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251 pages, Hardcover
First published September 11, 1967
An abrupt exclamation from the Master and a quick rustle ahead of him. Knowing the Master must have seen something, Copper rushed blindly forward. Here it was! The reeking-hot track of fox! It started by the stump of an oak and led away through the trees, but Copper was not sure whether the fox had been lying on top of the stump and jumped off or whether he had run to the stump and was now on top of it. Standing on his hind legs, he smelled the top of the stump. No doubt about it now, the fox had been lying there for some time, but he was not there now. Whirling around, Copper set off on the line in full cry.
Even Copper, well broken to all domestic stock, felt a charge of gloating cruelty surge through him. That odor meant the quarry would put up no resistance, but would lie writhing helplessly while Copper buried his teeth in the soft flesh and felt the ecstasy of the victim’s death struggles through clenched jaws.
If so, killing would be easy, and killing the helpless always appealed to Tod far more than killing the strong.
The squirrel tried to run and then to dodge, but Tod’s scissor-like jaws caught him by the neck. Tod shook his little victim savagely until the body went limp. He ate the head and then loped off with the body in his mouth to find a good place to bury it.This book is about a fox and a bloodhound trying to survive in an ever-changing world and is written from their perspectives without the anthropomorphism of the movie. In fact, one of my favorite parts is how the author really tries to get into the heads of animals and explores how they might think rather than just projecting human emotions on them. Who can say how accurate his take is, but nonetheless I found it refreshing and fascinating. If you read the author's note at the end, he clearly did his research in observing foxes and talking to hunters and incorporating real accounts of foxes outwitting hunting dogs into his story.
By late November, Tod felt the remembered pulsating in his testicles.There is a lot of hunting vocab I learned reading this as well, this is probably the first book in a long time in which I've encountered so many words or phrases I didn't know. Examples include hunting dogs "giving tongue" when they are on the trail, "line" as a word for a scent trail, "whippers-in" for hunting assistants, "run trash" which I still don't understand the meaning of, "hogback" as a long hill with steep sides, and "variegated" as a different form of varied.