For those loading tools and dogs early in the morning and driving out over fog-shrouded or even snow-covered fields, pause for a moment to reflect on how very short the fox season really is -- a few weeks really.
Short fox seasons are the same all over. In warm weather (anything over 30 degrees) the fox will generally choose to lay out above ground rather than find refuge in a den. An exception is if a fox is being chased, but who has 200 horses and 50 hounds to do that with? And what kind of hunting is that -- more like a traveling circus with a large number of personality disorders in attendance.
If all we had to hunt in the U.S. was red fox, terrier work would not account for too much.
We are extremely lucky, here in the Eastern U.S. and Midwest, to be able to legally hunt with terriers all year long and to be welcomed by farmers anxious to get rid of nuisance groundhogs, raccoons and possums.
We are fortunate to be free of the social and class-conscious baggage that surrounds working terriers in the UK, and we are blessed not only with a wide array of suitable quarry, but with rapidly rising and record-density populations of quarry as well.
No country in the world is better for terrier work than the U.S., and no place in the U.S. has more opportunities to work terriers than the Eastern U.S. and MidWest.
To read more on the geography of American working terriers >> click here.
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