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Apr 27, 2009 - 9:29PM

If you have a few minutes....it's worth reading. written Nov 28th, 1995

Foxhunters in front of Crystal Cafe, Crystal Springs, MS. Photograph courtesy of Bill Pevey.
Going Inside:
Transformation of Fox Hunting in Mississippi
by Wiley Charles Prewitt, Jr.

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Game and hounds are the invention of gods, of Apollo and Artemis. They bestowed it on Chevron and honored him therewith for his righteousness. And he, receiving it, rejoiced in the gift, and used it. --Xenophon, On Hunting.1

For many people, fox hunting conjures up images of red clad gentry riding to hounds, yet most Mississippi fox hunting was part of an informal rural tradition in which local hunters gathered at a good geographical vantage point to simply listen to their hounds run a fox. In south Mississippi a group of fox hunters cling to their avocation despite reversals in wildlife populations, altered interpretations of property rights and changing rural lifeways. This article traces traditional fox hunting in Mississippi from its origin as a communal rural past-time pursued in the open countryside and describes how its devotees adapted it to large fenced areas known as fox pens. Interviews with the participants allow the hunters themselves to describe the forces that influenced fox hunting and their reactions to them. The interviews offer insight into the changing natural and cultural environment of the state and suggest reasons for the resiliency of fox hunting as a rural activity.

The Fred Pevey Memorial Fox Hunters Association evolved out of this tradition and is typical of many fox hunting groups around the state. Organized first as the Copiah County Fox Hunters Association in the first decades of the twentieth century, by 1936 the group was renamed the Alton N. Parker Fox Hunters Association in honor of a local aviator and fox hunter. The organization served as means of bringing local fox hunters together for a field trial where judges evaluated the performance of members' hounds according to the rules and point system of the National Foxhunters Assocation. Copiah County native and World War I veteran Fred Pevey devoted much of his life to fox hunting and was instrumental in the organization of field trials in the Copiah County area. He traveled to many of the major fox hound field trials during the thirties, forties, fifties and sixties and had participated in judging several major field trials. His influence helped establish a strong interest in organized hunting in the Copiah County area. Also, his association with some of the leading fox hound breeders of the time helped bring in some of the first pedigreed hounds in the area. By the seventies, most local hunters acknowledged Fred Pevey as a major mentor for Copiah County fox hunting and field trialing and though the exact date is obscure, the association has borne his name since the mid seventies. Field trials formalized a type of fox hunting common in much of the south and constituted quite a different experience from the traditional informal hunt.2

Lauren Matthews, an older member of the Fred Pevey Association, explained traditional fox hunting as a communal activity enjoyed by friends and neighbors who met in the evenings with their dogs. He remembered, ". . . we'd turn loose and get out there on a hill and build us a fire, and nine times out of ten, we'd never leave just right there and run till daylight the next morning." Dave Hellums, an older fox hunter and noted fox hound breeder recalled, "Many times, I'd load up four or five dogs and go hunting and turn them out and sit there and listen to them all night." The more or less circular path run by a pursued red fox enabled hunters to stay in one place while following the chase or "race" by the sounds of the dogs. Hunters familiar with the individual voices of their own hounds and those of their companions' dogs could tell where the hounds were in relation to the fox, knowing which hound led the pack, how close they were to the fox and (the dread of all fox hunters) whether a hound "quit" or gave up the race. The practice of fox hunting was purely a sporting ritual enjoyed by those who, while often not wealthy, at least possessed the time and resources to make capture of edible game unimportant. In fact, while the hounds probably felt differently, the object of the hunters was never to catch the fox but only to listen to their dogs run it. Hounds could only occasionally catch a healthy fox on his home territory, as the fox usually retreated to one of his holes when it tired. This bloodless objective marks an important distinction between fox hunting and most other types of hunting in which some type of game is expected at the end of a fruitful hunt.3

These evening rituals of fox hunting thrived in an earlier Mississippi because of a definable set of circumstances. Fox hunting rose to prominence as big game species declined in the face of widespread settlement in the late nineteenth century. Deer, bears, panthers and turkeys all adapted poorly to intensive clearcutting and farming. As large game disappeared, red and grey foxes filled an important niche in the environment of the pre mechanized cotton culture. They adapted perfectly to the farmland of the time and red fox especially provided an excellent game animal for hounds. With the absence of deer in settled areas of Mississippi from the turn of the century to the fifties and sixties, hunters were reasonably sure that when they released their dogs, the track they struck would be that of a fox. In addition, fox hunters faced little opposition from landowners. Until the seventies, posted land was unheard of in most fox hunting areas. Landowners generally looked on hunting as a communal right within the rural community and they allowed and usually welcomed fox hunters on their land. Gatherings of fox hunters usually included landowners with their hounds although landownership was in no way required. Fox hunting groups reflected those in the local community interested in fox hunting and possessed of enough time and resources to pursue it. Although the cost of upkeep of hounds that pursued no edible game usually excluded the very poor, fox hunters represented a broad spectrum of the middle and upper classes.4

Because red foxes are creatures of well settled farming areas and large areas are required to run them, few types of hunting better illustrate the once cohesive rural community than fox hunting. David Hellums offered an example, "Well when we hunted outside, you just throw 'em in the truck and go over to a certain spot, 'cause back in them days most people didn't care if you were running on their property. Be glad, most of the time they was glad for you to come over and chase a fox. It may be catchin' his chickens, or doin' something, you know. And they'd want you to come over and run 'em and maybe catch one every once in a while. And it was a pleasure to, you know, to go out and run 'em. You just go out and find you a good place, and back up side of the road and dump 'em out through the woods or out across a pasture, you know. And pretty soon, the race is on and chances are, the farmer or whoever owned the place would probably come around and talk to you a while, you know, while they were runnin'. But you don't have that any more. That's all gone." Folks in the rural community generally knew each other and understood fox hunting as a part of rural life. Billy Pevey, the son of Fred Pevey, came back into fox hunting after an absence of some thirty years. He notes some of the distinct changes in the rural community around Crystal Springs since the times he hunted with his father. "Back then, if your dogs ran on your neighbors' property, they didn't say anything," Pevey remembered. "They didn't care. Your neighbors were close friends. Even the ones that lived five or six miles away, you went to church with them. They didn't care if your dogs ran on their place. So you didn't have to worry about this kind of stuff as far as people shooting your dogs or running over them with a car... We didn't have any deer, so the dogs didn't run off. They didn't know what a deer was, so they didn't have them to chase." By the fifties and sixties, deer returned to many parts of Mississippi through Game and Fish Commission restocking programs. In addtion, a significant outmigration of rural folk was occurring which enhanced the prospects of deer survival and deteriorated the rural community in which the fox hunting population thrived. The rise in deer populations and the changes in the composition and character of rural communities demanded sometimes painful adaptations by fox hunters.5

The specific time varied with each locality in Mississippi but sometime in the 1970s fox hunting in the open countryside became almost impossible. The fox hounds often disappeared while chasing deer, succumbed to cars while crossing highways, or followed their game onto lands posted against trespass where their masters could not retrieve them. Large numbers of fox hunters left the sport, some took up deer hunting or raccoon hunting, but others attempted a solution through the development of large fenced enclosures where they might run their hounds without fear of deer, cars, or irate property owners. Fenced enclosures or "fox pens" sprung up all over the South in response to the problems of hunting "outside". Leon Canoy, a Fred Pevey Association fox hunter and successful hound breeder, described the sometimes desperate situations that drove fox hunters "inside." "The pens, for now days, was the greatest thing that happened to fox hunters," Canoy explaines. "It wasn't by choice. It was just that something had to be done, you know. And that's why fox pens was built. But it had gotten to the point you couldn't hardly run outside with any pleasure. Either somebody was threatening to shoot you or your dogs 'cause they was goin' across an acre of land or something, you know. Or either he's on a highway or somebody leased up a deer club for deer, and they didn't want your dogs on there... A lot of people in town moved out and bought nine acre lots or two acre lots, and they [these lots] became their 'Ponderosa.' And if anything walked across their place they wanted to kill it or call the law. And it put a damper on a lot of things because folks would shoot at you. They'd come out on the road and cuss you out. So the pen really was our salvation." Salvation consists of large areas from 100 to well over 1,000 acres enclosed by a woven wire fence at least eight feet high. Pen owners purchase foxes and more often coyotes (or trap their own) to stock the enclosures. Hunters are charged a fee to hunt, usally around five dollars for each hound they release in the pen. Automatic feed dispensers provide food for the foxes and coyotes in the pens which are usually equipped with resting areas inaccessible to the dogs where tiring animals may escape the hounds for a time.6

The enclosures provide an experience much removed from a traditional hunt and most fox hunters, if given a choice, would prefer to hunt on the "outside". Speaking of the pens, one hunter said "... it's nothing perfect...its the best we got though...if I had the choice, I'd run outside, you know. If it wasn't any problem, I'd run outside, to where you could run just fox." Another hunter felt that the pens still offered "friendship and camaraderie, but it's not the same thing as being outside, being free if you were, if it was like that...You just don't have that anymore. You're confined to a pen." Descriptions like "free" and "confined" capture part of the transition in Mississippi fox hunting. On the outside, only the game and the hounds determined the boundary of the chase. The fox hunt was one of the communal uses of the land that the traditional rural community recognized and participated in. Running the hounds characterized a cohesive rural community because by necessity the hounds used land without respect to boundary lines. As the exodus to urban areas and the diminishing reliance on farming made the rural community less stable, boundary lines and acreage in the country came to mean privacy and privilege in a way that eroded communal property rights. The pre eminence of private property rights over perceptions of communal rights to hunting land drew a response in kind from fox hunters with the establishment of the pens. That is, the solution to the enforced boundaries of landowners was the creation of the fox hunters' own private areas. Still, fox hunters perceive the pen as a last resort. "It's got its good and bad points in a fox pen," one hunter contends, "but it's all we got, you know. And it's either this, or our sport's gone, you know. And we don't want it to go."7

While allowing fox hunters to continue their avocation, the artificial boundaries of the fox pen influenced the hunters' perceptions of the chase and the traits of their hounds. The fences of the pens give it the character of an arena for the chased game and hounds, and in some ways increase the opportunity for an objective competition or field trial to take place as a part of a fox hunt. Traditional fox hunts usually took place out of the sight of the hunters themselves. Hunters followed the race primarily by listening to the hounds. A field trial on the outside demanded a substantial effort on the part of judges to follow the hounds and make visual evaluation of their progress. In fox pens, the game and hounds tend to follow trails where judges may catch a glimpse of the pack during the race, making it easier to tell which hound is in the lead. Field trials inside fox pens involve several judges who position themselves around the pen and keep track of the leading dogs by the large numbers painted on the hounds. The judges usually take the numbers of the first six or seven hounds that pass by them behind the fox or coyote and the hounds are later given numerical scores according to where they were in the pack, that is, their "speed and drive". Ideally the hounds are given "hunting" and "trailing" scores in addition to the "speed and drive" scores but the abundance of game inside most pens eliminated the need for a hound to seek out the fox or coyote. The major requirement of a hound in a fox pen is the stamina necessary to propel itself through several hours of near consistent running. The hound that stays well to the front of the pack for several hours giving the judges numerous opportunities to record its number will accumulate enough points to place well in the field trial. The abundance of game along with the confinement of the fox pen make hunting skills less important for the hound while placing a premium on running ability and allowing hunters the opportunity to objectively quantify their dos' performance. One hunter concluded, "In a pen there is no hunting and trailing because they've got the game, the pen is full of game...all the dog's got to do is keep travelling until he runs up on that game. There he is, so its all speed and drive.... So, endurance is the main ingredient today that you want to breed into your hounds. Cause if he scores a thousand points, and he quits an hour or five minutes or two minutes before the hunt's called off, he loses every bit of it."8

The point system of the field trial and the competition it signifies became more important as running moved inside fox pens. The quantification of the performances of dogs took the place of some of the freedom that hunters experienced on the outside. Fox hunting associations held more field trials than ever through the aid of the pens. Hunters' esteem the winning hounds of field trials held inside pens more than the winners of those still conducted on the outside. Today, as in Fred Pevey's day, the major American fox hound field trials, known to hunters as the "National" and the "U.S.O." are held on the outside. However, it is the hounds that win trials on the inside who possess the genes most coveted by the breeders today and who therefore perpetuate their characteristics in the fox hound population. Hound breeders probably find the characteristic of stamina a more objective and more attainable goal than the rather nebulous notion of hunting ability. Fox hunters accept the more formalized competition among hunters and the increased specialization of hounds as simply part of the advent of the fox pens without which their sport might end.9

Hunters generally embrace the pens and emphasize the positive aspects of fox hunting opportunities today, some of which remain the same that hunters have enjoyed for generations. Traditionally, most hunters raised their own fox hounds and this practice is still important to many people. The challenge of mating the hounds that will result in a combination of the best characteristics of the sire and the dam is one of the most powerful attractions of fox hunting. Bill Pevey recalled that the successful outcome of a match, known to hunters as "making a good cross," was a major factor in his father's love of fox hunting. The search for a good cross is very much a part of fox hunting today. Much of the talk at fox pens revolves around hunters negotiating crosses among their own hounds or discussing the desirable traits of hounds among those at stud with professional breeders. With stud fees of around $100 to $150 and puppy prices from $75 to $125, serious hunters can obtain part of the more popular bloodlines for relatively reasonable amounts. Even though successful breeders do a brisk business in stud services and puppies, raising hounds usually constitutes only a hobby or a part time job and simply allows them more involvement with fox hunting.10

One of the most common reasons that fox hunters offer for continuing the chase is the camaraderie they enjoy at the pen hunts and field trials. Hunters describe a fellowship absent of distinctions between the wealthy and the poor and claim that while hunting, the common bond of the fox hunt supersedes one's social status. Lauren Matthews and others maintain lifelong friendships as part of their devotion to fox hunting: "It is...like a family reunion for me. I know just about everybody that comes to these field trials." The fox pens make possible the "get togethers" of the fox hunting community and their popularization has brought many old houndmen back into the sport and recruited a number of young people. Hunters generally perceive the interest in their sport as growing or at least stable after a long period of decline. Some see fox hunting as becoming more of a family recreation because of the camping facilities at many pens which encourage weekend stays by fairly large groups. Hunting associations often put special emphasis on children's involvement through youth hound shows and scheduling hunts and field trials to coincide with school holidays. The emphasis that hunters place on fellowship and the broadening spectrum of those who participate in events at fox pens suggest that the fox hunting community has supplanted some of the functions of the rural community for many fox hunters. The hunts in the pens maintain a network of relationships among fox hunters that in the past proved vital to hunting on the outside. Clearly the years changed fox hunting and no doubt Lauren Matthews correctly surmised, "...that old kind of hunting like we had back then, that's just like yesterday, that's gone, it ain't coming back." More than anything else, his relationships with other hunters kept Matthews and others like him involved in fox hunting and ultimately led them through the adaptations to the pen.11

Perhaps the sense of fellowship is the only part of fox hunting to pass through the last fifty years unscathed. Fred Pevey and his contemporaries would understand little of deer troubles and "no trespassing" signs and they might have balked at casting their hounds inside a pen, as many who witnessed the transition surely did. But without a doubt they would recognize the camaraderie that accompanied the houndmen into the pen.

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ENDNOTES
1. Xenophon, Scripta Minora, translated by E. C. Marchant, London, William Heinemann, New York, G.P. Putnam's Sons (MCMXXV), 367; although Marchant suspects that the introduction to Cynegeticus (On Hunting) is a much later addition to the body of the work, Xenophon would probably have been pleased at the sentiment conveyed by the first lines, xlii, xliii.

2. Stuart Marks, Southern Hunting in Black and White: Nature History and Ritual in a Carolina Community (Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1991) 92-125, Marks explains some of the different types of fox hunting from a social and culture perspective. By Laws, Running Rules and Regulations, National Fox Hunters Association (Lexington, KY: The Chase Publishing Co., 1993) Tape logs of interviews are on file in the Documentary Projects Archive, Center for the Study of Southern Culture, University of Mississippi, The transcripts of Laurin Matthews and other informants interviewed in 1994 for this study will be referred to by name, accession number, and page number, Laurin Matthews, MS-WP-001, 11, 12, 18, 19. Bill Pevey, MS-WP-005, 11, 12.

3. Laurin Matthews, MS-WP-001, 3 (quote), 25. David Hellums, MS-WP-002, 4 (quote), 13, 30.

4. Stuart Marks, 92-125, Marks notes some of the requirements of a good fox hunting area in his study of Scotland County, North Carolina. Wiley Prewitt, "The Best of All Breathing: Hunting and Environmental Change in Mississippi, 1900-1980" (unpublished Masters Thesis, University of Mississippi, 1991), 51-160.

5. David Hellums, MS-WP-002, 13. Billy Pevey, MS-WP-005, 8. 9. Wiley Prewitt, 51-160.

6. Leon Canoy, MS-WP-003, 14, 3. Billy Pevey, MS-WP-005, 9. 10. David Hellums, MS-WP-002, 35.

7. David Hellums, MS-WP-002, "its nothing perfect..." 29, "Its got its good and bad points..." 20. Billy Pevey, MS-WP-005, "friendship and camaraderie..." 9.

8. Leon Canoy, MS-WP-003, "In a pen...", 16, 17.

9. David Hellums, MS-WP-002, 21, 22. Stuart Marks, 92-125, Marks investigated some of the competitiveness among hunters and how they felt about their fox hunting although his work involved those who field trialed and hunted on the outside. Mary Hufford, Chaseworld: Foxhunting and Storytelling in New Jersey's Pine Barrens (Philedelphia: Universityof Pennsylvania Press, 1992). Hufford also deals with the ways fox hunters perceive their sport but she too studied hunters who continued to run their hounds on the outside.

10. Billy Pevey, MS-WP-005, 4, 5, 16.

11. David Hellums, MS-WP-002, 20, 21, 26, 37, 38. Lauren Matthews, MS-WP- 001, 8, 5.

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