Fox hunting and being 'blooded'.

Where I grew up fox hunting was quite a prized part of life. When one first rode with the hunt, the novice hunters would be ‘blooded’ when their first fox was taken.

It was exciting. It was primal. It was disgusting.

Being 'blooded' was the smearing of fox blood over the faces of those who had not taken a fox before, to the cheers and upturned flasks of other members of the hunt. A young girl sweating with exertion and excitement, being smeared with blood and plied with hard alcohol sounds like something out of a satanic ritual, and yet with hunting season it was not out of the ordinary. All the new hunters went through it, and loved the event. All except the fox, that is.

And Mrs. Barlow’s cat, Mittens.

Yes. Accidents happen. I remember the day when thirty fox hounds took of yelping and snarling after something in the hedgerow, and all the horses chased excitedly down the narrow farm lane. The clatter of steel shod hunters on the tarmac as we followed the baying hounds into the village. Many of the villagers watched as redcoated riders gathered pace, the horses infected by the excitement that had overtaken the hounds, their quarry sighted.

Mrs. Barlow was the post mistress in the village, and her tabby cat, Mittens, was well known, sitting on the stone wall outside the Post Office, a homely reminder that on the Isle Of Wight you need to set your watch back sixty years when you arrive. The cat would watch each visitor to the shop, and scowl.

That morning the tabby, frightened by the baying dogs, broke cover and the hounds took it for a fox. Into the front garden the cat dashed, and the dogs took chase. A frightened look over it’s shoulder and up and into the living from through the open window.

Thirty hounds streamed into the garden. The horses, trained to follow through thick and thin followed. An open window presents no obstacle to a hound with it’s blood up. In went the lead hound, followed by another, and another. In a matter of seconds the entire pack had flowed like a river of brown, black and white through the open window into the front room of the postmistress’s house.

Perhaps you can imagine what happens when you place a trio of excited dogs in a living room, along with a display case of Dresden china, some art pieces, diverse pieces of genteel furniture and a tabby cat. Now multiply that by a factor of ten and you have the general idea.

This is not helped by the fact that most of the hunt were well lubricated with spirits before the hunt moved out, and the horses were definitely the ones in command here. The front lawn looked as though it had been rotavated. By the time the horrified post mistress had seen the dogs dragged from what was left of the front room, the furniture was smashed, the china reduced to a Greek restaurant tragedy and Mittens… Well, there was not much left of anything.

Fox hunting was banned in Britain twenty years later, though that would have been cold comfort to Mittens.

We all have a primal side to us. Some bury it better than others, but it is there.

Comments

  1. Loved this. I wanted to find out about being blooded because I never had a pony, never got initiated into the exciting sweaty chase. Well not this way anyway.

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