MY first view of a hunted coyote was one of those vivid, heart-stopping moments that will be with me always. Yellow-grey, wolf-like, he was bounding across the wind-bleached grassland of the Shenandoah Valley like he owned it all, with his mask set for the rearing bulk of the Blue Ridge Mountains to the east.

The sixth Lord Fairfax made the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia his home and introduced the first organised fox hunting to North America in 1747, with the importation of a pack of English foxhounds. Fairfax hunted well into his 70s and instilled his love of the chase in his young protege, George Washington.

For the past 150 years, this has been the territory of the Blue Ridge Hunt, and what a country it is. The abundant woods teem with game; wild turkey and white-tailed deer, black bear and snowshoe hare. Canada geese glide serenely on the lakes and turkey vultures ride the thermals overhead on vast black wings.

Sean Cully MFH with the Rose Tree Blue Mountain hounds in Pennsylvania \ Liam Clancy

The rolling grassland - mile after mile of it - holds scent well and begs to be galloped over. The red fox is the traditional quarry here, but in recent years, the foxes have been increasingly supplanted by coyotes moving in from the west. This is beef country, and the coyotes’ taste for young calves has not endeared them to the locals.

The older school of American huntsmen are ambivalent about hunting coyote, maintaining there is more artistry and old-fashioned venery involved in the pursuit of the fox. The younger practitioners have embraced their new quarry, and their hounds hunt them with a zeal I had never witnessed before.

Limerick native Graham Buston hunts the Blue Ridge Hounds. Widely regarded as one of the finest huntsmen in the United States, Graham is a laconic, unexcitable character, who has not had his head turned or his accent watered down by a decade in the land of the free.

A quiet, ‘How’ya, Liam?’ was all the greeting I received or expected, when I presented myself at a meet of the Blue Ridge one March morning. The welcome may not have been effusive, but Graham had lent me his best horse to ride, a big bold thoroughbred with a raking stride.

We drew across a country of rolling pasture, the view broken here and there by the brown woods and neat farmhouses, each with its rust-red barn and dark huddle of sheltering cedars.

At length, we heard a flurry of music up ahead in a narrow belt of trees, which soon swelled to a full-throated chorus. That was when I saw my coyote loping away out of the top of the covert, covering the ground with big, easy bounds.

The late Greg Schwartz, formerly huntsman to the Bull Run in Virginia \ Liam Clancy

I could have happily stayed rooted to the spot watching him disappear out of view, but Graham was doubling his horn and his hounds were surging out of covert in a tri-coloured torrent, every hound screaming on the line. My horse was all life and fire under me, and I gave him his head and allowed myself to be swept away in what the late Captain Ronnie Wallace described as ‘the haroosh of the chase’.

Popular pursuit

The American Masters of Foxhounds Association (MFHA) recognises 135 packs in 35 states and three Canadian provinces. It has been my privilege to hunt with many of them, from the virgin forests of Ontario to the swamps of Florida, and yet I have really only scratched the surface.

The country varies enormously, but in general, it is true to say that the going is light and the hunting fast. I hunted a pure-bred Canadian horse with the Toronto and North York, and a lovely Irish Draught with the Goshen, but my best days have been on thoroughbreds. So, for that matter, have my worst.

On a day with the Bull Run in Virginia, the mare I was riding pulled a shoe, and a friend kindly offered me her little ex-racehorse as a substitute. I was hardly settled in the plate when hounds hit off the line of a coyote, and a hell-for-leather hunt ensued through miles of low-lying swampy brush. My enjoyment of the occasion was hampered by the discovery that my horse had a mouth like a steel trap and hit every fence we jumped. Only by dint of desperate riding could I prevent him from running the hounds over or meeting his fences at 55 miles per hour. Objectively, it was a very good day, and the handful of us still with hounds at the end felt a justifiable glow of pride, but in my case I hadn’t had a lot of choice in the matter.

The legendary Robert Taylor MFH, huntsman to the Goshen for the last 30 years \ Liam Clancy

Extraordinary experience

The oldest and most northerly hunt in North America is the Montreal (Club de Chasse à Courre de Montréal), founded in 1826, a charming mixture of proper English hunting and French commitment to good living. In late winter, when snow cancels play, the Montreal hounds make the long trek south to Florida, and continue their season as the Palm Beach Hunt.

Hunting in the alligator-haunted swamps of southern Florida is one of the most extraordinary experiences I have ever had. We met at dawn, before the sun had burned off the scent, and spent a fascinating morning following hounds as they hunted a bobcat (red lynx) on a twisting line through the dense palmetto.

“The main thing you need when hunting a bobcat is patience,” huntsman Andrew Marren told me. “They are the most tricky, marvellous thing I’ve ever hunted.”

Andrew, an outgoing, cheery character who makes regular trips to hunt in Ireland, is currently huntsman to the Toronto and North York in Ontario. They hunt a beautiful country on the eastern edge of the Niagara Escarpment, all rolling wildflower meadows, broadleaf forests and neat Mennonite farms. Their season is short, usually running from August to mid-November, but they are a jolly, welcoming bunch, who make the most of their sport before the long snow-bound winter sets in.

Andrew also has his own private pack of bassets, the Old Port, who hunt snowshoe hare with a wonderful mellow cry. Snow does not prevent the bassets from going out, and the community Andrew has built up around the little pack helps to make the Canadian winter a little brighter for its members.

Hunting epicentre

The Virginia Piedmont, the pretty, rolling grass country on the eastern side of the Blue Ridge Mountains, has always been the epicentre of American hunting. The attractive town of Middleburg, an hour’s drive west of Washington DC, is deservedly known as America’s horse and hound capital.

Home to the headquarters of the MFHA, it also lies within hacking distance of some of the nation’s most famous packs of hounds. There is the venerable Piedmont, founded in 1840, the swanky Orange County, with whom John and Jackie Kennedy regularly hunted, and the Middleburg Hunt itself, today hunted by top-notch English professional, Richard Roberts.

North of the Potomac River lies the little state of Maryland, with an equally strong tradition of fox hunting. The Green Spring Valley, north-west of Baltimore, is arguably the state’s premier pack. The GSV are a hard-riding bunch, who take their hunting seriously and resisted until very recently the almost universal American practice of having a second, non-jumping field. This seems entirely fitting, as the American Grand National is run on one side of their kennels, and the Maryland Hunt Cup, America’s most famous timber race, on the other.

The elegant Mrs Devon Zebrovious hunting with the Middlburg \ Liam Clancy

Four miles long, the Hunt Cup is run over 22 solid timber fences, some fully five feet high and, having seen the course, I can confidently state that it is not for me. Green Spring Valley huntsman Ashley Hubbard maintains one of the best organised and most spotless kennels I have ever seen, and is a firm believer that good routine and hard work in kennels pays off during the hunting season.

Maryland is also home to the Goshen and their famous huntsman Robert Taylor MFH, currently at the end of his 30th season hunting these hounds. A fifth generation huntsman, Robert was born at the Kildare’s kennels in Punchestown, where his father was whipper-in, and grew up in the East Antrim country. He is a magnetic, larger-than-life character, who has the knack of keeping every member of his hunt happy, be they hound purists, happy hackers or social members.

The Goshen hounds have some modern English blood, but on the whole they are a good example of a pack of American foxhounds. The American hound is in many ways more akin to an Irish harrier than an English foxhound, with an athletic physique, deep chest, large, drooping ears and a booming cry.

“I love ‘em, ‘cos they’re the thoroughbred of the foxhound,” Robert states. “They’re very quick. If they move, you move straight away or else you lose them. “They’re not easy; they need sensitive handling,” says Jeff Blue, long-serving master of the Middleburg. “If you let them have some freedom and trust them, they’ll trust you.”

Strong voice

As its name suggests, the Penn-Marydel hound is the traditional hunting dog of Pennsylvania, eastern Maryland and Delaware. Even a superficial glance at a pack of Penn-Marydels reveals close similarities to the trencher-fed ‘Kerry beagle’ of Cork and Kerry, to whom they do indeed trace some descent. Like the Kerry beagle, they can be temperamental and are not for everyone, but their voices, echoing around the sprawling American woods, must be heard to be believed.

“They’ve got a big booming voice; you can hear seven couple of them and it sounds like 40 couple,” Ashley Hubbard told me. “We’ve introduced a little bit of Penn-Marydel blood at the Green Spring, and I’m really liking them.”

“What I like is the English-American cross,” Richard Roberts of the Middleburg maintains. “The American hounds have the voice and the nose. The English hounds have the biddability and the drive. You put those two together and you get the perfect storm.”

Just as hounds must suit their country, so they must suit their huntsman.“It once dawned on me that your hounds become you,” says Andrew Marren.

“People who are lackadaisical, their hounds are lackadaisical, and people who are excitable, their hounds are excitable. And I realised that I’m a fat English huntsman, and I have big fat English hounds!”

Challenges

As elsewhere, hunting in North America is not without its problems. Attracting good staff to work in hunt service is an ongoing difficulty. Mounted fox hunting in America is on the whole a prestigious past-time.

Lads and lassies who come up following the local pack of hounds on foot or producing young horses on their parents’ farm are few and far between. Many Irish and English huntsmen have successfully overcome the obstacles surrounding the acquisition of a working visa and are hunting top-class packs. When it works, it works well.

“They bring good traditions with them,” says Robert Taylor. “Those who have kept their noses clean have been very successful. They get a lot more freedom over here. There’s not as much tugging of the cap, and they can take it a little bit too far.”

Some of the best-known and most prestigious packs in Virginia and Maryland have lost country, as Washington and Baltimore spread westward.

Many hunting landowners have responded by putting their farms into permanent conservation easements, and there is no doubt that hunting has been instrumental in protecting the countryside and its wildlife from suburban development.

For all that, American hunting is little troubled by the intensive farming that has become so prevalent in Ireland. The hunts in the western states in particular have vast swathes of territory open to them.

Anti-hunting sentiment among the general public is almost unknown. It is still possible to look around you in the Virginia Piedmont or the Shenandoah Valley or the rolling farmland of Pennsylvania and feel that in America, hunting continues to enjoy a golden age.