Installment Five
Whiskey Road MFH David Smith (left) greets Toronto and North York MFH Wolf von Teichman.Betsy and friends escape frozen Virginia for a week of hunting in warmer climes. We bring you Installment Five of her daily blog, exclusive to Foxhunting Life.
Monday was an open day. Gene and Barbara Hough joined me, Tom, Jackie, and Don for a hack in the Hitchcock Woods. We grabbed lunch at Rio Pablo, an excellent Cuban place downtown. There was a benefit for the Hitchcock Woods Foundation that night at the Wilcox Hotel, one of the town’s oldest and most grand buildings.
Tuesday dawned cold and frosty but with that promise of spring in the air. There was a pretty good breeze, though, and I was uncertain of scenting conditions as we headed east towards Bill Scott’s Fairview fixture near Lexington.
The Scotts own thousands of acres of managed timberland—pine forests cut for pulpwood and lumber—providing excellent habitat for game of all sizes. Gene Hough told me about hunting at Fairview a few years ago when the hounds held a four hundred-pound boar at bay until the huntsman dispatched it (then famously burned it at a pig roast later!).
Master Lynn Smith explained that there used to be lots of wild pig at the eastern fringes of Whiskey Road’s territory, but there are none now. Richard Lamb said that Why Worry, which hunts a lot of the Savannah River Plant (a nuclear research lab facility south of town) neighborhood, still has lots of wild boar, something pretty unusual, he said, for east coast hunters.
Hounds were put in at ten a.m. north of the meet. They struck fairly quickly on the fiberoptic cable line—about thirty feet wide—over-planted with what appears to be rye or winter wheat. They pressed game (probably coyote) north to the gas line (a little wider, not over-seeded, but grown up with tough Bermuda grass and native brush). The coyote turned west and, assumably, crossed the Edisto River taking most of the pack with him. Huntsman Joseph Hardiman was able to call all but two back across to “our” side. A wheel whip collected that couple later on.
Hardiman re-cast into the low-lying swamp back toward the gas line, but hounds were unable to find nor carry and after a good three hours the field headed back to the trailers on the power line for a big tailgate lunch and camaraderie.
There were more than a hundred riders out—granted, a sunny, temperate day—but still a weekday meet in dead winter. Lynn Smith explained that Hunt Week was to blame, in more ways than one. Of course, the visitors for Hunt Week comprised most of the “excess” field, but, she added, many previous Hunt Week visitors “have found they liked Aiken in the winter so much, they end up buying property here and joining Whiskey Road.” Snowbirds have made Whiskey Road’s general membership grow over the past ten years, she said, and the club has nearly one hundred members that regularly follow hounds, in addition to social members, limited subscriptions and juniors.
Huntsman Joseph Hardiman was joined today by an old compatriot from the Olde Sod. He’s a native of Galway, Ireland, and he grew up hunting with Galway Blazers’ Master Willie Leahy. Leahy joined us for Hunt Week, and today he rode up with the hounds. Hardiman first came to the U.S. to hunt the Rolling Rock hounds in Pennsyvlania, later carrying the horn at Chagrin Valley in Illinois before coming to Whiskey Road five years ago.
Today he hunted ten couple of the English and Crossbred pack. Lynn Smith explained the relatively small number, saying that, usually during Hunt Week, the Toronto and North York hounds hunt every other day in the concentrated seven days, giving the host hunt’s hounds a chance to rest and recover. This year, however, T&NY huntsman Antony Gaylard hurt his back, and their hounds are not going out this month. Whiskey Road, which has about thirty couple in kennel, is able to hunt an abbreviated pack without compromising sport.
Tuesday night was the much-anticipated party at Horner and Freddie Davis’s downtown home, The Balcony, a 1928 brick mansion next door to the Green Boundary Club. Freddie and Horner, formerly of Charleston, West Virginia, bought the property last year during Hunt Week. The six-acre parcel—which includes the 11,600-square-foot home, a twenty-one-stall barn, paddocks, a riding arena, mature formal gardens, tennis court, ballroom, and more—was to be sold at auction in February. However, the high bidders retracted their offer, and the Davis’s stepped in and bought The Balcony—so-named for the handsome second-story feature—for $2.5 million. (The property sold in 2007 for $2.8 million according to Aiken Tax Assessors records. The tax value then was $3.5 million.)
Horner Davis is president and CEO of a mineral and ore merchant and real estate holding company started by his great-grandfather. His dad and granddad were both attorneys who held positions in West Virginia legislature.
The party was befitting such a grand home, with service in the snug library (replete with roaring fire), vast ballroom (complete with a secret, paneled cabinet encompassing a full wall that was used to squirrel away liquor and hide it from the law during the Prohibition era which ran from 1920 to 1933), a butler’s pantry with a lockable cupboard (for liquor in addition to the silver service), and a mud room complex that extended from laundry room to dog room to storage rooms to a servants’ quarters.
No hunting tomorrow; we’re helping at the Full Gallop horse trials (more jump judging and dressage stewarding) and then taking a hack in the Woods. To be continued….
Previous Installments of Betsy Parker’s Aiken Hunt Week blog may be seen at Horse and Hound/Hunt Reports.
(l-r) Gene and Barbara Hough, Don Palus with Whiskey Road Foxhounds at Fairview