Life and horses had conspired to prevent me from going foxhunting for almost two years until a few weeks ago, and the renewed experience helped me realize why I’d been missing it.

One reason relates directly to the horses who carry us across the fields, through the streams, and over the coops. I was astride a horse making his maiden foxhunting voyage, and, fortunately, he seemed to have a blast being with a pack of horses and going across the countryside in a way that seemed easy and fun to him. I’ve been training him to compete, and, honestly, it was a pleasure to be training him to do something that’s just for fun for both of us, something with no blue ribbons or ranking. Yes, hunters usually progress from hilltopping to first flight, from following along at a distance to following hounds over, under or through anything in the way. But it’s a progression without pressure, at least to me.

But, honestly, once it was obvious my first-time hunter was going to be a joy, horses took the back seat in my mind to the animals that really make the sport work. And those, of course, are the hounds. Watching them reminded me of the almost supernatural process that makes hunting work.

Think about it: You’re pursuing a small animal (a fox or maybe a larger coyote or bobcat, or a rabbit or hare) that nature has caused to leave a scent. And we’ve bred hounds of various types and sizes whose biology, instinct and training allows them to follow that elusive scent, from the mud-drenched fields of England to the sun-baked mountains of Nevada.

But that’s only half the equation. The other half is developing what huntsmen call “the invisible thread” between them and their hounds, a thread that’s rather amazing. The best huntsmen know how their hounds think and react, and their hounds seem an extension of them. They can recognize their hounds by habits and voices, and they can listen to hounds a mile away and say, “Oh, that’s Old Red in the lead, with Preacher right behind him.”

It’s that “thread” that makes watching hounds work as a pack so fascinating. You see them cast into a covert–a stand of trees or a cornfield–and hear one voice open, sort of tentatively, then another, then another. And suddenly, like an orchestra, all their voices come crashing together as they burst from the covert. Soon they might overrun the line and seem to madly scurry silently about with their noses to the ground, nostrils dilated, and their sterns waving, before one recovers the line and the others honor, and off they charge again.

No sensation compares to standing at a check along a wooded trail, perhaps next to a streambed, and hearing 10 or 12 or 15 couple open on a fresh, hot line. The sound reverberates up the creek bed and bounces off the trees before it rises up into the sky. The horses, who might have been standing quietly, some even napping, snap to attention.

Some just raise their heads to get a better look; others chomp at the bit; some even sashay eagerly side to side. And then the huntsman blows gone away to encourage his hounds, now hurtling through the trees, as you move off, first at the trot but accelerating quickly to the gallop, hoping to stay with the flying hounds.

It’s a kind of primal sensation, that feeling of hounds, your horse and you, all galloping in the same direction, with the fox or coyote as the pilot, headed only he knows where.