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more than their share of dog sense. Miller’s Rags belonged to that last category. “He was one smart hound." Bruce recalled. “One time, a fox ducked into a garden. 01’ Rags went round and round and round that garden, trying to find a way in to that fox. There wasn’t one. So Rags just reached up and grabbed a piece of that fence in his jaws and ripped it off. Then he went in and killed that fox!”
Corbin’s hounds are sons and daughters of the Old Dominion. “They’re an old Virginia breed that my father had and I’ve just kept the stock up over the years," he said.
At 74, Bruce no longer follows his dogs on hoi’seback. Corbin, 30 some years his rival’s junior, gave up the mounted chase when he was just a teenager. "When I was younger, 1 didn't need a horse! I'd park my truck on a hill, let the hounds out and follow them on foot. But now bv running days are over,” Corbin said. While he still trails behind the songs of his hounds, he admits to sometimes coming back to the truck to wait.
A few years back, Corbin had coon dogs, bird dogs, rabbit dogs and fox hounds. “There weren't enough hours in the day for me." he recalled, his wife, friendly face creasing into a smile. "Going out coon huntin’ all night and then after birds, fox or rabbit the next day got old in a hurry.”
Like Bruce, he remembers a time when the hunts lasted far longer. “Now. my hounds will run a fox for five or ten minutes, up to maybe an hour. We don’t have the long chases for three or four hours like we did when my father raised hounds. The dogs are must faster today."
Bruce takes his dogs out only occasionally: Corbin still hunts two or three times a week if the weather’s nice. Seldom do the chases for either end with a kill. "It's a rare occasion when my hounds get a fox," Corbin admitted. "There are too many groundhog holes and the foxes know where every one of them are."
And as the foxes have come to know the land, through repeated pursuits, so have Corbin and Bruce come to know their quarry. The red fox will go to ground: the gray w ill climb a tree to escape. Reds get mange; grays are susceptible to distemper. Red foxes will run clear out of the county; grays stay in their home territory.
Deer Will Be Downfall
Learning the sly ways of the fox and breeding faster hounds balance the increased prevelance of
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