"...During these War years, when Major Higgins, a music-master from Stowe School took on the Mastership, Jo - whowas invalided out of the army in 1942 - and Pope found themselves turning their hand to every task in the kennels. 'We'd excercise hounds and horses in the morning and goout and bring in all the flesh in the afternoon. Sometimes Mrs. Pope would come and help us.* There was no transport and Jo remembers the early morning starts - leaving the kennels at 7.45am for the meet at Charwelton at 11. On another occasion, following the meet at Cooper's Oak in Salcey Forest, Miller, who had only just started as Whipper-in and didn't know the country well, was on his horse for 14 hours after the hounds divided at Old Ponds and Jo had to goin search of the four couple which had hunted deep into the Oakley [hunt]. 'I got back to the kennels at 11.30 that night. The stud groom tore me off a strip, then the kennelman shouted at me for keeping the hounds out so late and then Mr. Pope had a go.'
Having experienced the difficulties of of being a whipper-in - over many seasons and with a variety of packs - Jo proved a 'sympathic' boss when he achieved his aim and was invited,in 1952, to suceed Pope. 'I would never tell a whipper-in off in public if something had gone wrong. Never', he says, with a suprising vehemence. 'I'd wait and just say something quietly while we were moving to the next covert.'..."
