The private Bobbery packs of the 1860s comprising of local dogs were gradually replaced by foxhounds from U.K. Originally ‘couples’ were brought out to India, but they were also later bred in India for the first time in Ooty. Only male hounds were taken out every two or three years to introduce fresh blood. By the late 19 century, regiments and brigades maintained their own packs and some also went to war. During the Second Afghan War, the pack of 16th (The Queen’s) Lancers marched with the regiment from Peshawar to Kabul, and back. Since it was expensive for regiments to maintain their hounds, local hunts were established.
Of all the hunts in India, the Peshawar Vale Hunt (P.V.H.) was by far the most famed. The station pack at Peshawar was formed by the Army in 1870 out of the regimental and private packs stationed around Peshawar. The backbone was the purchase of a really level, well-ordered pack of hounds owned by Capt. Markham of the Royal Horse Artillery. At first it was mostly drag hunting in which the hounds followed a scent trail laid by a rider dragging a material soaked in a strong smelling substance.
However, as the popularity of the sport grew, the masters went after jacks (short for jackals) and occasionally the small Indian silver fox which afforded little sport as it left very little scent.” Some were of the opinion that the jacks were not as cunning or as fast as the British fox, but an American who rode with the Lahore Hunt during the Second World War, was favourably impressed by its qualities. “The jack in question carried us a good eight miles with ruler precision before hounds came to their noses beside an apparently empty wooden bridge across a dry ditch. The Master cast in all directions and was just about to give up when up popped the jack from a hidden hole in the bank under the bridge.
Taking a broken field run that would have done credit to a Notre Dame back-fielder, he zigzagged through the astonished pack and made good his escape. He then led us another five miles in an equally straight line before hounds nabbed him in a brush cutter’s hut and broke him up”.
The record of the P.V.H. boasts that “The far-famed Shires of the Eusufzaie Valley have long been acknowledged to be the only real hunting country in India,” and was considered in no way inferior to any in the United Kingdom. The hounds hunted some 400 square miles of fertile land watered by the River Kabul and its tributaries in which the going was generally soft and light, and the scent good. In addition, there were a variety of obstacles to be negotiated including larger water courses, open brooks, dykes and small streams lined with willows. A book titled The P.V.H. published in 1934 provides a wonderful description of “….. the charms of the countryside with its successive changes of scenery as the seasons pass,” and the shires of the Peshawar Vale were sketched by Snaffles the famous artist who partly illustrated the book.
Snaffles (Charles Johnson Payne, 1884-1967) was one of the greatest sporting and military artist of his time. He travelled extensively in India and enjoyed a Raj lifestyle with sahibs, polo, shooting, clubs and messes. He also spent a considerable time with the Scinde Horse, from which many of his Indian-period sketches and paintings derive. While travelling in northern India, he stayed with Major Victor Wakely, whipper- in to the Peshawar Vale Hounds, who carried a whip to keep the pack together.
Many a hunt was exceptional for pace, country and distance. Some of the good runs of over six and half miles lasted 40 minutes with only the odd check. However larger runs are on record. The hounds met once or twice in a season at Mardan at the invitation of the Guides, and at Risalpur for the benefit of the 1st (Risalpur) Cavalry Brigade. A meet near Risalpur in 1911 lost their jack after racing for twelve and a quarter mile in an hour. Riding with the pack was never safe and it seems injuries and deaths occurred more commonly with the Masters. In 1880 while jumping over a wall, Maj. Princep of the 11th Bengal Lancers, fractured his skull on the branch of a tree. In 1912, Capt. Heyworth of the North Stafford Regiment was invalided home after he was kicked in the head by a horse which he was trying to extricate from quicksand. Seven years later, a third Master, Lt Col Irvine, of the Indian Medical Service, who was master during the entire period of the First World War, drowned in a tributary of the River Kabul called the Nagoman. To honour his memory nearly a century after his death, in 2014 the Peshawar Club named a renovated hall Irvine Hall.
The P.V.H. went through many vicissitudes, but always managed to keep going. Though it was supported by subscriptions, finances suffered from interruptions caused by Frontier expeditions and during the Second Afghan War the finances were in such a serious state that a meeting considered breaking up the pack and selling the hounds. Fortunately, the Royal Artillery and the 25th King’s Own Borderers arranged for its continuation. Following the First World War, there was yet another proposal for abolishing the P.V.H. because “polo was being so much played, officers could not afford to keep the animals for both.” However, the commander of the Peshawar District, considered it a monstrous proposition stating he “would die of shame if, after all these years, the P.V.H ceased to exist during my tenure here.” The hunt carried on under Gartside-Tipping, one of the ablest Masters in all of India. “He was a real hound lover, with a voice that seemed to go to the heart of every hound in the pack, whether outside or inside a covert. He was always talking to them, but musically and ever so quietly.” It is very creditable that neither the First World War nor the Third Afghan War caused the Hunt to close. Even during the Frontier uprising of 1930-31, “ ……. only one days hunting was lost owing to the presence of hostile Afridis close to Peshawar.” A cavalry escort formed part of the field, women were not allowed to participate and the riders carried revolvers. The continuation of the Hunt in spite of the threat did much to restore British prestige.
The rigors of the Indian climate particularly in the south were hard on the hounds. In the season of 1892-93, the Bombay pack lost seven couples (out of thirty) from malaria and lung trouble caused by dust. Six years later, five couples were regrettably ridden over by the field. Survival was compounded by the jackal being a silent carrier of rabies. Around 1890, the pack of the P.V.H. was decimated by dumb rabies and in 1910, 22 couples died due to rabies and distemper. Since the hounds did not adjust well to hot weather, those at Bombay and Madras travelled to Ooty and the ones in Peshawar to the foothills of the Pir Panjal. Before the advent of the rail and truck, the hounds of the P.V.H. walked 130 miles by night to their summer quarters in Nathia Gali (and later Murree), via Abbottabad. At Murree they were initially kennelled within the premises of the Murree Brewery and subsequently accommodation was constructed near Kuldana. Initially the kennel men were British but were replaced by locals amongst whom the most famous was Shera who cared for the hounds of the P.V.H.
During the season, Thursdays and Sundays were hunting days. Normally the horses and hounds were sent-off a night before and sometimes the riders had to rise very early to get to the meet. The field was well turned out and often included ladies as well as local nobility. The children on small ponies would ride for a short distance with the hunt and then along with elderly people who could not ride, watch the hounds working from a vantage point. Finally, everyone joined the hunt for breakfast – an open-air meal supplanted with rum that was given in turn by the local gentry, civilians, army messes and sometimes the Governor. During the season a hunt ball was held as well as a point-to-point which was a cross-country race by teams of four riders.
“Let it not be thought,” states The P.V.H. “that it was too easy for the hounds to account for their quarry.” From 1836 to 1934, on an average there were 35 Meets a season and the average number of jacks killed were 8 brace. The jacks that migrated from the surrounding hills in spring were able to take hounds at speed for any distance.
The stay-at-home jacks were not by any means easier to take as they knew the coverts well. An attempt was made to stock with red foxes from the hills which appeared almost identical to the hill foxes in U.K., but they did not survive in the plains. In the last quarter of the 19 Century, the field hunted a wolf on five occasions. Being a relatively big animal it gave the pack a hard run and only one was broken up. In 1899 when the hounds flushed a wolf, it “…… . took them past Babazai to the Kabul River, where they literally raced over the grass along the banks. Crossing the branches of the river, …… this grand old wolf was viewed only two hundred yards ahead of the pack cantering along as if out for exercise. At the sound of a view holloa, however, he laid himself out and just strode away from the pack.” When jacks became scarce, the pack hunted black bucks carted from Punjab which gave a good run and in one chase entered Peshawar. “The hounds ran to view straight through the city and came out through the gate next to the railway station, and finally the buck was taken in the Bundi River near the racecourse.” One hound got lost while chasing a quarry and returned after three weeks.
The P.V.H. was one of the four Hunts that survived Independence but in 1950 tragedy struck. Before leaving for UK, a British couple who had been caring for the hounds shot the entire pack as they considered that Pakistanis were incapable of looking after them. John Dent the Home Secretary of the Frontier Province re-raised the pack by importing hounds from U.K. My father Shahid Hamid recollects that “John (Dent) was one of the best political officers I have ever met and truly loved the Frontier”. At Independence he had agreed on a request by the Government of Pakistan to serve at the Chief Secretary in the Northwest Province and was a contemporary and friend of the Late President Ghulam Ishaq Khan. Apparently John Dent did an excellent job in resurrecting the pack of hounds. In the early 1950s a British RAF pilot had the occasion to ride with the Peshawar Hunt and recounts that “I had a wonderful days hunting. ……. The horse I was riding, a charger which had been the property of General Gracey when he was commanding one of the armies in Burma, had been well trained to get across them. He would stop at the edge of the stream and cat-jump to the other side. Apart from the heat, it was very much like a foxhunt conducted back home at Bicester. The turnout and the way the hunt was conducted were first rate.”
Shahzada Colonel Khushwaqt- ul-Mulk (known as Khushi to his friends) from the princely family of Chitral, was the Whipper-in. He was one of the first Indian officers to be commissioned from IMA in 1932 and commanded the South Waziristan Scouts. Khushqat ul-Mulk considered Peshawar his second home where he bought the famous Holmes Studio belonging to R.B. Holmes (the pre-Independence photographer from Peshawar) and renamed it ‘Chitral House’. He was a regular member of the Peshawar Club and remained a ‘Whippers-in’ of P.V.H. for 16 years from 1935 to 1951. He was also a great friend of John Dent and the two rode together on the Hunt; John the Master and Khushi the whipper-in.
Khushi was amongst the first Indians to be admitted as a member of the Peshawar Club which till the mid-1930s was exclusively for the British. The change to the club rules occurred with the arrival of 16th Light Cavalry. Some of the hunters were privately owned and others were owned and rented out by the clubs. But a large number were rented out by the army for Rupees 7 and 8 annas and thus called ‘seven-eighters’. The British commanding officer of 16th Light Cavalry refused to let out his horses to the members if his Indian officers could not receive equal treatment. Sardar Shaukat Hayat who served in 16th Light Cavalry recounts in his autobiography “As his embargo meant literally the closing down of the P.V.H. the club’s executive committee asked for a joint meeting, hoping that our delegation would consist of British officers. On the contrary Bill Williams [the commanding officer] nominated all Indians and gave them clear instructions to withdraw our regiments cooperation should the going prove to be rough. The result was a foregone conclusion.
In the early 1950s, 19th Lancers was stationed in Peshawar and there was a concentration of armoured regiments nearby in Kohat and Risalpur providing enough enthusiasts to ride with the Hunt. One of these enthusiasts was a young lieutenant named Syed Wajahat Hussain who had transferred from Central India Horse to 19th Lancers on Independence and posted to Peshawar. In his autobiography he recollects: “The Peshawar Vale hunt was very active with weekly meetings, starting early Sunday mornings, with a good field usually around Hayatabad; in those days it was all barren and conducive for hunting; now it is a prosperous new town. The Hunt usually ended in some Khan’s or Malik’s hujra, with sumptuous lunches at their great fortress-like houses and beautiful gardens. In the company of the delightful old Maliks, the sense of friendship and sincerity between the tribal leaders and the administration was most conspicuous-all of them enjoying the typical Pathan hospitality.”
