient — of blood sports will become a crime. By then, unless some legal wheeze defeats the Act or an infusion of Ukrainian-style revolutionary spirit grips the gentle beagling crowd, we will all be saying 'good night' — which is how beaglers bid each other farewell, even though it's still mid-afternoon.
But, I thought, better late than never — a sentiment which is apparently prevalent throughout the countryside this autumn: a fox-hunting neighbour tells me that the Sinnington's early season children's meet attracted record numbers, and that hunt tailors and horse dealers have never been busier. Still, I approached my first beagling encounter, high on the moors at Levisham, north of Pickering, with trepidation. Was I fit enough to keep up? Was I dressed correctly? Besides this 'good morning' business, what other traps of etiquette were lying in wait?
Unhappy memories recurred of my last appearance on the hunting field, twentysomething years ago: it was a day with the Exmoor Foxhounds — and I was not a success, socially, sartorially or by any measure of equestrian skill. To the extent that local hunting folk acknowledged my presence at all, they did so by sniggering at me for being a nervous visitor from London on a hired horse. Not one of them bothered to be friendly except the legendary Master, Captain Ronnie Wallace, who to his enormous credit (I really must have looked hopeless) bought me two big whiskies afterwards and urged me to try again.
Beaglers turned out to be a very different proposition. As to dress, almost anything goes: the Master, the kennel huntsman and the whippers-in wear smart green coats and white britches, but everyone else is just dressed for a walk on the moors. Tweeds and waterproof gaiters prevail, but bright red anoraks are OK too, and I spotted one woman in a camelhair coat and sunglasses, for all the world as if the meet was taking place in Harvey Nichols. 'Good morning,' they all said. 'Good morning,' I replied, pleased to have jumped this first fence, and off we strode on to the moor in conversational groups, while the hounds searched ahead with bounding optimism for the scent of a hare.
You would have to be an optimist to be a beagle hound — and not only because a strong hare on open ground so easily outruns its pursuers. Any remote hope that the activity for which these hounds are bred will survive beyond February is diminished by the unavoidable lack of a serious 'pest control' justification. Lowland hares in large numbers are a nuisance to farmers, but it is a lot easier to shoot them; up on the moors, in relatively sparse numbers, they are not really a nuisance to anyone, and they have plenty of natural predators. And when the hounds face the final judgment, they will not be allowed to plead in mitigation that, statistically, they are not even very good at their job: in the whole of last season, the Master tells me precisely, the Ampleforth pack killed only 'nine and a half couple', roughly one in 14 of all the hares they put up.
The Master, Major Ian Kibble, is an elegant, sharp-eyed man of about 70 who likes to quote Surtees and correct hunting solecisms. 'For God's sake don't call them dogs,' he tells mc more than once, adding that all non-hound canines are known as 'cur dogs'. He hunts, he says, 'because 1 enjoy it'. He and his cohort took over the pack a decade ago from Ampleforth College, the Catholic public school, where for the previous 40 years it had been run by a Benedictine monk, Father Walter Maxwell-Stewart; the hounds are still blessed annually, and a handful of boys from the school still take part.
They join an amiable cross-section of local life which includes, among my first sampling, a fish farmer, a paediatrician, a wine merchant, a sinologist, a prison officer, a retired schoolmaster and several small children. Newcomers and visitors from other packs are welcomed with unfeigned warmth, Anti-hunt protesters used to turn up occasionally too, but nowadays they devote their attention to highprofile fox-hunts elsewhere.
My second meet is at a hill farm on Snilesworth moor, one of the remotest places in England; the weatherbeaten old farmer beams with pleasure at having so much company. 'How are you, Wilt?' the Master asks. 'Fit as a lop,' says Wilt leading us out of the filthy yard on to the hill. Being fit as a lop is (fortunately for me) not essential to the enjoyment. Since hares tend to run in circles around their territory, the technique is to stay high and walk at an angle to the direction of the pack, in the hope that the hunt will swing around you — though sometimes it dives deep into a dale and up the far side, at which point those who are fit as lops follow, while the less fit stay put until it comes back. The best viewing point is jokingly designated 'the talking hill', for idlers who prefer to stand and chat from the start.
But most of us spend the afternoon moving up, down and across the heather, trying to stay within earshot of the huntsman's horn and the voice of the pack. Despite periodic reprimands from the Master, we rarely stop chattering; because everyone has their own pace, and their own theory as to the best line to follow, conversations form and dissolve in random patterns. Discussion of moorland fungi swiftly gives way to amateur dramatics, international rugby, Spectator sex scandals, farming woes and stock market tips. Contempt for Tony Blair and his government crops up more frequently than most topics, but these days that is probably true everywhere from Sedgefieid to Basra, not just on the hunting field.
And from time to time — twice in my five outings so far — somewhere in the distance a hare is killed, or, as a hunting journal might say, 'hounds earned their just deserts'. Unlike many other creatures whose existence is interfered with to satisfy human urges — pigs destined for the local bacon factory, for example — the hare leads a free life and has 13 chances out of 14 of avoiding its fate. And unlike many other ways in which the hare might eventually die on the moors, this particular death, in the jaws of the leading hound, is almost always instantaneous. It is also the ultimate purpose of our outing, though the human participants rarely witness it at close quarters and do not celebrate it with pagan ceremonies.
Last Saturday, on a bleak northern spur of the moors called Glaisdale Rigg, I picked a had line which took me out of sight and sound, and I missed the moment of excitement when a hare made the fatal mistake of doubling back towards the pack. The sun went down and the cold crept under ray coat; suddenly disconsolate, I decided to call it an early good night. As I drove along the ridge I found the hounds again, in fading light, streaming across the heather in full cry. The fittest beaglers were still with them. Ask them why they were there and they will say for the fellowship, for the exercise, for the pleasure of watching hounds work; for the sport, if you like, but only incidentally for the kill. But soon it won't matter what they say, because it will all be gone.
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