FOLEY, Ala. — Before anyone ever heard of “15 minutes of fame,” “Buck” got his in 1954.

“Buck” was a hound owned by G. A. Reeves of Mobile, and on Jan. 12, 1954, “Buck” took the lead in the opening day cast of the annual Alabama State Fox Hunter Association’s field trials held in Foley.

“Buck’s” moment in the sun was reported in the Jan. 14, 1954, edition of The Onlooker, front page above the fold. The story noted that “Buck” had “amassed a total of 110 points in the first cast held at Pleasure Island Tuesday morning to take the lead in the All Age class.”

A week later, however, “Buck” was old news as “Midnite Wildie,” a hound from Meridian, Miss., was declared the All Age winner as reported in another Onlooker article. That Jan. 21, 1954, article also reported that “Bing Crosby” was a winner; that dog, owned by R. E. Stacey of Foley, was declared the Derby winner at the Alabama State Fox Hunt. Pictures of the two winning dogs and their owners appeared in the paper a week later.

Thus, 55 years ago, before Foley became the economic and revenue generating engine it is today; before the area became a tourist destination; before there were snowbirds, there were hounds — hundreds of them.

People and their dogs came from all over the country to participate in an activity that bore a distinctive Foley mark. An Onlooker editorial in that Jan. 14, 1954, newspaper welcomed the fox hunters.

“ … we are very proud of the unique pagentry, presented under the direction of John Snook, which gives the hunt a color which is perhaps not to be found any other place in this country … .”

Yet, the thing the editorial writer was most proud of was that the fox hunt held in South Baldwin had such appeal that it had grown to be the “largest in the nation.” Indeed, 1954 was the fifth consecutive year the hunt was held in Foley.

The Alabama State Fox Hunters Association could hardly have been more stacked with Foley and South Baldwin people than it was. When the 1954 fox hunt began, Mrs. R. E. Stacey of Foley was president and Roger Lee Kirkland of Foley was vice president. When it ended, The Onlooker reported on the new slate of officers:

“Dr. W. S. Beesley, Foley, was elected president of the association; R. E. Stacey, Foley, first vice president; Mrs. George Brown, Bon Secour, second vice president; Nelson Hamilton, Foley, third vice president, and Mrs. R. E. Stacey, Foley, secretary-treasurer.

Foley businessman and historian Charlie Ebert Jr. remembers those state fox hunts being a “big deal” in Foley. He said John Snook, the owner of what was then South Baldwin’s landmark business, Gulf Telephone Co., held a big party for the fox hunters. Ebert remembers dancing being a part of the festivities.

Of Snook, Ebert said, “He’d set off a blast to start the hunts. They’d actually hunt and chase the foxes.

“One morning the blast was set off and a bunch of windows were broken around town.”

According to Ebert, Snook sent his trucks around town asking if people’s windows were broken by the blast and, if so, Snook replaced the windows.

When the state fox hunt was staged in Foley during those years, Ebert said it was noticeable by the number of strangers one would see in town. You would see the dogs too in dog trailers, trucks. or homemade pens. There were horses too.

“You could tell whether a man had money or not by the dog pen or trailer,” Ebert said.

The Onlooker reported in ‘54 that fox hunt participants came from as faraway as New Orleans, Rhode Island and Illinois.

In 1954, 320 hounds from 14 states were involved in the fox hunt, according to The Onlooker, which reported on some of the activities:

“Monday evening a torchlight parade preceding (sic) the formal opening ceremonies at the elementary school grounds. The first cast, the blessing of the hounds and hunters and other pagentry took place at the Intracoastal Canal at daybreak Tuesday. The second and third casts were at daybreak Wednesday and Thursday.”

Master of Hounds W. N. Buchner of Starrett, Ala., was on hand with his “15 judges” to grade the dogs on “hunting, trailing and speed and driving.”

The Jan. 21, 1954, article said 500 people attended the hunt. The week before, however, one of the Alabama Fox Hunter Association’s soon to be elected officers, Nelson Hamilton, a photographer by trade, submitted a long, narrow picture to The Onlooker of the first day’s field trials. While the picture did not reproduce clearly in the paper, pictorial evidence leaves little doubt that many dogs and people were on hand for that daybreak photograph. The picture cutline puts the crowd at 1,000.

“That was one of the last territories where they chased foxes,” Ebert said of those 1950s state hunts. “They caught the foxes but I never saw one dead.”

Ebert recalls the names of local fox hunters back then - Dukes and “old Mr. Johnny Rhodes,” the latter a person with whom he went on a fox hunt or two. Those hunts were about building a campfire, sitting around telling stories, and listening to the dogs off in the distance and identifying each by their signature bark, Ebert said.

55 YEARS LATER

Chuck Sharp, District 5 supervisor for the Alabama Department of Conservation’s Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Enforcement Division, said he personally knows of no fox hunters in Baldwin County today. Indeed, he knows of none in the southern part of the state that use horses the way they did during those years when Foley hosted the State Fox Hunt.

There used to be a group years ago east of Montgomery that used horses to fox hunt, Sharp said, but he doesn’t know if that group exists today.

Of fox hunters today, Sharp said, “They can still hunt them (foxes) but they can’t move them around.”

His reference is to the fact that Alabama law and wildlife regulations prohibit trapping and transporting live foxes or coyotes, in this case, for the purpose of putting them in enclosures to act as chase animals for fox hounds.

Sharp points to an incident years ago when a Texas strain of rabies broke out in Covington County, Ala., after coyotes from Texas were brought into the area. But rabies isn’t the only concern, Sharp said.

“There are all kinds of wildlife diseases - West Nile, encephalitis, TB. There are all kinds of diseases they can carry.”

Alabama fox hunters have petitioned the Alabama Conservation Advisory Board not to sound the death-knell on their sport by refusing them a way to restock chase animals. Fox hunting today is typically carried out in “pens” or “enclosures” which are large tracts of land fenced off for fox hunting purposes. Still, however, it remains a violation to trap or transport a fox or coyote for the purpose of putting it into one of these pens.

But the core of the fox hunting dilemma goes back to something Sharp points out; something that didn’t exist in Foley, Ala., 55 years ago to the degree it does today.

“The land is chopped up now,” Sharp said, a reference not only to South Baldwin but areas all over the state.

Thus, besides the disease factor, fox hunters are facing changing times. Fifty-five years ago the presence of hundreds of dogs in Foley meant festivities and dancing and excitement. Today, dogs running in packs aren’t welcome on most of the state’s patchwork landscape of large and small property owners.

Still, present-day fox hunters who want to keep their controversial sport alive - who have appeared before state officials to plead their case - pretty much describe fox hunting the way Ebert recalls the couple of hunts he went on 50 years ago. It’s about sitting around a campfire and listening to the sounds of the hounds on the trail.