A crescendo of barks and long plaintive cries erupts as my car tires crunch along the gravel path toward the kennels. Several outdoor pens arc around the green- and-white kennel complex tucked into the wooded corner of the Marlborough Hunt Club property in Upper Marlboro, Md. Workmanlike in his buckskin-colored jumpsuit and faded baseball cap, Jim Faber is finishing up his morning chores: squirting down the kennel grounds, filling water troughs, shoveling here and there. It’s only 10:30 a.m. and already all sixty-six hounds (twenty-seven couples of hunting hounds and six couples of puppies) have been checked over, fed, and had their morning walk. Still to come on this non-hunting day: training the puppies on commands and calls; finishing notes from yesterday’s hunt; inspecting next Monday’s hunting grounds, clearing trails where needed.

It’s all part of a day’s work for this full-time professional huntsman: part hound trainer, ranch hand, scout, forest ranger, biologist, historian, musician. It’s a job many would kill for, working in the outdoors, with animals that you love, conserving a rural way of life. There’s even a bit of public relations involved, persuading landowners to allow the hunt right-of-way through their farms. And it’s balanced with the creative strategies of breeding for an award-winning pack and orchestrating them with all the skill of a top-notch conductor. “It’s an art,” says Faber with a trace of a New England accent. “It takes commitment and dedication and lots of time, every day.”

But it’s a life Faber clearly loves. He came by it early, when his grandfather taught him to hunt back home in Connecticut with the Litchfield County Hounds. He remembers his first outing at age nineteen. “It was Thanksgiving Day, and we started out with sixty riders. Eventually, we got ourselves a fox, and there were only the huntsman, two others, and myself. It was a wonderful sight, coming back home, with the townspeople coming out to meet us, asking about the fox. It was like going back in history.”

Seven years later, while riding with the Middlebury Hunt Club in Connecticut’s South Litchfield County, the retiring huntsman asked him if he wanted to “carry the horn” for the club. He did, and, with horn in hand, set off into the woods with his bird dogs to practice calls like “gone to ground,” a note of praise sounded when the hounds have chased a fox back into its hole and “going home,” a long, sad note played at the hunt’s end. (In this part of the world, the purpose of the hunt is to chase the fox, not kill it.)

Years spent fox hunting have taught him the intricacies of this hound art. There is no real huntsman school; it’s something one learns as an apprentice. Faber learned early from his days spent hunting with the Litchfield County Hounds and the Middlebury Hunt Club. Now, more than thirty years later, he wins hunting horn competitions held at steeplechases, hunt races, and hound shows. “It’s a way of life,” he says—one his wife, Maureen, and youngest daughter, who live on the hunt club property, have committed to as well. But, says Faber, “the hounds come first. They get fed before the family.”

The hounds are Penn Marydels, bred, as the name suggests, in the mid-Atlantic region. They are diverse in color: gray with white ticking (blue tick hounds), white with caramel patches (lemon hounds), and tricolor (black, white, and brown patches). They’re almost gangly; cute in a lopey kind of way. Faber clearly has affection for them, regularly giving them encouragement and praise in a soothing voice. “He’s so easy with them,” observes Christy Clagett, one of the joint masters of the Marlborough Hunt Club. “It’s just his character.”

It’s Sunday, formal hunt day, and Faber has been working since 6 a.m. After watering the hounds, he selects his pack for the day, which depends on the size and topography of the country—this Sunday’s hunt will cover more than 1,700 acres, with many hills and dales. Out of the pack, he picks just the right “16 to 20 couple.” Hounds are always counted in pairs, and “coupling” occurs when mentor hound and puppy are leashed together for a training session. He separates out the lucky few, who sense their impending fun. Dozer, a popular tricolor with an abundance of personality and enthusiasm, makes the cut today. “He always wants to go hunting,” notes hunt club member Snowy Myers. “One time he climbed right out of the pen and joined the pack. We had to put a roof on his pen.”

Once at the hunt site at the Clagett farm, located in Harwood, Md., the hounds leap with excitement behind the metal screen doors of their specially outfitted trailer. The “whippers-in,” member riders who assists the huntsman in keeping the pack together, circle around on horseback, awaiting instructions as Faber dons his red coat and tucks his hunting horn, Napoleon-style, into his jacket front. A clean-shaven, taciturn face peers out from under his jaunty helmet. He confidently reviews the day’s hunting plan with the whippers-in as the hounds unwind. “We’ll head toward Essex,” Faber instructs, “then draw down away from Quinn’s farm, then move across to the Lansdale’s.” He leads the hounds and whippers-in over to meet the rest of the riders behind the farmhouse. Faber rides tall in the saddle, looking regal. Hunt Club members and their guest riders are out in force, even on this freezing afternoon, for a beautiful romp over lands they love, to indulge in this centuries-old sport. The scene is from a Currier & Ives painting: black or red tailored jackets and high boots, buff breeches, white shirt with stock tie, velvet hardhats. Faber puts horn to mouth as the hounds dart this way and that, some with heads up in full sniff, others nose down on ground level, working hard to “hit a line"—pick up the elusive fox’s scent. As Faber sounds a long trill, the hounds are off, and the horses speed after them across the field. The foxchase has begun.

Kathy H. Ely is a freelance editor/writer living in Maryland who longs for the horse she never got.