Interview
with Norman Fine
Image of Norman Fine provided courtesy of Joan K.
Fine. All rights reserved.
This exclusive interview with foxhunter and author Norman Fine was
conducted by Nicola Linza and Cristoffer Neljesjö in Millwood, Virginia during
March 2013
How did you get involved in foxhunting?
There are two ways to come to foxhunting: one is through an interest in horses and the other is through a passion for hounds. I came through a love of horses, but eventually became smitten by hounds as well.
As a child, before I could write my name, I was drawing pictures of horses—nothing else. Where this came from I don’t know. I truly believe it’s genetic because when fully expressed, it becomes a way of life.
For me, growing up in the city—Boston, Massachusetts—there wasn’t much
opportunity to live my childhood fantasies. They lay dormant but were never
forgotten. It wasn’t until my young adult years that I started riding.
One day while competing in a local horse show, a man came up to me and
introduced himself as the Master of Foxhounds of a nearby foxhunting club, the
Nashoba Valley Hunt. He paid me a compliment and invited me to come foxhunting.
A woman I had my eyes on — Joan, now my wife of more than forty years—was
already foxhunting at Nashoba Valley, so it didn’t take much encouragement for me
to try it. It proved to be the most exhilarating experience I’d ever had on the
back of a horse.
It’s unfettered and unbounded. Your only challenge is to weld a partnership
with your horse and keep up with hounds wherever the fox may lead them. Nothing
is pre-set or preplanned. You need lots of space, and the fox may lead you
anywhere. You become infected by the enthusiasm and excitement of the hounds
cries, your blood rises, your horse’s blood rises, and when the partnership
works, the pair of you will face any obstacle in your path to keep up with the
chase and stay in touch with hounds.
Speaking of the chase, I should say that in North America, it’s all
about the chase. Unlike England and Ireland, where the fox population is so
large as to be a serious nuisance to farmers, here they pose no problems. They
know their country, they know every hole and burrow, and when they are pressed
hard enough by hounds they just go to ground. That’s where we leave them.
Yes, if hounds catch a fox they will kill it. But it happens very rarely, and
when it does, it’s usually a sick or an old fox that would soon die a more
lingering death. In North America, I would say that 99 percent of all
foxhunters do not want to see a fox killed.
Describe the feeling of riding a
Thoroughbred while chasing the fox.
Most of my hunters have been Thoroughbreds. They are the kings of all equine athletes. I have two at the moment. Both were bred for racing but neither made a success of that game, to my good fortune. One, whom I call Chance, was registered with the Jockey Club with the unwieldy name of Purely Conjecture. He’s a grandson of the great Secretariat through his sire, Purely Pleasure, a son of Secretariat. I have to admit there’s a special feeling to know that the blood of such a horse is coursing beneath you.
Riding a Thoroughbred is like riding a cloud. They gallop across the country,
and you scarcely feel their feet touching the ground. They move fluidly under
you with a grace and elegance unmatched by the other breeds. It’s the
difference between driving a Jaguar as opposed to driving a pickup truck.
A good Thoroughbred is all heart, and he gives it to you generously. In fact,
generosity is a key attribute in the breed. Another is honesty. Riding horses
over fences, ditches and stone walls comes with an element of danger. I want an
honest and generous horse that will not take advantage of me in a moment of
vulnerability. I’m not a world class rider, I make mistakes, and I want a horse
that will not take advantage of those mistakes and try to part company with me.
The Thoroughbred is too royal to express such a “common” streak!
What inspired you to write the
now classic, Foxhunting Adventures:
Chasing the Story?
I found myself with some extra time on my hands while I was designing and preparing to launch my website and e-magazine Foxhunting Life, so I went back and collected some previously written stories of my foxhunting experiences. Most of them had been published in various magazines in the U.S. and England, and altogether they represented forty-plus years of foxhunting across the U.S., Ireland, and England. I wrote a new introduction for each story, and arranged chronologically they give the flavor of my world.
I have hunted with and been educated by some very interesting and famous characters in our sport, and I’ve had the opportunity to watch the work of many different types of foxhounds. I try to weave into my hunting stories whatever is special and unique about the history, the geography, or the culture of the locale. I guess it worked. I’ve received a lot of enthusiastic mail!
Could you tell us a foxhunting story you will never forget?
Sure. This is the first story in my book. It’s short, and it had never been previously published. It tells how an Irish horse taught me something about our capacity to achieve the seemingly impossible. It’s titled “Any Reasonable Horse.”
When the late summer nights turn crisp, and the dinner talk turns to tales of
foxhunting, I like to share a bit of philosophy imparted to me by that special
animal—part horse, part cat, and all heart—the Irish hunter. That remarkable
creature understands something of the flavor of life. He never allows natural
caution, reticence, or conservatism to limit his perception of the possible.
The Scarteen hounds were hunting a most unusual piece of country in Kilcommon,
County Limerick this day. A wild and forbidding landscape, far from the
well-traveled roads, high into the hills, it was unknown country even to Master
Thady Ryan. To complete the scene, a dense fog obliterated every feature of the
landscape.
Hounds found a fox in the very first covert. The field galloped forward blindly
through the thick, hanging mist in a tight pack. To delay was to be left alone
and disoriented. Disdaining the crowd, however, my new English friend Richard
swung his horse away. With an ear to the chorusing hounds, he chose his own
line, and I followed.
Enveloped in a gray, colourless sphere of our own with no more than fifty feet
of visibility in any direction, we two galloped over this no man’s land. We
soon lost all sound of hounds, horn, or humanity. On we cantered in what
direction one couldn’t possibly know. I wondered if we should ever again see
another living soul.
Finally, far off, barely audible through the moist air, the horn reached us. We
set off in the direction of that welcome sound, but were soon brought up short
by a most formidable obstacle.
Before us was a sliding bank leading down to the narrow shore of a swiftly
moving stream. Although the stream seemed jumpable, the opposite shore offered
only two feet of width before meeting the sheer face of a high vertical bank.
In amazement, I watched Richard point his horse down the slide with the casual
confidence of a man descending the front steps of his house. He reached the
bottom, jumped the stream, and there his journey ended. The scant two-foot
shoreline forced his horse to turn parallel to the vertical bank, and he was
trapped. It was perfectly clear to me that the whole maneuver was impossible.
Richard was unfazed by his predicament. Although he couldn’t even see over the
cliff beside him, he swung his horse’s head toward it time and time again,
kicking, swatting, and cursing the horse’s cowardice. His colour and his voice
rose precipitously. He turned to me as I sat transfixed by the futility of his
efforts and shouted, “Come down and give us a lead over. I don’t know what’s
got into this horse of mine.”
Staring dumbly into his red face, astonished by his expectations, and
thoroughly intimidated by the combination of obstacles before me, I could think
only to appeal to whatever shred of judgement he might possess. I asked
quietly, “Is it possible for a horse to do that?”
Achieving yet another
shade of crimson, Richard turned his horse to the bank once again and shouted,
punctuating each word with a kick and a swat.
“Any... reasonable... horse... can... do... this!”
Several kicks and swats later, exhausted by his efforts, he gave up on his
horse as unreasonable.
Somehow those words had a magical effect upon me. Uttered as they were with
absolute conviction, I believed him. I closed my legs and pointed my horse down
the slide. He slid down on his hocks. As we reached the near shore, I asked him
to jump the stream. He leaped toward the narrow shore opposite and the high
facing bank. My only hope was to keep him straight. I separated both my hands
so he couldn’t turn. His front feet touched. As his hind feet hit the shore I
closed my legs, clucked, and grabbed the mane to free his head. He thrust off
his hocks.
Time stopped. In slow motion I saw a sight that I never again expect to see in
a lifetime of riding. As I stared straight ahead into the vertical bank, his
two front feet rose into view before my face. His hooves continued their
miraculous journey upward until he had hooked his elbows on top of the bank.
Inch by inch on his elbows, his hind feet scrambling for purchase against the
vertical wall, we progressed upward. Time resumed. We were standing on top.
“Well done,” shouted my English friend. I heard several kicks and thumps from
below, and a moment later Richard and his horse stood beside me. We trotted off
in the direction of the horn—two unreasonable men on two reasonable horses.
In the film, The Shooting Party (1985) the character Lord Bob Lilburn says; "If the land-owning class goes,
everything goes!". One can interpret the quote and apply it to
foxhunting, if land is reducing then foxhunting will eventually disappear. What
do you think about this and the future of foxhunting?
Hunting with hounds has been threatened over centuries of history with a constantly changing world, but it still thrives. When fences and hedges sprouted up in the English countryside as the result of the Enclosure Acts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was feared that mounted hunting was finished, but horses and riders learned not only to jump the obstacles, but to enjoy doing it. Hunting continued, but in a somewhat different form.
When the railroads came and cut across the hunting countries, the end of foxhunting was again predicted. While the laying of tracks may have curtailed hunting near the cities, the railroads provided transportation for man and horse well into the countryside, where fox hunters found even better land for their sport.
Today fox hunters face two major threats: loss of open space and animal rights
activism. Yes, land is being developed at a frightening pace and is interfering
with sport for many hunt clubs, but one has only to get in a plane and fly across
the country.
There is still an
incredible amount of open, undeveloped space in North America, and new hunt
clubs are continually being organized. Some hunts may be forced to move because
of development, and some hunt members may find themselves too far away from the
new country to continue, but new members take their places. Moreover, many
hunts have been successful in leading and supporting land conservation
initiatives in their communities and have preserved oases of open space
astonishingly close to urban centres.
The other threat, animal rights activism, is not new. It’s important to
understand that animal rights activism and animal welfare are two different
movements. Virtually all law-abiding hunters today subscribe to the tenets of
animal welfare. We respect our quarry and do all we can to preserve the species
and their habitat through sensible game management. Animal rights activists
simply want to end man’s dominion and control over animals—a most impractical
philosophy. They are well funded, however, and they are often successful in
chipping away at small bits of personal freedoms. All sportsmen that work with
animals must pay attention to their legislative initiatives. They enjoyed their
greatest legislative success in England with the passage of the Hunting Act of
2004, but—major changes in hunting notwithstanding—more people are hunting in
England today than ever before.
The above interview with Norman Fine 2013 © Manner of Man Magazine. All
rights reserved. Reproduction is strictly prohibited without written permission
from the publisher.
