Fox Hunting : Pennsylvania a Hotbed of Old-Time Sport

Guided by a bugler and spurred on by cries of “tallyho,” about 40 fox hunters clad in blazers and felt caps galloped furiously over a ridge behind a pack of howling hounds.

The spooked fox managed to escape, its scent mingling with a herd of dairy cows and several curious deer, but no one seemed particularly discouraged.

“The sport is in the chase, not the kill,” explained Tom Slater, master of the Rolling Rock-Westmoreland Hunt Club. “And we had a good run. The hounds hunted especially well.”

Here in the Laurel Mountains of western Pennsylvania, riding to the hounds is the grand obsession of doctors, lawyers, veterinarians, homemakers, business executives and high school students alike.

Hunt club members ride and ride and ride--on Wednesdays, Saturdays and holidays--from August until March. Only the most severe snowstorm or rainstorm will halt an outing.

Everything Else Stops

“On the day of a hunt, the world stops,” said Carlene Gnazzo, 32, of Gibsonia, whose husband, Joseph, a steel company president, rides with the club at least twice a week. “You couldn’t even die the day of a hunt because no one would come and see you.”

“These people are crazy,” said Jackie Harris, 39, of Pittsburgh, a self-proclaimed “hunt groupie” or “hilltopper” who drives with friends from hilltop to hilltop to catch a glimpse of the chase.

“You have to be to get up at the crack of dawn, saddle up a horse and chase a pack of dogs--I mean hounds.”

Hounds are never called dogs, just as a geologist never calls a rock a stone or a sailor never calls a ship a boat. It is part of the rigid etiquette of a pastime steeped in tradition.

Fox hunting began here when Richard King Mellon, the noted industrialist-banker from Pittsburgh, founded the Rolling Rock Hunt Club in 1921 at the family estate in Ligonier.

Two Clubs Merged

In 1972, the Westmoreland Hunt Club, based in nearby Greensburg, joined with Rolling Rock when much of the club’s hunt country was shrunk by encroaching housing.

Hunting grounds consist of about 20 square miles of rolling mountains dotted with hardwood forests, crystal streams and tidy estates. Most property owners in the area allow hunting. Some even lower fences so the horses can easily jump them.

“A fox’s paradise, all these old hills,” said Lovell Stickley, the club’s retired huntsman, as he watched the hunt from a nearby hilltop.

There is about one fox per square mile in the Ligonier area, Stickley said, but rarely do the hounds manage to catch one.

“Last year we went out 68 times and killed two, and that was the first time in four years that we killed one,” Slater said. “This year we’ve killed one.”

Hounds and horses are the essence of fox hunting. The fox is secondary, hunters say.

Types of Hunters

“There are two types of fox hunters: those who hunt to ride and those who ride to hunt,” Slater said. “I’m more a hound person than a horse person. I never ride my horse unless I’m hunting.”

“I’ve always had this thing for horses,” said 16-year-old Suzanne Seitz of Greensburg, who just joined the club this season. “I like to ride, and hunting is my favorite of all.”

Some clubs, especially those in urban areas, don’t even use a fox, but rather hunt by dragging a scent for the hounds to follow. However, purists contend that a drag takes the spontaneity and thrill out of the sport.

With live hunting, “every day is different,” said Dr. Sheila Selznick, 42, a veterinarian from Greensburg. “When you lay a drag, eventually you run out of new things.”

“Once you’ve gone live fox hunting, you don’t go drag hunting again,” said Susie Todd, 60, of Ligonier, one of the club’s three hunt masters.

Accidents Possible

The chase can last from sunup untill sundown, depending on how successful the hounds are in picking up a fox’s scent or, in this case, on the number of accidents.

Late in the afternoon of a recent hunt, the club president fell off his horse and was knocked unconscious. A few riders carried him off the field and took him to a nearby hospital, while the rest of the group, unruffled, hunted for a few more hours.

“You’re on your own. Sometimes they don’t even stop if someone falls,” Harris said as the riders galloped their panting and lathered horses down a tree-lined lane.

“Once one guy broke a leg and climbed back on his horse so he could get out of the woods,” she said. “Another man broke his back and was riding a week later.”

Little has changed since the sport began in England in the mid-18th Century, and that suits the riders and hilltoppers just fine. Black felt caps, red or black blazers, vests, ascots clipped to starched white shirts with gold stickpins, riding breeches called jodhpurs and black, knee-high boots are de rigueur .

‘Sense of Ceremony’

“There’s a sense of ceremony in this, and we don’t have much ceremony left in this country,” Harris said. “Even the style and fabric of the coats they wear are more than 200 years old.”

Before the hunt began, sherry was served to riders on horseback while the huntsman, Joseph Hardiman, assembled the pack. Hardiman, a 29-year-old Irishman, is employed full time to breed, train and care for the hounds.

The riders then wound their way into place, determined by a rigid sense of decorum.

In the lead was the huntsman, who controls the hounds with his bugle or hunt horn, and a few whippers-in, who look after the stray hounds. When a fox is sighted, the huntsman or the whippers-in yell “tallyho” to direct the riders to the location.

Next is the master, who is in charge of the riders and bestows colors--in this case, red jackets--on those who actively support the hunt.

Riding behind the master are riders wearing colors, regular hunting members dressed in black blazers, junior riders and professionals who are hired to ride other people’s horses.