“Are you?” 

No response. 

“Are you?” you query in a louder voice. 

The prospect of becoming hopelessly lost crosses your mind. In the process of trying to solve that last check, you seem to have lost your bearings. Suddenly, you hear the unmistakable blaring of the hash horn. You welcome the sound of the horn almost as much as those desperate souls rescued by the cavalry at the last moment in late night westerns. 

According to the Half-Mind Dictionary, the hash horn is the mismanagement member who carries a horn or bugle on trail, and blows it to encourage and guide the pack. A good hash horn will run mid-pack in order to serve as an effective beacon for hashers who stray from the trail. 

Today, the hash horn is a fixture at many (but not all) hashes. Was the hash horn part of the original hashing tradition? The Half-Mind Catalog spoke with “Tumbling Bill” Panton, of the Hash Heritage Foundation whose answer provided some unexpected information on the origins of hashing: 

We certainly had a horn when I first ran with the KLH3 in 1954, and I have always assumed the pioneers had one when they started up in 1938. After all, they adopted a number of other hunt traditions, including nomenclature - hounds; two joint, senior and junior, masters, one to lead the hunt and the other to manage the hounds and kennel staff.

Actually, of course, hashing is much closer to beagling than fox hunting, the difference between the two sports being that beaglers run after hares, behind their shorter-legged dogs, while fox hunters ride after foxes behind their faster-running fox hounds. Put another way one might say that fox hunting is for the richer country folk while beagling is for the yokels who can't afford horses. 

If your kennel has a hash horn, you can take pride in participating in a tradition that dates back to the 1400s, well before the origins of the hash. If your hash doesn’t have a hash horn, all you need is a horn. And someone willing to blow. 

The Half-Mind Catalog regularly receives inquiries regarding where horns may be purchased. Several links to commercial sources are provided for your convenience at the Half-Mind Mall.