Nimrod

Cush fathered Nimrod; he was the first on earth to be a mighty man.  He was a mighty hunter before the LORD.  Therefore it is said, Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the LORD.  The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.  -- (Genesis 10:8-10)

A day such as this one is a precursor to Fall around here, cool and cloudy and slightly damp.  Last night, just at sunset, the coyotes set up howling at a distant siren.  This morning the cats were hunting early and have just now returned without any chipmunks, field mice or the small, short-tailed brown rats that populate the runways in the fescue.  They were just having a look-see, getting their stalk on, tuning up, one might say.  None of us are taking hunting season too seriously, yet.  There will be heat again before the first frost, unless the next ice age is impending.  I have heard fools argue that hunting is some sort of sexual sublimation.  The walking clay from which God formed us hunted long before being human.  If anything, some of the sexual deviants in the world should take up the sport.  They might find what they seek.

The dayrunning houndmen live for weather like this when the wind is not too strong and the scent hangs in the cool, moist air like a fat curveball that fails to break.  Loosed to jump their quarry before the stars fade in the east, the deep-chested dogs can run all day and push even the leggiest coyote to his limits. 

They are fewer these days, the houndmen.  Closed land, the costs of maintaining a pack, the time-pressure of the smart phone age, it all works against them.  The coyote hunters evolved, mostly, from the fox hunters.  Fox hunters were nightrunners.  They would walk or ride, and later drive, to an appointed spot with a cold-nosed Walker or two or three in tow, meeting often on a spot of high ground after the day's work was done, the cows were milked, and every creature, except those called to the ministry, had fed.  The fasting runners sensed what was coming and almost nervously emptied themselves ahead of the challenge.   One of the men might bring coffee, another a smoke-blackened pot.  Soon a fire would be lit, as much for light to talk by as to dispel the chill.  Hounds would be loosed, though not always all at first, and the mixed pack would head off in search of a race.  No one, including the hounds, wanted to hole a fox right away, let alone catch or kill one.  The object was the voice, and maybe, too, the social aspect.  The hounds wanted to run, to catch the scent of a gray, or, preferably, a more sporting red and let it fill their nostrils with a mystery that moved their tongues in ecstatic utterances. 

The old-line Walkers were relatively slow.  They did not push the circling creature too hard.  The game for the hounds was not to catch the fox but to run ahead of the other dogs, to be at the apex of the pack.  There were no sexual distinctions.  It was often a light-footed bitch in the lead.  The hounds in front are more vocal; the hounds in back or that are trying to catch up are less vocal.  Each man knew the voice of each of his hounds and those of his more frequent companions as well, if not better than, the voices of his own children.  It is fairly easy to pick up the unique notes and tones of a dog's running voice, even out of the pack chorus.  Like humans, running dogs have their tenors and basses, altos and sopranos.  Some day, as a new dawn breaks on some golden hill, I will hear again the high, fine mouth of the hound we called Dodger carrying through rich, still air above the voices of his brethren, and I will know familiar faces wait not far ahead. 

Coyotes are mostly all business in front of a pack, but they might know that coyote hounds run to catch.  The short-winded, more feline gray fox will seek escape at the earliest opportunity, but the red, Ol' Reynard himself, he is a game player.  The old-timers tell of seeing a red fox pause to sit, to catch his breath with laughing, lolling tongue, and to listen to his choir of inquisitors as if he enjoyed laying the track as much as they enjoyed searching it out.  Though these predators may fear humans -- just as they fear other predators and even some of their own kind, they have learned to deal with us.  We have brought something into the world which challenges and elevates them, a hint of meaning and an ethereal fragrance of a glory they cannot know apart from us.  But, the Disneyfied object, you bring them death.  It is true.  Sometimes we do, but death is ever the constant companion of the beasts of the field.  They, too, live by death.  The game is in playing it, dodging it, outwitting it.  Josey Wales might have been correct when he said, "Dyin' ain't much of a livin', boy."  Nevertheless, dying is a part of it, the fire we dance around and that with which we pepper the game to rush the blood to our faces, the tears to our eyes, and to vibrate our tongues in chilling, joyous cries.