by Jim Harrison
At the pavilion a crowd of a hundred or so had gathered. Guy was rather irked, claiming that the crowd was there, much like those who surround auto accidents, only to watch the gutting and caping of the stag. There would be an hour's wait while the hunters returned on their horses, washed up and had a brandy or two. We sat in the car drinking from a good bottle Michel had produced and finishing the picnic basket. Guy fiddled with his cameras and talked of hunts he had witnessed in his youth. He said that a decade ago he had allowed a few men from the hunt to enter the château grounds to dispatch a stag at bay. Guy had been very nervous about the race horses and then the man, not Serge, who was to serve the stag lost his nerve and the brother of Pierre Firmin-Didot had dismounted and in his elegant hunting clothes had directly done the serving, narrowly missing a thrust of the horns. I've always been interested in this primitive form of courage, never having felt much of it in my own bones. An angry dachshund can be an overwhelming threat to a former paperboy.
The trackers arrived with the stag and quickly gutted it out and performed the deftest skinning job I had ever seen. Some in the crowd were offended by the smell, which was actually sweet compared to butchering a Michigan deer that had received a gut shot from a 30-06. The trackers carved the meat, skillfully stripping the loins and placing it in a large burlap bag, leaving only the sparsely meated trunk and the intestines which they covered with the hide, propping the stag's head in an upright position.
The hunters emerged from the clubhouse and took their places a dozen feet behind the stag. A short, gracious speech was made by Jean Ferjoux and then Serge arrived with about half the hounds, perhaps twenty or so. The hounds became berserk at the smell of the carcass and surged and growled within the circle of spectators but were easily controlled by the tracker who cracked a whip above their heads. Then the hide was pulled back and placed near the hunters and Ferjoux gave the order for the hounds to be released. Within an instant an indescribable squabble took place: the innards and trunk were pounced upon in unison by all twenty hounds. Fights over morsels were broken up instantly by the whip cracking well above the hounds’ heads. Ouragan trotted away proudly with a lung, a reward for his early-morning labors. He evidently held a high place in the kennel pecking order as no other dog challenged his prize. In a few minutes the remains of the stag had disappeared except for a well-chewed thick white spine. Even the sturdy ribs had been ground up and swallowed. Then Serge returned the obedient hounds to the kennel in an orderly group.
The hunters with horns in hand organized themselves in an order evidently based on seniority, with Jean Ferjoux standing in the middle of the group with his hands behind his back. They took turns playing solos, then choruses: this music, which was to last an hour, was a complete retelling of the four-hour hunt in song. There are over three hundred possible melodies to describe particular incidents including the débucher and the crossing of the river. Ferjoux requested several tunes that apparently characterized the parts of the hunt most pleasurable to him. The young man in the long army coat again played with great beauty and intensity. When the music finished the forest began to darken and the crowd and hunters shivered in the evening coolness. The hunt disbanded.
That evening we sat and rather drowsily talked about the hunt: our natural sorrow and empathy for the stag that all but the most moronic hunter feels for his quarry, but also our sympathy for the hounds, also noble beasts in whose blood runs this ancient urge for the quarry—dogs that had begun anyway as predators and had their instincts refined by man to hunt a particular beast, just as a good bird dog singles out his grouse. The sport is nearly a millennium old in France and in some parts of the world dates back five millennia, as in the stele I had seen in a museum of the great Abyssinian lion dogs upon their own quarry. There is no apologia now for hunting except that the desire is in us. Some are born hunting and rarely in our time out of need. I thought of the painting I had seen last summer in Browning, Montana, of a Blackfoot Indian delivering an arrow while riding full speed along a buffalo's side. Of course then it was what is called “necessary” but at the very least la chasse had preserved the ritual dignity of the hunt. It wasn't a million licensed hunters in my home state wandering around the shrinking woods, probably killing more trees with their stray shots and target practice than the sixty to ninety thousand deer taken yearly. Without becoming stupidly atavistic one might say at base that we are meat eaters still and some like to kill the meat they eat, which is not far removed in dignity from letting someone else do the killing.
Early the next morning on the way to Orly at two hundred kilometers per hour (I'm not kidding), my emotions left the remnant of the sixteenth century and reentered the twentieth. The hunt would be finally doomed not by its outraged opponents but by the fact that there is simply little room left in which to “chase” an animal. Dreux, the sanitarium, National 12, housing developments and villages left its edges a bit frayed. So the already minuscule remnant of the past suffers further attrition from the usual bane of population. And the motorized cavalcade that follows each hunt confuses the hounds with auto exhaust, diminishing the privacy of the sport. Cars. Population. My eight-hour jet took me from Orly to Detroit, another French name, and in part the ironic source of the problems, the coming end of it all. Even noblemen seem less interested in being regarded as “noble,” what with the force of all of us in the middle who inadvertently will deny them by our press of numbers their ancient pleasures.
1972
A Memoir of Horse Pulling
We thought we would have a swim and Jack quickly shed his clothes and I followed him into the small shallow pond covered with pale green algae, the water nearly strangled with weeds. We were perhaps seven and within the logic peculiar to young boys and pigs, muddy water is better than a hot August afternoon sun. When we got out we tried to scrape the scum and slime from our bodies which had begun to itch. Jack caught a watersnake and slapped its head against a fencepost; the snake's writhing ceased in his grasp and he dropped it. We looked over to the small pasture's woodlot fifty yards or so away; half emerged from a grove of tag-alder trees was an enormous bronze horse, the back of him invisible in the shade and the full sun falling on his great head and neck and flaxen mane. Jack said that is my dad's new horse and it will pull at the fair. It was so much grander than either part of my grandfather's team, which were lightweights and used only for farm work. I stood there and Jack walked along the fence toward the woodlot saying I'll show him to you. He struck the horse on the flank with a stick and yelled and the horse exploded from the trees running along the fence in my direction so I ducked under the fence. I could feel the hooves pounding in the ground and he galloped past me splashing through the edge of the pond so huge and close and tossing his head and mane and neighing. Then twenty yards or so farther on the horse stopped and fed calmly in the grass.
I would like to avoid any sense of “nostalgia"—the word has the attractiveness of a viral infection to my generation; those who wander about the age of thirty and having reached maturity during the Eisenhower lassitude feel lost within the energetic radicalism of the young, with their apparent willingness to change life-styles on a monthly basis or even more frequently. “Nostalgia” seems to involve the savoring of something permanently lost: the way Doc Blanchard ran, Big Daddy Lipscomb necktied, James Dean talked and drove a Porsche, Ben Hogan endured, or Ali jabbed. I value my memory and find it as fascinating as life in the present; they mix together, coexist, live a comfortable life, confuse each other, and finally, have a sweet and permanent marriage.
Until the age of fourteen I lived in what now seems the nineteenth century in a small county seat of 1500 people in northern Michigan. My father, Winfield Sprague Harrison, was the government agricultural agent dispensing advice to farmers in a hopelessly unfertile countryside of jackpine, scrub oak, cedar swamps, and fields where gravel, sand and marl lurked altogether too close to the surface. The area was short on topsoil and money, but long on its efforts at the time to a
id our boys who were fighting World War II by saving squashed tin cans, tinfoil, bread wrappers, picking milk-weed pods for life preservers, and holding frequent blackouts and air-raid warnings in case the enemy should choose to attack us, though I suspect that it was agreed upon that we were a less than primary target. There was the usual plugged cannon on the courthouse lawn.
My father ran the annual county fair with Francis Godbold, the 4-H (Head, Heart, Health, Hands) director. My father loved his work, having come from many generations of unprosperous farmers; he had worked his way through what was then Michigan Agricultural College and considered farming an applied science and his job that of a missionary who spread the good news of effective farming methods. The fair was always held in late August on three invariably hot and dusty days. There were produce and crafts tents with vegetables stacked neatly, and canning, needlework and sewing with ribbons attached to the winning exhibits. And long sessions of milk cow, beef cattle, calf, pig, sheep, and even chicken judging took place. I took little interest in these; there was a small midway with games of chance and a few rides, a ferris wheel and merry-go-round, plus at least one implausibly frightening whirl and puke sort of machine. And a freak show where one paid an extra dime to see a hermaphrodite, an experience I might add that didn't mar my young psyche. We only argued whether or not “it” could do “it” to himself or herself. Farm children then, before artificial insemination, had a built-in sex education in the barnyard. But before noon each day I would have spent my miserably small allowance and would walk around looking for lost tickets on the ground, envying those who were drinking cold pop, and then I would find and pester my father for more change though he was busy judging everything imaginable, making sure the fair went smoothly. I looked forward only to the 4-H talent show in the evening though I was without any talent and anyway would have been too cowardly to enter. But a little girl I was fond of would sing “Candy Kisses,” someone would play the musical saw, four older girls would imitate the Andrews Sisters, a young man with greasy hair would strum his guitar to the latest Grand Old Opry hit, and then a small boy would attempt “Flight of the Bumblebee” on the accordion.
But the main event, the most exciting spectacle to the adults, was the heavyweight horse pulling contest. The small grandstand would fill early in the afternoon with farmers and their wives talking and shading their eyes with the mimeographed programs. Out in the infield and across the track from the grandstand, a dozen teams or so would be standing, their owners since mid-morning having gone through the involved process of unloading them from trucks and putting on the harness and “working them out” a bit. I was always in the infield and watched the action with no great interest. Horses were simply as common as dogs or hogs to me. I was perpetually wary of the fabled cocked hoof which all my friends knew could kill in an instant, just as they knew men and sheep could breed sheep-humans. Someone had always heard of a recent rumor of a case where a child or man had been kicked through the side of a barn by a giant, angry hoof, “killed dead,” as we used to say. The teamsters would be talking to their horses, straightening and adjusting the harness, chewing tobacco which would bulge one cheek and distort their faces. Later I learned they took snuff or chewed tobacco because it was cheap and nobody ever smoked in a barn, the largest of tinder boxes; smoking in a barn was a taboo on the level of incest. The teams would finally be marched out and people would clap for their favorites. The teams in turn would attempt to pull a loaded stoneboat a certain number of feet. A man with a clipboard would mark their progress, weight would be added and contestants eliminated until what I thought was hours and hours later a champion would be proclaimed. All the people in the hot grandstand would rise and applaud madly and the winning farmer would beam and blush and accept his trophy and the horses would stand there sweating and bored, waiting for the reward of feed and water.
These are first memories, hazy, probably inaccurate. It is lucky though for the world of books that those preadolescents perhaps genetically disposed to be writers don't keep journals. Think of the sheer, mimsy glut of sensitivity that would flood the market. But after the inevitable rejection of everything my parents seemed to value, an alienation lasting a decade, I came back to horse pulling contests; I go to them, few as there are, whenever I get a chance. I stand in the infield and take my clumsy pictures, talk to the farmers, the teamsters, and the beasts still look huge and magnificent; in reverse of the usual childhood memory they have become grander with time rather than diminished.
I was talking about the sport the other day to Leonard Erickson who lives down the road from me in Leelanau County, a fruit-growing area in northern Michigan. The county is a peninsula jutting out into Lake Michigan and the immediate presence of a large body of water tempers the climate and makes cherry growing possible. Aside from being a gentleman, a cattle dealer and fruit farmer, Erickson was for years a competitor and has a knowledge of horse pulling lore not a little less than fabulous. The sport for the “insider” has intricacies that remind one of fly-fishing or grouse hunting, subtle and arcane strategies, and superstitions that would fail any vaguely scientific test. There are cruelties, too, that reflect badly on a very small minority of practitioners.
The Belgian, with origins back before William the Conqueror's warhorses, that day's equivalent of the Sherman tank, is the strongest and most popular breed in heavyweight pulling contests. (I dwell on the heavyweights for the same reason I preferred watching Marciano to Basilio. The Percheron is the most frequent breed in the “lightweights,” the cutoff point being a combined weight per team of 3200 pounds.) But the largest team does not necessarily win; conditioning is the main factor and natural strength, daily workouts, how well the horses pull together as a team are tremendously important. A well-trained team often beats a stronger and heavier one—in fact I have seen a disciplined pair of 4275 pounds beat an ill-prepared, fat team of 5200 pounds. As with dogs there is a great variation of size with the breed. At present there is an attempt being made to breed “more light” Belgian pullers, to sacrifice a bit of their compactness for a rangier horse. Pulling horses are nearly always geldings or mares for obvious reasons. One scarcely can tell a sexed-up bull elephant to “calm down” if there's a female in heat in the area. It is difficult for the neophyte to comprehend the strength of these animals. It has been accurately estimated that a team of championship quality can pull the equal of a rolling load of 110 tons, a deadweight stone boat of around 10,000 pounds, or a seven-bottom plow for a limited distance.
A device called a “hydrometer” mounted on a truck is used in major contests for absolute accuracy. The hydrometer though is unpopular at many county fairs. The audience enjoys the visual drama of the pig iron being gradually added as the contest continues. Usually there are many arguments and much stalling, false passes are made at the hitch, but all of this constitutes a tactic to allow the bottom of the boat to cool, thus reducing the friction of heat caused by the previous contestant. Most teams are keyed to start pulling by the sound of the clank of the hitch when the hook drops in rather than by the shout of the teamster. Two assistants carry the ends of the eveners as the team swings up to the boat, the teamster seats himself holding the reins tightly; then with the clank or shout their flanks lower and the horses strain forward against the weight, tearing out clots of earth with their hooves. When the twenty-seven-and-a-half-foot distance is reached a whistle is blown. Until then the audience refrains from clapping as the horses associate applause with success and will stop short of the distance. Anything short of a full run is measured to determine positioning among the teams.
Horse pulling can be an extremely expensive sport. The prize money is so pitifully small as to make the sport virtually amateur—top prizes rarely go over $250. A pulling team which will be in its prime for only about five years can cost anywhere from $400 to $20,000, the latter amount being the most I've ever heard paid for a team and this particular pair died a few months after the purchase from bloat. To this initial expense
must be added the cost of hauling the team from contest to contest, the feeding of animals which eat four times as much as race horses, the not inconsiderable price of the custom harness required to pull the vast weights. It is simply a sport practiced out of love rather than for profit.
I have thoughts, usually dim and morose, about the mechanization of sport. One of the delights of a long trip into the Absarokas in Montana was the meeting of a Natty Bumppo sort of wilderness crank who openly admitted to the vandalizing of trail bikes because he hated the noise. He would stalk the riders until they left their bikes to climb or fish then smash the sparkplugs and carburetors with a rock. No matter how far into any mountain range we go we see jet contrails or are suspicious that we might step into a missile silo by mistake. In Michigan some sportsmen harry coyotes and fox from snowmobiles. Add to this the Alaskan amusement of shooting wolves from helicopters.