One Man’s Passion Revives the Fox Hunt in Virginia

The hounds dive into the hole. They’ve got their snouts down in the dirt, and they’re digging, scratching, squirming, trying to squeeze into a groundhog tunnel that’s way too small.

The fox is down there. They can smell him. It’s a rich, pungent scent, somewhere between skunk and moldy cellar. They’ve followed that scent for a couple of miles, yapping and barking all the way.

The fox led them across Goose Creek and into a cow pasture on the Mellon estate near Middleburg, Va., then darted into this tunnel. Now these wet, panting, eager hounds are digging down, desperate to get at him.

Randy Waterman, the huntsman, stands over the hole in his red riding coat, black cap and white breeches. He puts a golden horn to his lips and bends over so he’s right down there among all those soggy hound rumps, and he blows a long blast on the horn.

He stands up. A half-dozen hounds rub up against his knee-high boots and nuzzle his belly, eager for affection. Which he gives them, rubbing their heads, scratching their necks. “Good boy!” he says. “Good boy!”

Despite all the hubbub, the fox is safe down there. This isn’t England, after all. In England, the hunters would force the fox out of the hole and let the hounds kill it. Here, the fox is merely chased into a hole. Then the hounds and their master hover harmlessly over it for a while, howling and blowing the horn, proclaiming their triumph.

“This is their celebration,” Waterman says, standing amid 41 happy hounds. “It’s a celebration of the fox, who ran two miles and crossed a river twice, and it’s a celebration of the hounds. They’re happy. They know they won.”

Waterman won, too, of course. He’s the master of the Piedmont Fox Hounds and it’s the opening day of the season and his hounds already have chased three foxes to ground. Some Virginia hunts don’t put three foxes to ground in a week. But the 50 horsemen who have galloped after Waterman all morning aren’t surprised. They know he’s not out here to sip sherry and rub elbows with the aristocracy. He is a serious fox hunter, obsessed, driven.

“He’s a very intense huntsman, probably the most dedicated huntsman in America,” says Dennis Foster, executive director of the Masters of Foxhounds Assn., the sport’s governing body.

When he came to Virginia 20 years ago, Waterman thought the fox hunting here was a joke--a lot of pompous poseurs more interested in ceremonies and socializing than in hunting. He was going to quit the sport until a self-described “Georgia redneck” named Ben Hardaway convinced him that he could teach those Virginia stuffed shirts how to put the fun back into fox hunting.

And Waterman did it, too. All it took was a ton of money and his every waking hour.

“My grandfather was a master of hounds, my father was a master of hounds,” Waterman says. “My mother wasn’t a master of hounds, but she was the most devoted fox hunter I’ve ever met. The woman was demented. She hunted seven days a week in Ireland.” Waterman is sitting in the living room of his funky little log cabin near Upperville, Va., drinking a beer and telling the story of his fox-hunting life. He was born 48 years ago in Greenwich, Conn. His parents divorced when he was young and his mother remarried and took her son to Ireland. He rode in his first fox hunt there when he was about 10.

By the time he was 12, “I knew it was the only thing I ever wanted to do.”

Fox hunting isn’t an elite sport in rural Ireland. Waterman would go out with his mother and some local farmers and they’d follow the hounds across the lush green fields. The grass is almost always wet, which makes it easier for the hounds to follow the scent, so the hunting is fast and they’d bound over dikes and hedges and ancient stone walls. And when the day’s hunt was over, they’d repair to the pub.

“Everybody, including my mother, goes in the pub, and you have hot whiskeys, and the farmers start talking,” Waterman recalled. “ ‘Oh, Jaysus, did ya see Johnny fall into the dike!’ Did you see this? Did you see that? And the stories start getting better and better.”

It was a wonderful life, but it was interrupted by the Vietnam War. In 1969, Waterman was drafted into the Army and sent to Germany. When he got out, he took over the family sand-and-gravel business in New York. He married, fathered three daughters and moved to northern Virginia. He’d fly to New York for a couple of days to run the business, then fly down to ride in steeplechase races. By the late ‘70s, he was the best amateur steeplechase jockey in America.

But when Waterman sampled the fox hunting in northern Virginia, he was stunned.

“It was a joke,” he says. “It was more social than it was a sport. There was so much more pomp and ceremony surrounding it than there was a passion for horses or galloping or seeing good hounds run. In Ireland, whoever has the fastest horse goes first. Well, in America, so-and-so goes first and then so-and-so’s wife and then the next person in terms of financial and social prominence.”

He was about to quit the sport altogether when he met Hardaway, who by the late ‘70s already was a fox-hunting legend. He was a boisterous Georgia good ol’ boy who had been breeding foxhounds since he was 12, creating a very fast pack capable of chasing foxes through the swamps and pine forests of Georgia.

Hardaway also was appalled at the sport in Virginia.He described fox hunting there as “entrenched ignorance masquerading as tradition.”

Waterman thought that was dead-on accurate. He had concluded that you couldn’t have first-rate fox hunting in America. The rainfall was far lower than in Ireland, which made for tough scenting conditions, which made it hard for the hounds to keep up with the foxes.

Baloney! Hardaway replied. He told Waterman that he’d bred some hounds who could chase a fox anywhere. So Waterman went to Georgia. He spent two weeks hunting with Hardaway, drinking with Hardaway, absorbing the Hardaway philosophy.

“We had a fantastic time,” Waterman says. “He had a type of hound that could run a fox as well as anything I’d seen in Ireland. It absolutely changed my life.”

Randy Waterman was now a man with a mission, and he soon got his chance--and a challenge.

Piedmont is the oldest fox hunt in the United States, dating to 1840. Its territory is probably the best hunt country in America--90,000 acres of beautiful fields and pastures with plenty of fences to jump, friendly landowners and lots of wild red foxes. By the late ‘70s, though, the hunt was in a deep decline. The pack had deteriorated, membership had dwindled.

Waterman became the master of the Piedmont hunt, which meant that he ran the organization’s finances and dealt with the local landowners--traditionally the job of a gentleman fox hunter. He also became Piedmont’s huntsman, which meant he bred and trained the hounds and directed the hunt in the field--traditionally the job of a hired hand.

He semi-retired from the family gravel business and devoted his life to the hunt. He bought new horses, built a new kennel and hired an assistant. Every year, he pumped tens of thousands of dollars of his own money into the hunt.

“The important thing is the hounds,” Hardaway told him. “The hounds make the sport.” Waterman took his advice and started breeding a new pack, importing some of Hardaway’s fast, eager dogs.

Waterman also cut down on the socializing and the ceremony--all that protocol about who rides in what order--and concentrated on fast, serious fox hunting.

“The question was no longer who’s going to go in what order, it was can you keep up?” Foster says.

Today, the Piedmont hunt is regarded as one of the best--if not the best--in the world.

Meanwhile, Piedmont’s membership has risen from 17 to 70. And last year more than 2,000 visitors paid $150 to ride for a day with Piedmont.

As for Waterman, he is doing exactly what he wants to do. With his little cabin, his pickup truck and his hunting dogs, this third-generation gravel baron lives like a hillbilly, which suits him fine.

“I am, pardon my arrogance, really, really good at this,” he says. “I have devoted an awful lot of money and an awful lot of my time and energy to this sport. It is such a fantastic sport. I admit we’re anachronistic at best. We dress up in silly outfits and gallop along with a little tin horn and all of this foolishness. But there are these wonderful animals and they do these fantastic things.”