Horseless Hunters

In lumberjacks and jeans, in skating skirts and golf socks, in ski pants and starched white spats, 100-odd socialites gathered last week on the rambling estate of Capitalist Oakleigh Thorne at Millbrook, N. Y. Sniffing the crisp Dutchess County air, they galumphed over the meadows, up & down hill, tripping over cornstalks, leaping heavily over brooks & briars--in pursuit of a pack of beagles who were in pursuit of a wily hare. Local farmers would never go in for such crosscountry foolishness, but if they did, they would call it a rabbit hunt. In sport parlance this mixture of old clothes and cocktail breaths is known as beagling.

A beagle is a short-legged hound, 13 to 15 inches high. Smallest member of the hound family, it has the same characteristics as the foxhound: keen scent, melodious voice (higher-pitched than the foxhound's), a fierce determination to make that tackle. Although many U. S. hunters use beagles to track rabbits, the sport of beagling--in olden days "the poor man's foxhunt"--has remained a Tory pastime ever since the first beagle pack was imported from England in 1870.

Basically, beagling is a spectator sport. Except that beagle-bugs run a little faster, puff and stumble a good deal more, there is little difference between chasing a hound that is chasing a rabbit and chasing a golfer who is chasing a golf ball. But beaglers, unlike golf fans, are mighty etiquetty. Their exclusive fraternity has honorary degrees, liveries and other traditions that date back to the days of Queen Elizabeth.

There are only 32 registered packs of beagles in the U. S. (all but one of them on the eastern seaboard). Each has its own color and insignia, its Master of Beagles (M.B.) and its whips (whippers-in who are permitted to wear green coats in the field). Some packs are privately owned, like Mrs. William du Pont Jr.'s Foxcatcher Beagles (a misnomer,* because a beagle could never catch a fox). Others are subscription packs, like the Treweryn Beagles of Berwyn, Pa. and the Buckram Beagles of Brookville, Long Island, which anyone with sturdy legs and a presentable papa may join.

Not all these horseless hunters are young, red-blooded suburbanites who find the sport inexpensive outdoor exercise for fall and winter Sundays. Some are middle-aged beaglers--notably the Buckrams' walrusy Hoffman Nickerson (Harvard '11) and his British bride of a year, whose enthusiasm for beagling dates back to her pigtail days.

Last week the Nickersons and their fellow Buckramites motored up to Dutchess County for the first big chase of the season: a joint meet of the Buckram Beagles and the Redington Foot Beagles owned by John K. Cowperthwaite of Far Hills, N. J. Prey of the week-end was not the mere jackrabbit or the lowly cottontail, but the rare European hare (giant of the rabbit family),/- which has been known to run twelve miles in one direction before turning to circle home. In the three years that the two packs have hunted this region, bound they like bandersnatches, not one of these exasperating hares had been caught. On the first day of last week's meet, however, there was a kill--only 35 minutes after the hare had been "viewed away." First of the spectator field in at the kill was Mrs. Hoffman Nickerson, who was awarded the cherished mask (hare's head). Although the subsequent hunts led to no more kills, at the hunt breakfast in Millbrook's Red Pheasant Inn, the Buckram and Reddington followers agreed it had been a red-letter meet.

* Foxcatcher is the name of the Du Pont stables and kennels.

/-Plentiful in Dutchess County because an Austrian peasant, settling there some 50 years ago after making a fortune in the U. S., stocked his 3,000-acre estate with European hare to make it seem more like home.

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