Human Hunting: Fox Hunting Gone Way Humane

Apr. 15, 2008— -- Fox hunting has long been a ritual in rural Britain, with slavering hounds and well-heeled horsemen and women all on the scent of a furry beast.

But on a recent sunny Sunday afternoon, the Cambridge University Draghounds are hot in pursuit of a very different prey: a rangy biochemistry professor called Ian Eperon. There's a slightly worried look on his face, but this human quarry seems to be enjoying the chase.

England banned fox hunting with hounds three years ago. For the likes of Samuel Colvin, a Cambridge Draghounds master, chasing a professor around muddy fields will never be the same as chasing a fox. But it's an afternoon in the countryside on his horse, jumping hedges, drinking port and getting away from it all.

"It's the fun of the company," he says. "You know, I talk to people before and afterward and we know each other."

And it appeals to the runner in him.

"Bit of adrenaline," he says with an endorphin-fueled smile. "I have to work a bit harder."

The Cambridge Draghounds have been doing this since the 1840s. This sport is nothing new but is flourishing in the wake of the fox hunting ban. At Knights Farm, they used to hunt foxes. Now they hunt humans.

While the hunters enjoy that glass of port and a sausage roll, the runner gets a half hour head start, dragging a dead animal -- road kill -- to give the hounds a scent. He throws himself over the gates riders love to jump.Every so often he looks nervously over his shoulder.

Runners, like Eperon, "don't need to be particularly fast," the Draghounds' Web site proclaims, but "stamina" is a prerequisite. Volunteer runners are paid $60 a day and are always invited to join the riders for a sandwich and a cup of tea when all is said and done.

"I know some fairly left-wing people at Cambridge who think it's appalling that we hunt those that can't afford to have a horse," Colvin said before loading his own steed into a trailer. "But that's really not the case."

Everyone has an exciting day out and with any luck, no animals or humans get killed -- though there are sometimes a few bruised egos when a horse unseats a hapless rider.

On this day, Eperon escaped. He outran the hunt. "I had a three-minute interval at the end to catch my breath before the hounds caught me up," he said at the end of the day's course, wheezing. "It was rather nice."

If Eperon were caught, it's unlikely that the hounds would attack him as they would a fox.

"They're more likely to jump on him and love him and lick him to death," Huntsman Bruce Langley-McKim says.

It's the embarrassment of such a scenario that Eperon says spurred him on to keep well ahead of the pack.