The hunting horn

A passionate American hunter has compiled a comprehensive reference on the instrument that punctuates a day’s hunting

- GROSVENOR MERLE-SMITH

It has been said in many ways, probably since the dawn of time, that a bad day of hunting is better than a good day of almost anything else. I’ve said it myself, and more to the point there are almost as many reasons to foxhunt as there are foxhunters.

In today’s intense, complicated world, hunting gives one an opportunity to get out in the countryside and immerse oneself into something that has a way to make everything else seem less important than the experience at hand. It manages that in a million ways for as many different reasons… and that is magic.

Today, foxhunters love hearing a well blown hunting horn out in the hunt field, rolling out of the depths of some covert, the echo floating across the countryside. Throughout the history of hunting with hounds we have utilised some form of horn to communicate with both the hounds we are hunting and our fellow hunters, and as much as we enjoy hearing it, most foxhunters hardly know one end of the horn from the other. Even in the off season we look forward to the horn blowing competitions with almost as much excitement as a main hound show event, but for most of us the experience ends there. I’d like to introduce most of the fox-hunting world to what I find an overlooked, fascinating little detail that is an integral part of our sport: the horns we use.

For our purposes, and with only minimal exceptions, hunting horns can be divided into three categories. The first grouping would be natural animal horns, or an arcuate copy thereof. This is certainly from where this entire business evolved. From prehistoric times when hunters had limited ability to create any kind of horn form, animal horns were an ubiquitous wonderful solution.