When The Lurcher and The Fox Meet One Sunday Morning
A Lurcher is a dog. It’s an ancient Irish hunting hound bred by crossing three breeds. A greyhound, a Labrador, and thirdly, a choice of Irish Wolfhound, or Border Collie.
A good hunting dog is intelligent, it helps if it’s fast and nimble. The mix of three breeds reveal the character of a brave, robust, and keen dog that’ll chase, and stop at nothing to ground its quarry.
My Lurchers, Bran and Paddy, would cross a field at such speed you could only see two elongated dashes of blue-grey, and reddish brown animal piling through the green grass. They would often become small dots, then disappeared through a distant border hedge.
Bran and I walked together, side by side, no leash, just trust and a set of keen eyes between us. Bran and I entered Pamber Forest. An early walk in the woods where the mist hung among the trees, and the smell of peat soil overwhelmed our senses.
Pamber Forest has a gamekeeper. A man with a gun, dark combat clothes and the mind of a detective. He doesn’t like Lurchers.
He wants to be sure that none of his deer have been killed by night poachers. He lurks, somewhere, among the bracken and trees.
Ruthless parties of men with lamps and shotguns. They hunt for profit these days. No romance, no kids at home waiting for the rabbit stew when dad gets home.
Their lamps are floodlights fixed onto a 4x4 vehicle. The driver crashes through the woodlands, deep into the dark forest to locate where the deer doze in the darkness, shiny eyes keep a lookout. The deer don’t move till morning, the darkness brings cover and danger for the herd.
The gamekeeper hates these poachers, Bran and I hate them too. Back in those days, they’d get five years in prison for taking a deer. 100 years earlier, they’d simply lose a hand by the landlord’s axe. Beasts that hunt noble animals.
Bran sniffed the air, and I gently stepped along the pathway. We weren’t hunters, just observers of nature. To see the wildlife in the forest is a joy. If you walk softly, breathe gently, and control your body — be like an animal — you will see the other animals.
You hear them, or you smell them, but you have to know the difference between the drip-drop of rain, or the dry crack of a branch to the shuffled sound of a paw, a foot, or hoof. If you smell a wild animal, you know you are too close.
There are many sounds in the woods, most are simply nature adjusting its arms and legs, sometimes you hear the brush of a leaf against a wet fur body, or the three strides of a deer bouncing away from danger.
I once listened to a hedgehog shuffling along, grunting, and chattering to itself as it made its way through the cover of the firns. I stopped. Squatted and waited. All the time listening to locate its exact position and direction. It finally popped out onto the pathway where I waited, stopped quickly in its tracks, head up, it squinted at me, then let out a terrified scream. And I felt terrible for scaring the living daylights out of this beautiful chattering hedgehog. I apologized, and said goodbye.
You must attune your ears, and lighten your feet. Remember what time of day or night it is, the season, the weather, the lay of the landscape, trees or fields, or firs and conifers, meadow or marsh? Which plants offer food or medicine to which animal? To know something about the forest will help you know where to find the animals.
They hear you too. The scuff of your boot is heard hundreds of yards away. Don’t scuff. A cold hand pushed into a jacket pocket is a tell-tale sound that makes an animal jump, hide, run for its life. Human noise is a foreign sound in the woods. The smell of soap on a human body, is a solitary day in the woods.
We walked until we came to the crossroads close to Dick Turpin Bridge. Called that after the infamous highwayman Dick Turpin received a bullet in the back as he galloped across a small forest bridge close by.
Pamber Forest is an ancient forest. A local family who live along its borders have used these woods for their upkeep for more than 150 years, maybe longer. Their main business is broom making.
If anybody knows about Pamber Forest, or how to make a good solid besom broom, then it's George Nash and his family. Ask them, if they have time to tell, anything of the legends that dwell among the trees, and you’ll hear the real story. Not the local pub gossip of witches and blaggards who once roamed the forests. There are strange legends about Pamber Forest.
When Hollywood made Harry Potter, the film, they came to George Nash for the exact broom that a witch or wizard needed to sweep across the heavens. He made and supplied all the brooms for Harry and his friends.
I once cut myself a walking stick from Pamber Forest hazel. I did it according to ancient custom. Up before dawn, to the forest, and stand ready with the sharpest knife you have, held close to the straightest branch. As the morning sun breaks on the horizon, cut the branch with one single swoop of the knife. The walking stick will always be straight and solid.
It stayed straight and true for many years. I didn’t need a walking stick, though.
I stopped at the crossroads, looked down at my lurcher Bran, she stared into my eyes for a moment. Her gaze soft and calm, her ears flopped at the sides of her head, she relaxed, as if waiting for my signal as to what we next do. This tells me that there is no gamekeeper close, no deer around us in the trees.
I wanted to move on down the sloped pathway towards a knoll close to an opening. Sometimes, if we were careful with our approach, we’d spy a red fox sitting on the knoll, pondering the morning light. I’d only seen him twice before.
A fox that sits alone, relaxed and wild, offers a beautiful sight for any walker. Still at the crossroads, I heard a movement.
I could tell the noise came from the bracken at the edge of the pathway. A ray of sunshine splashed down to create a red and yellow pool, the red and green bracken glinted darkly. I stepped forwards two feet. Looked, and saw the coiled body of an adder.
Red-brown body, dark zig-zag that matched the lines of bracken. Well camouflaged by nature.
His head already raised. He knew we were there, probably hoping we’d pass quickly, so he could carry on enjoying the morning sunshine. Adders love to bask in the sun, especially on a warm rock.
I stayed too long.
He pulled his head higher, and coiled backwards to put some spring into his body. His dark eyes stared directly at me. His powerful bull like head steady, showing me that he had no fear, he would strike if I didn’t skidaddle in the next few moments. So, I signalled to Bran that it was time to smoothly walk away, no sudden movements. Just back up, then disappear into the forest.
The European adder is a beautiful but poisonous snake. Get bitten, and you’ll feel a slow burn in the limbs, swelling that has no end to it, and generally, it ruins your Sunday morning.
Most people don’t die from adder bites, partly because an adult is strong enough to withstand the poison for a few hours, and most adults know they need to get to a hospital for treatment quickly. That’s why they survive the adder bite.
I’ve known people to experience sudden swelling in the leg. They have no idea why. It gets worse, very painful, and so they go to the hospital. They and the doctors are baffled about the pain and swelling, until some bright spark of a nurse or doctor suggest examining the leg for the tiny, almost imperceivable, puncture marks from the adder’s fangs.
Some people claim an adder bite is like a big bee sting. Not at all, it’s far more dangerous than that. So, I gave Bran a nod and a wink, and we disappeared into the woods to leave the viper to sunbathe.
As we approached the fox knoll, I could already see it was vacant. I watched Bran, her movements, her eyes.
Where she looked, I looked. She’s got the gift, that natural instinct not yet ruined by modern life. Humans have lost it by the use of machines and computers. The instinct to know about something unseen, to locate food, to know of danger before it’s too late.
The smell of peat on the forest floor became mixed with a pungent smell of wild animal. I stopped, Bran stopped. Her body taut, her claws dug into the earth, ready to leap at, or from danger.
We stepped forwards, one step. The smell became stronger, We were silent. A few more steps and the source of the smell became obvious. A large bramble bush with a dugout in the middle. A sleeping fox in the dugout.
The fox is sly. We all know that. This fox was a tired fellow. He slept noisily, and let off a stink that would cause a ferret to rumple its nose and sneeze.
Bran shifted her feet a little, stretched her neck, and sniffed the air. She was a tough hound, and game for anything. I wouldn’t let her get into a scrap with a fox, ever. She doesn’t need to prove herself.
She was still off the leash, but she kept her cool. I followed her lead, and she checked in with me every few seconds, just to be sure that we were on the same page.
We stood only three feet from its lair, the fox grunted as it slept. The stench of its wet fur covered our own natural scent. The grunting fox caused me to quietly laugh. It stirred, and then it awoke.
Bran was fearless. She waited for me to signal her to attack. I didn’t want her to attack, to become embroiled in a scrap that would leave her torn and ragged.
The fox had spent a lifetime fighting off enemies, thieves, and dodging witches and wizards in the forest. I slipped a lead through Bran’s leather collar, and pulled her close to my thigh. Then I clapped my hands twice. A human sound, a foreign sound. The fox leaped up, scrambled through the thick bush, and out onto a pathway alongside a nearby stream.
The sound of a clap in the forest travels far. It echoes and bounces through the trees. A warning shot that sends the wild things of the woods running for their holes and burrows, deer leapt and searched for better cover. Hedgehogs screamed and scrambled through the conifers, the viper hissed, and the fox ran quickly along the banks of the stream.
The clap of a human hand sent fear rippling through the forest.
