|
 This is a book
about fun in field sports. It celebrates the characters and cultures of
foxhunting, steeplechasing, fishing, and shooting. It celebrates life. . . . Do
not be surprised that the same sportsmen show up in different contexts. This is
a joyful tour in which reliable old friends reappear, sometimes unexpectedly,
to enhance the fun. . . . If I am ever eloquent, I want it to be in praise and
defense of that precious heritage that has allowed me a lifetime of adventure
in field sports. Not only the fun of it, but the enduring friendships as well,
enrich my memory. Those characters who could jest at themselves while jousting
with danger taught me much. They are still teaching me whenever I think back
over the old times.
Henry W. Hooker, MFH
Foreword by James L. Young,
MFH
The Plains, Virginia
Henry Hooker's sporting memoir, Fox, Fin,
and Feather, spans seventy-five years chronicling, in his words, "fun in
field sports." However, describing his offering as an anecdotal biography would
be akin to defining Ernest Hemingway's Green Hills of Africa as an
African travelogue. Neither does justice to the pristine genius of either
author.
With tongue lightly pressed against his psyche's cheek, Mr.
Hooker draws his reader into a lively world—the world of larger-than-life
characters; a world rife with the warp and woof of sporting adventure. It is a
rich tapestry in danger of fading due to the harsh light of
modernity.
Hooker tells stories. Oh, how he tells stories! One might be
about the chief of the Osage Indians following a "one-legged lady" in the
hunting field. Another is the one about his being lured to the Alaskan brine by
the fish that hunts—by scent! Henry's passion and pure, unadulterated
pleasure in all things feral (whether fin, feather, or feminine) fairly sings
with unbridled joie de vivre. In fact, that master of southern hounds,
hospitality, and hunting chutzpah, Mason Lampton, master of the Midland Fox
Hounds of Georgia, remarked to Henry that "you have sung their song." A paean
to the Hook's stories of dogs and hunting people.
This gem is genuine; a
unique and precious retrospective of one exceptional man's life with dogs and
their human factotums. As a lifelong follower of and, lately, breeder of pure,
line-bred Virginia-strain American foxhounds, I was enthralled with Hooker's
account of the North Cotswold hounds imported from England to Tennessee in
World War II. Mason Houghland, in a generous gesture to preserve Cotswold
master Bill Scott's bloodlines lest they perish due to the exigencies of war,
gambled with the Hillsboro American hound breeding program and entered these
English hounds into his pack. The results might startle some
houndmen.
True hound aficionados will relish Henry's personal tales of
the seminal foxhound breeders of the early twentieth century: Haiden Trigg, Sam
Wooldridge, Joseph B. Thomas, E. H. Walker, Wash Maupin, and Burrell Frank
Bywaters, among others. I do not know if Henry's yarns about Sam Wooldridge's
exploits are true or not, but I really do not care. They alone are worth the
price of the book.
Hooker's anecdotes about dogs are not limited to
foxhounds alone. Shooting dogs figure notably, and his recollections include
quail shoots in the deep South with Parker and Pansy Poe of Pebble Hill
Plantation (worthwhile subjects by their own right for a chronicle); shooting
driven grouse in Scotland (site of Henry's temptation by the fairer sex); or
drawing a bead on the red-legged partridge in Spain. Somewhere in the midst of
these shooting adventures is the story of "The Dropper," part setter, part
pointer, who was "the meat-providingest dog" ever hunted. He simply required a
"beep" before he would "Auk"!
We in the sporting world rarely are
treated to lyrical or creative writing. Ours normally is the stuff of didactic
or demonstrative essay. But in Hooker's reminiscences we find the
serendipitous, the sublime, even the sensuous. Woven into the narrative is
genuine conflict, wryly drawn characterization, and age-old themes of
faithfulness, constancy, and strength against adversity. Some of the stories
really do bring a tear to the eye.
There is also creative
gambling, unbridled drinking, sexual tension (both canine and human), incisive
but gentle humor, and mellifluous poetry.
"Bold fox, you learn eternal truth
For
which the histories offer proof.
It's true of all the world's host
Who
hunts the best is hunted most."
Well, there you go.
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