Page 55 - The Hunt - Summer 2021

WILD
BY J.F. PIRRO
The red fox is flourishing in Hunt Country—and conservationists aren’t the only ones who want to keep it that way.
Outsiders might conclude that foxhunter Julie Nafe is, at the very least, indifferent to her quarry. “Quite the contrary—we love the fox,” says Nafe, who spent more than two years as a stable groom and whipper-in with Radnor Hunt and still hunts with the venerable club. “Our goal is to see the fox. By the end of a hunting day, if we saw one, we feel privileged.”
Radnor huntmaster Collin McNeil’s describes it as an “almost romantic relationship,” and Nafe concurs. From February to June 2020, she rescued Stitch after a sanitation worker she knew found the young red
fox scavenging in a neighborhood trash can. Nafe is a nurse, an animal-lover and one of some 35,000
North American foxhunters among 160 organized clubs. Born in Honeybrook, Pa., and raised in Malvern, she has a distinct childhood memory of a fox cub ambling over to her after digging in a manure pile. “I remember thinking, ‘I want it,’” she recalls. “I ended up with one eventually.”
A fox is a tough catch. Unbeknownst to some, you hardly ever nab one while foxhunting. “It’s a sport, not a death match,” says one in-the-know non-hunter.
Vital to the essence of preserving the sport is the protection and cultivation of this naturally elusive commodity. Without the fox, there’s no “hunt” in Hunt Country. For its part, Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds maintains artificial dens as safe havens from coyotes and other predators. This may seem unnecessary now, as foxes are plentiful. McNeil saw more than ever in 2020, anecdotal evidence echoed in a recent Masters of Foxhounds Association of North America seminar at Radnor.
In England, however, fox populations are down by as much as 41 percent since 1995. It’s the reason for upstarts like the Fox Project, which incorporated a wildlife hospital there in 1993. Today, it admits and treats over 1,000 foxes a year, including 250 cubs.
www.TheHuntMagazine.com 53