Tommy Lee Jones: 50 Years Hunting Hounds at Casanova
Douglas Lees photo 2019
Masters, staff, and members of the Casanova Hunt (VA) are proud and pleased to celebrate Tommy Lee Jones’s fiftieth season as huntsman. Tommy Lee has carried the horn for this venerable 110-year-old sporting establishment for nearly half of its existence—a remarkable feat made possible by a lengthy and talented career in the saddle from a young age.
Growing up, Tommy Lee was fortunate to have hunted with many fine Virginia huntsmen, among them Messrs Melvin and Albert Poe, Andrew Branham, and Duke Leech. While hunting with Casanova in 1967, Tommy Lee was appointed whipper-in to the Irish huntsman, Captain Ian Benson. When Captain Benson returned to Ireland in 1970, the horn was passed to Tommy Lee.
Save Foxhunting
Huntsman Colin Brown with foxhounds at the Great Lakes Invitational Hound ShowWe are extremely lucky this side of the pond when it comes to anti-foxhunting activities. We don’t yet have the attacks on our sport that happen in the U.K. and are starting to appear in France.
But we don’t need to rest on our good fortune. The Animal Rights movement is starting to attack deer hunters, their tree stands, and other hunting activities. We need to rally round each other to protect our sport with hounds. We have already seen attacks at some state levels, and Animal Rights activists are probing for weaknesses.
We can help our friends in the UK to combat their foes by supporting This is Hunting U.K. through their Facebook page. This organization was set up by James Barclay, ex-MFH, some five years ago following a concept paper I wrote for him after an epic conversation we had based on our heartfelt needs to combat the lies and rhetoric that the Animal Rights lobby had escalated in the world of social media.
Cleveland Bay Reunion 2019
Twelve of the seventeen Cleveland Bay purebreds and crosses pose at the annual Cleveland Bay reunion before Farnley house in White Post, Virginia. / Karen Kandra photo
Cleveland Bay owners, breeders, and fanciers were privileged to travel back in time to recreate the heyday of this handsome, versatile, yet endangered breed of equine on November 16, 2019. The reunion combined with a meeting of the Blue Ridge Hunt is so appropriate at Farnley Farm in White Post, Virginia.
In the 1930s and 1940s the late Alexander Mackay-Smith bred both pure Cleveland Bay horses and partbreds at Farnley for use as field hunters. He remains the only North American breeder to have exported a stallion back to the UK from whence the breed originated. His stallion, Farnley Exchange, still appears in the pedigrees of most Cleveland Bays living in the world today.
Mackay-Smith’s daughter, Hetty Mackay-Smith Abeles, and her family welcomed the Blue Ridge Hunt subscribers, guests, and seventeen purebred and partbred Cleveland Bays to Farnley for the annual event. Mackay-Smith was a Master of Blue Ridge in the mid-twentieth century. Mrs Abeles and her family continue to breed their well-known Farnley Ponies there, based on bloodlines started and proven as early as the 1930s.
A Thanksgiving Day Hunt with the Brandywine
Stuart Rose: foxhunter, race rider, publisher, author
This tale of a Thanksgiving hunt in Pennsylvania around the middle of the twentieth century is from Stuart Rose’s excellent book, There’s a Fox in the Spinney: Memories of Fox-hunting, Racing and Publishing (Doubleday, 1967).
Rose’s father intended to send his son to Harvard, but upon completing secondary school the young man joined the U.S. Calvary instead, by lying about his age. He wanted to ride horses.
Secular Prayer
This poem is from a collection by the author being prepared for publication with the working title, Stride for Stride. Wendell Hawken earned her MFA in Poetry at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, NC. Collections of her poems include, The Luck of Being, published by The Backwaters Press, Omaha (2008) and The Spinal Sequence by Finishing Line Press, Georgetown, Kentucky (2013). Individual poems have appeared in literary magazines including Narrative, Shenandoah, Southern Poetry Review, and Poet Lore as well as in Foxhunting Life.“Gallant Tipps” Open Formal Season at Fethard
Huntsman Gavin Shorten, foxhounds, staff, and field of nearly 80 move off through the north gate of the ancient town wall to the first draw. / Catherine Power photo
A day with the Tipperary Foxhounds is always special, but when that day happens to be the Opening Meet in Fethard, it rises to a completely different dimension. Recognised by all as the World Horse Capital, Fethard is a very special place, indeed. It hosts the Fethard Horse Museum in the Old Town Hall, a must for all horse enthusiasts. Not to forget as well that Coolmore Stud is just a stone’s throw from town.
And so it was we found ourselves on bank holiday Monday, in the small park between the Clashawley River and the historic town wall, first built in 1375 and among the best preserved of any in these islands. A portion of the town wall also serves as the back wall of the famed McCarthy’s hotel, that establishment providing hot port and other suitable hunting refreshments served up by the proprietor, Vincent (Jasper) Murphy. Mr. Murphy also doubles as the town undertaker. He is the fifth generation of his family since Richard McCarthy opened in 1852.
Reliable Staff Horses Don’t Grow On Trees
Camargo Huntsman, Andy Bozdan / Carla Babcock photoI guess I shouldn’t be surprised that some folks think of the staff horse that the huntsman or whipper-in is riding as just another horse. So before all the ‘egg spurts’ chime in, let me explain a little about the staff horse. Just imagine getting a jumping racehorse fit and ready for a race—weeks and months of preparation and hardening plus schooling over fences until the day arrives and the horse is off to the races.
Now think about getting a horse, if not racing fit, then pretty darn close to it, and not having one big race every couple of weeks but going out maybe twice a week and running for four to five hours. And in all weather, fair or foul. In the case of the huntsman, keeping up with hounds no matter the obstacles faced; in the case of the whipper-in, staying with or even getting on ahead of hounds in the ordinary course of the job. The staff horse puts in many more miles on a hunting day than does the field hunter. That is what’s required of it. No options.
Why We Hunt…Even On a Hopeless Day
Illustration by Lynne Thompson
Hunting in dry conditions is a challenge at best, but hunting in the dry and heat…like sweltering heat…is tantamount to impossible. There had been no rain for about six weeks, so dust was also a contributor to our less than optimal hunting day. But there are those of us who are not fair weather hunters, and it doesn’t matter the weather because as the saying goes, “A bad day hunting beats a good day in the office.” So we found ourselves lightly trotting, mostly walking behind the Hillsboro Hounds (TN) because pressing hounds, horses, and humans on a day like that would have been foolhardy and irresponsible.
Girl Power at the South County Dublin Harriers
Huntsman Grace Kerr and whippers-in Eve Kerr and Eimear Byrne with the black and tans of the South County Dublin Harriers / Noel Mullins photo
It was a case of ‘Girl Power’ at the Opening Meet of the South County Dublin Harriers. Hounds met at Gerry O’Malley’s Batterstown Inn in County Meath, Ireland, and didn’t hang around too long with a healthy field of about fifty followers and an active junior hunt section (that stages its own hunt ball)! Originally founded in 1867, it is the oldest surviving drag hunt in Ireland.
Three young staff ladies were immaculately turned out on three matching grey hunters. Huntsman Grace Kerr and her sister Eve*, who is now studying for an MBA and just back from the USA riding out from huntsman Willie Dunne’s yard in North Carolina and Redfield Farm in New Jersey. (Willie hunts the Middleton Place Hounds in North Carolina.) Grace’s and Eve’s sister Catherine would normally make up the trio but is a nurse in Australia. The final member of the team is whipper-in Eimear Byrne, another fine horsewoman.
Friendships Through Foxhunting
Huntsman Johnny and whipper-in Lelani Gray with the Hillsboro Hounds / Kevin Keesee photo
Two weeks, 3,700 miles, eight hunting days, six different hunts, too many friends to count, one hellova good time….
What do you do when you are stuck in the cold winter weather of Northern Illinois and have not been hunting for two months? A road trip! Lucky for me, and all of us, foxhunting is a small but welcoming world. While there are a variety of ways to hunt, we all welcome fellow fox hunters to join us, and, as Jorrocks said, “Tell me a man’s a fox-hunter, and I loves him at once.”