Wentworth Hunt Enjoys Good Hunting on Opening Day
Stacy Howe provides bagpipe music during Wentworth Hunt’s Opening Meet ceremonies. / James Mertz, Suddenly Still Photography
The Wentworth Hunt opened its formal foxhunting season on Saturday, September 30, 2017 at Yorkfield Farm in Kensington, New Hampshire. The Blessing of the Hounds was led by Wentworth Hunt member and Pastor David Maguire. Bagpipe music was provided by Stacy Howe. The light drizzle and forty-seven degree temperatures deterred neither the twenty-six riders, horses, hounds, spectators, and supporters nor our “fox,” Michelle Myrdek, who laid the drag.
Huntsman Rachel Duffy hacked down and across the road and sent hounds into a fully mature cornfield, while the field skirted northeast around the perimeter. Our strike hound, De La Brooke Vernon ’13, found early then lost. Hounds worked quickly through the tall, wet corn, and we soon heard Vernon open again, honored by Moore County Zombie ’13 and soon others. Hounds burst out of the corn, hunted through a thin covert, and into a large hayfield where the field was treated to a spectacular view of the pack working in the tall grass. The hounds soon accounted for their “fox” near an old cemetery and were praised.
Potomac Hunt Helps Chevy Chase Club Celebrate 125th Anniversary
An historical thread runs back in time from the Potomac Hunt (MD) to the Washington Riding and Hunt Club (est. 1913) to the Chevy Chase Club (est. 1892) to the Dumblane Club (est. 1885) to the Washington Hunt (est. 1828). Only the Potomac Hunt and the Chevy Chase Club survive. The latter is celebrating its 125th Anniversary, and the Potomac Hunt was there with horses and hounds on October 1, 2017 to mark the occasion. What follows is taken from the remarks of Knight Kiplinger, who explained the club’s foxhunting roots to its current members.
Clarence Moore was MFH of the Chevy Chase Club from 1899 to his death in the waters of the Atlantic in 1912. “A man of staggerying wealth,” Moore was bringing foxhounds back from England when the Titanic struck an iceberg and sunk. He perished after remaining aboard to help women and children into lifeboats. / Image courtesy of the Chevy Chase ClubGood morning. I’m Knight Kiplinger, and it is my privilege to be a member of both the Chevy Chase Club and the Potomac Hunt, which are collaborating today in presenting this exhibition of foxhunting here on our Club grounds. The reason that our celebration with horses and hounds is so appropriate is because the Chevy Chase Club was first founded as a foxhunting club.
Not as a golf club, like Washington Golf in Arlington, which is two years younger than we are but was founded for golf. Not as a tennis club, although tennis came to Chevy Chase in 1895, just three years after our founding. Our club was founded by gentlemen members of the Metropolitan Club downtown, who rode horses for pleasure and for sport. For the first three or four years after the Club’s founding in 1892, its sole activity was riding to hounds across the vast expanses of rural northwest D.C. and Montgomery County, Maryland.
Eglington and Caledon: First Stop on the Friendship Tour
Alastair Strachan, MFH, hunting hounds this day, invites Epp Wilson to accompany him. / Barbara Smith photo
Who do you call twelve hours in advance for overnight accommodations for ten horses and five people when original plans fall through? In this case we were blessed to land on the doorstep of Christine Gracey, MFH of the Eglinton and Caledon Hounds (ON). Completely nonplused at the last-minute plans, Christy and Master Alastair Strachan made arrangements for our caravan of horses and people. We pulled into Sleepy Fox Farm, the lovely hunter barn of Al Borrett and daughter Jennifer at midnight, after a fifteen-hour drive from Illinois.
In the Huntsman’s Pocket at Golden’s Bridge
Huntsman Codie Hayes and hounds in the Golden’s Bridge country. / Barbara Smith photo
After two brutally hot days of foxhound performance trials at Millbrook, the weather finally broke. The next stop on our Hark Forward Friendship Tour was a day’s foxhunting with the Golden’s Bridge Hounds (NY), about twenty miles southeast of Millbrook as the crow flies. Thankfully, the temperature had dropped by fifteen degrees. Hounds met at 7:30 am, scenting had definitely improved, and so had the game activity.
Trying something new, I took my digital recorder to record the important snippets of the action and my impressions of the day. This is the same recorder we use to score the hounds in the hound trials. Since it’s hard to remember everything that happens during a foxhunt, I wanted to make the all the action and impressions of the day come alive. Here goes:
A Foxhunt to Remember at Genesee Valley
The Genesee Valley foxhounds meet on Opening Day of the formal season at The Homestead, home of W. Austin Wadsworth, MFH. Marion Thorne, MFH and huntsman (center) stands with hounds. / Barbara Smith photo
Genesee Valley, a stop along the MFHA’s Hark Forward Friendship Tour, was awesome! Six foxes put to ground in three-and-a-half hours! Epp Wilson, MFH, Belle Meade Hunt (GA), called it the best red fox hunt he had ever experienced.
Epp is Chairman of the Hark Forward Foxhound Performance Trials this season and is leading the tour across the North American foxhunting countries. Friendship Meets along the way have been scheduled. Join Epp and his fellow travelers for one or more (or any) of the exciting trials and/or hunt meets.
The Genesee Vally Hunt is renowned as one of the premier foxhunting clubs in North America. We were privileged to join Marion Thorne, MFH and huntsman, for their exciting Opening Day Meet on Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. Marion’s pack more than lived up to its reputation!
Team Leahy Hosts Performance Trial; Kicks Off Hark Forward!
MFHA President Tony Leahy and the Massbach Hounds kick off this season’s Foxhound Performance Trial tour.MFHA President Tony Leahy and the Fox River Valley/Massbach Hounds hosted the kick-off Performance Trial on the Hark Forward Tour in their western Illinois hunting country on September 16 and 17, 2017.
By the time it was over, everyone took home a renewed appreciation for the hard work and knowhow it takes to make and maintain a good hunting pack of foxhounds. Certainly the fact that littermates brought up by different hunts and trained by different staffs, rose like cream to the top of the scoring is convincing proof that breeding matters! Next stop on the tour is Millbrook, New York.
Whipping-In Is a Rush
Whipping-in on Fearnought, the author’s favorite.Cold and wet from rain on my thirty-six-inch pony Toy Mouse, with my fearless two-legged leader…mom Caroline…at the other end of the lead-line: that’s how I became addicted to a sport known as foxhunting. When we got in from hunting, my wool hunt coat weighed more than I did.
Since then, every autumn, from age four until now (not going to disclose that, but I’ve finished college!), there is a sense of anticipation and adrenaline that rushes through my veins. Foxhunters know how the goose bumps rise on your skin the moment those hunting hounds open up on a fresh scent of a fox or coyote, and away they go! This adrenaline rush only multiples, if you can believe it, when a person is allowed to have the honor of being a whipper-in.
Entering Puppies at Belle Meade
The Belle Meade Hunt Masters believe that the more field members understand what huntsman and hounds are up to, the more they will enjoy each foxhunting day. To that end, Epp Wilson sends the occasional email to the membership reviewing the day’s hound work. With virtually every foxhunt in North America entering puppies right about now, here’s a timely one for all.
Epp Wilson and hounds / Lauren Giannini photo
Those of you who came out yesterday morning know how well the hounds worked. You also know that we jumped a coyote by the Foxboro Mare Barn and ran him into a culvert on an old logging road in Wilson Woods. Not only was this good training for the puppies, it was even better than one might first think.
Earlier we had drawn mostly blank except for two incidents of puppies starting what we believe were deer lines. And we were able to get them to leave those lines by hollering at them. Why do we feel confident that they were deer lines? There were numerous clues:
Bridlespur Hunt Celebrates 90th Anniversary
Huntsman Eleanor Hartwell and the foxhounds of the Bridlespur Hunt
This year, 2017, marks the ninetieth season for the Bridlespur Hunt Club (MO). The Club has survived two World Wars, loss of land, uprooting of hounds and clubhouse, and hopefully will endure for another ninety years at least. Over the years, the Hunt has been honored by the patronship and Mastership of wonderfully dedicated individuals.
Bridlespur was founded in 1927 with the support and assistance of the late Mr. August A. Busch, Sr., president of Anheuser-Busch and brewer of what is still the most popular beer in the U.S. Mr. Busch obtained his original draft of hounds from the well-known Joseph B. Thomas1-Percy Rockefeller pack at Overhills, North Carolina. The pack consisted entirely of American hounds or, as better known, Virginia Hounds. By careful breeding and observation the two guiding spirits of the hunt, Mr. August A. Busch, Jr.2 and Mr. Adelbert von Gontard, Sr., developed a pack with most excellent nose and voice. Today, the pack consists mainly of Crossbred hounds.
Pensioned
From Scarlet Blue and Green: A Book of Sporting Verse by Duncan Fife, with Illustrations by Cecil Aldin, MacMillan and Company, London, 1932
I am Dan—ten years old, and a little bit blind—
But it doesn’t annoy me, for people, I find,
Seem to vie with each other in being most kind,
For I’m pensioned.
When the weather is wet and the wind blowing cold,
And the others troop out for their walk when they’re told,
I curl up in my chair by the fire, for I’m old—
And I’m pensioned.