The Galway Blazers at Cawley’s Bar in Craughwell
John Denis became the first huntsman of the County Galway Hunt (the Blazers) when it was organised in 1839 / Courtesy of Noel Mullins
The Castleboy Hunt Club, established in 1803, hunted the Galway foxes until 1839. At that time a new hunt committee founded the County Galway Hunt, better known today as the Galway Blazers. John Denis, a direct ancestor of the only lady huntsman of the Blazers, Molly O’Rourke, was appointed the first huntsman.
In years past, top Hollywood stars were often seen in Galway visiting the late film director and actor John Huston, a Joint-Master of the Blazers at the time. I have great personal memories of hunting with the Blazers over the years, starting as a child over sixty years ago. In later years I had the pleasure also of serving on the Blazers hunt committee. Few had transport in those early days, so we hacked to meets sometime five and often up to twenty miles from our hometown Loughrea, especially if the meet was Athenry or Turloughmore.
MFHA Elects Tony Leahy President; Promises Season of Celebration
MFHA President Tony LeahyTony Leahy, MFH of the Fox River Valley Hunt (IL), was elected to a three-year term as President of the Masters of Foxhounds Association at the Annual Meeting held on Friday, January 27, 2017 in New York. Leslie Rhett Crosby, MFH, Mooreland Hunt (AL) was elected First Vice President and Penny Denegre, MFH, Middleburg Hunt (VA) was elected Second Vice President. Also, David Twiggs was officially confirmed as the MFHA’s new Executive Director.
Retiring Executive Director Dennis Foster will remain at the office for another two months to complete David’s training. Upon his official retirement, Dennis will continue to assist the MFHA in animal rights and other areas, on a consulting basis.
I had the distinct honor of addressing the Annual Meeting crowd, the largest crowd I have ever seen, to relate how special David and his family are, and to explain President Leahy’s vision for an upcoming season of celebration. It was literally standing room only.
Matthew Cook Is New Farmington Huntsman
“My first knowledge of foxes began with hating them,” said Matthew Cook with a chuckle. “Working as a gamekeeper they were a pest.” / Cathy Summers photo“New” is hardly the word to use when writing about the sport of foxhunting in general, and even harder to use with a club as dedicated to tradition as central Virginia’s Farmington Hunt Club. Change is always a challenge! But our new huntsman Matthew Cook has been changing things all around since he arrived in Free Union three years ago—raising a new level of hunting sport with a growing list of firsts.
Cook entered Farmington hounds in the Virginia Hound Show in May, 2014 for the first time; he took a carefully picked few hounds to meet prospective foxhunting juniors at the local 4H club last spring, and he accompanied his daughter Pippa along with a group of Farmington juniors to compete for the first time ever at the finals of the Junior North American Field hunting championship in Lexington, Kentucky just last October. Most recently, he prepared Farmington hounds to compete in a foxhound performance trial at the Belle Meade Hunt in Thomson, Georgia in January 2017.
The Ride of My Life: Memoirs of a Sporting Editor
The Ride of My Life: Memoirs of a Sporting Editor by Michael Clayton, Merlin Unwin Books, $30Before his retirement, author Michael Clayton probably had the best job in the world—editor of Horse & Hound magazine in Great Britain. He led the magazine for more than two decades—from hunting’s heyday through the bad times, when laws were passed to prevent hounds from chasing a fox. Now Clayton has given fellow foxhunters a chance to share his adventures in his memoir, The Ride of My Life: Memoirs of a Sporting Editor. And we are lucky to get to go along for the ride.
Clayton writes that he once read that a happy adult is one who feels he made his childhood dreams come true. An only child, his youth was overshadowed by World War II, and he remembers nights dashing to the family air-raid shelter at the foot of the garden. “If this sounds grim,” he writes, “it was not. We were generally safer in Bournemouth than those living in London.…”
But horses beckoned. When he was seven, Clayton, an only child, announced that he wanted to learn to ride, and to his surprise, his parents agreed instead of saying wait until after the war. The Longham Riding Stables, a bit run-down and shabby, were just a thirty-minute bike ride from his home and were “my first gate-way to horsemanship and the hunting field.”
Ellen Emmet Rand Painted Presidents and Foxhunters
Portrait of Ellen Emmet c. 1907 by Mary Foote (American, 1847-1938).Ellen Gertrude Emmet Rand (1876-1941) was among the first females in the United States to succeed as a professional portrait artist. She was a contemporary of Mary Foote who painted this portrait of Rand at her easel.
A superb portraitist, Rand is perhaps best known for painting Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s official presidential portrait in 1934, one of hundreds of portraits of politicians, captains of industry, socialites, artists, and scholars completed over her forty-year career…as well as foxhunters of note! You see, she was a foxhunter, too.
Taking a Toss
Another short story from the author’s Echoes of the Hunting Horn. Every foxhunter with warm blood will relate to the jumble of self-accusations tumbling through the author’s mind after getting tossed.
Hounds are running hard for the past twenty minutes. Not a semblance of a check. The pace is terrific over a magnificent line of country with big sensible banks. One fairly-wide river, the honest variety, no slime or sponge-like edges; not a trace of wire anywhere. Horse never put a foot wrong since the Gone-Away . . . blowing somewhat now, though; last big wall took some negotiating. It seems to have thinned the already select field to a mere dozen. Thank Heaven for the down-hill gallop after that last stiff hill; horse’s wind feels easier now. Out on the left, riders are heading for a gate. It seems a long way off, and this wall does not seem such a terrifying rasper. Come on, old Challenger, the wall will save time. Steady now, not so fast. Slower still, slower I say, Hup! Over! God bless us, oblivion.
Mr. Nappie’s Grey
This story, extracted from Trollope’s The Eustace Diamonds, is populated by just about every character you ever met in the hunting field.
Anthony Trollope by Spy in Vanity FairMounted on a bright-skinned, lively steed, with her cousin on one side and Lord George de Bruce Carruthers on the other, with all the hunting world of her own county around her, and a fox just found in Craigattan Gorse, what could the heart of woman desire more? This was to live. There was, however, just enough of fear to make the blood run quickly to her heart. “We’ll be away at once now,” said Lord George with utmost earnestness; “follow me close, but not too close. Just check your horse as he comes to his fences, and, if you can, see me over before you go at them. Now then, down the hill;—there’s a gate at the corner, and a bridge over the water. We couldn’t be better. By George! there they are,—all together. If they don’t pull him down in the first two minutes, we shall have a run.”
Lizzie understood most of it,—more at least than would nine out of ten young women who had never ridden a hunt before. She was to go wherever Lord George led her, and she was not to ride upon his heels. So much at least she understood,—and so much she was resolved to do. She would ride as fast as Lucinda Roanoke. That was her prevailing idea.
A Christmas Hunt in the Cumbrian Fells
The path wound its way up the fell side, twisting and turning as it sought the line of least resistance in its quest for the ridge and finally the trig point that marked the actual summit. Several hundred feet below the track and above the valley where the track began, a buzzard circled on a thermal originating from the big crag.
The path like the crag had over the centuries seen many things, Stone Age man had used the track to get to the veins of slate on an adjoining fell. Viking and Roman feet had followed the track to and from the nearby coast. Long pony trains carried produce over the track to the coast and its sea port. Finally, endless hordes of garishly dressed tourists added to the general erosion of the track. It began in the valley bottom, passed through an area of bog, soon left it behind, and that is where the erosion started. The higher up the fell, the thinner the soil, the greater the erosion. At the time all these thoughts passed me by, but looking back I can ascend the track from start to finish in my mind’s eye. I remember it so well because on one Christmas holiday morning, I saw a hunt which will long remain in my memory.
Honk, Honk; Gone Away!
Every sport has its downside. Consider some of the older, retired NFL players—hobbling about in a fog of multiple concussions. What about foxhunters? Most of us have had our share of concussions and fractures, too. Now comes this hunt report from a retired Master of Foxhounds. Is this what we have to look forward to? He claims his story is tongue-in-cheek. Whatever. But I wouldn’t believe a word of it. -ED
The pack / Alastair Strachan photo
This season’s armadillo hunting has started with a bang. There’s plenty of quarry as the local pack of coyotes has moved away. Lots of rabbits on the golf course is another sign that the coyotes have taken a hike. However, in the wee hours of the night a week ago, I did hear a strange howl out there on the fourth fairway of the golf course.
The local radio has been reporting that Florida panthers (no, not the sports team) have moved north of the Caloosahatchee River for the first time. Perhaps it is a coincidence, but a black Labrador and a house cat have been reported missing—another good reason to walk out our pack of Jack Russells in daylight hours.
Stretching Out
Click image to enlarge. Mark Houliston shot the action with a Canon EOS 1D X, EF28-300 f3.5-5.6L IS USM shutter speed 1/1000th second Two hours into the Blue Ridge Hunt meet at Fox Spring Woods Farm, huntsman and hounds were east of the meet and drawing north. I’m familiar with this area as I have […]