The Chronicle of the Horse - Five Rules for
Fieldmasters September 20, 1996 In the quarter century since Erskine
Bedford took over the field for the Piedmont Fox Hounds
(Va.) field from late MFH Theodora Randolph, he has learned
a lot. And he shared it with staff members from hunts across
the continent at the MFHA seminar in Southern Pines, N.C.,
last April. His first rule was to know your
country. "How do I do it? Year after year, I go
out with staff and help clear the country. After you've
hunted it for 25 years, you know where the holes are and
where the rock is going to slide when you come down off a
cliff face. So you sensitize your field to what's comoing
up," he suggested. Bedford actually had five rules for
fieldmasters to follow. 1. Have a great pack of
hounds, 2. Have a great huntsman, 3. Have good horses, 4. Know your country, 5. Make sure the field has good sport and
good fun. And how do you handle that? Bedford
asked, somewhat rhetorically. "First and foremost, keep as close to
your huntsman as you can, and that will vary day to day,
depending on scenting conditions and the mood of the
huntsman. And if you do something wrong, that mood will
change drastically and you'll fall 100 yards farther back,"
he said. Bedford advised thinking of the field as
the audience at a movie. "You, as the fieldmaster, are in
the front row, so stay down the hill enough so that the rest
of the field can be above you and see hounds and staff. It's
fantastic when you can get them there and hounds can open
right in front of them, and if you get a view away, it's
unbelievable," he said. Bedford addressed a good deal of his
remarks to the subject of educating the field, and his
preference for positive rather than negative
reinforcement. "In our country, we have a lot of Texas
gates, wire gates that take an unbelievable amount of time
to take down and get back up again. So I take the front end
of my field and send them to be gate men. There's a standing
rule that once you get a grate, you come back to the front
of the field and report to the master that the gate is
shut. "That does two things: It enables that
individual to get back to the front of the field
legitimately; and it gives you the chance to thank him or
her in front of the entire field. That's positive
reinforcement for help they've given you." When part of the field is coffee housing,
said Bedford, if you turn around and tell someone to shut
up, that's negative. "But if the fieldmaster will turn back
and call, 'Hark,' chances are they will all stop talking and
you haven't singled out an individual, they'll all take the
blame collectively." Bedford also educates his field to hound
work. "If I've got tail hounds, I'll tell them, hounds
right, or hounds left. If they're educated and the field is
strung out, they'll pass it back." And by the same token, if
hounds come up through the field, members will alert the
fieldmaster. "That way, they feel it's part of their
duty to be a decent member of the field, and that way you
can get closer to hounds." Sometimes, Bedford, admitted, the
negative can be more intriguing. He used to lead the field
on a mare who was a bad kicker on the right side. "If you
knew you had a thruster behind you that might cause
problems, you just always pulled and canted to the right. If
anyone came up on her right, she would kick, and her batting
average was about .800. "I had a big red pompom in her tail, so
they couldn't say they didn't see it. Most of them would
apologize - when they came back from the hospital," he said.
"That's kind of a tough way to educate your field. That's
the negative method." Bedford added that Piedmont always had
three rules for the field: no hilltoppers, no green horses,
and keep up. Anyone who had trouble - a thrown shoe, a bad
horse - is supposed to know that it was his or her
responsibility to get to the nearest road and get home
without interfering with hounds. Finally, counseled Bedford, think of the
future. "After the grown-ups have gone in, invite the
juniors up if they can run and jump. Once you turn a child
on to speed, he may go many places in the horse world, but
he'll always come back to foxhunting because it's the one
place he can really enjoy it," he said. © Copyright 1998 The
Chronicle of the Horse