University of Arizona Offers Race Track Industry Curriculum
The University of Arizona in Tuscon offers a course of study for aspiring race track industry executives and officials. The university’s Race Track Industry Program (RTIP) is the only Bachelor of Arts and Masters Degree program of its kind, specific to the pari-mutuel racing industry. RTIP students have two options to follow toward their degree—the […]
I’m Outta Here!
Photographer Nancy Kleck caught Charlie streaking, and Blue Ridge Hunt field members staring, at a recent meet at Catherine Berger’s Rolling Hills Farm near the Shenandoah River. Click photo for larger view.
The Story of Old Drum
Old Drum, a black and tan foxhound whose bronze effigy stands before the courthouse in Warrensburg, Missouri, inspired an attorney’s closing argument that has endured as one of the most well-known and oft-reproduced tributes to the dog.
Bronze statue of Old Drum in Warrensburg, Missouri
One crisp October night in 1869, the music of the foxhounds was interrupted by the sound of a gunshot. Charles Burden stepped outside to listen. The hound music continued, but one voice was missing—that of his favorite dog, Drum. The next morning he went to the adjoining farm to call on his brother-in-law, Leonidas Hornsby. Hornsby had lost one hundred sheep to stray dogs and had threatened to shoot the next stray that came on his property. In answer to Burden’s questions, Hornsby claimed that his ward, Dick Ferguson, had shot a load of shelled corn at a black looking dog. The next day Burden found Drum lying dead.
A 3-Day Eventer Goes Foxhunting
Handsome Leo and the author go hunting. / Joe Samuels photo
In England and Ireland, it’s de rigueur for eventing horses of all levels to spend their winter season in the foxhunting field, but in the U.S., not so much. In this country, the hunt field is not necessarily where young eventing enthusiasts start their passion for galloping at hedges and coops, or where young horses find their balance and footing across varied terrain.
We reap the benefits when we import sensible Irish horses that have already been out for two seasons at the age of five, but it is certainly less common than it used to be to find crossover between the two disciplines.
Leo, I decided, was going to take the old-fashioned route to finding his cross country talents; we were going to foxhunt. He had come an incredibly long way in the eighteen months that I owned him, in both cross country acumen and fitness for the activities required in eventing, but there was still something missing.
David Hopkins Semmes, ex-MFH
Joint-Masters David Semmes and Mildred Riddell move off at the head of the Old Dominion field from a meet at the Honorable and Mrs. Joseph W. Barr’s Houyhnhnm Farm near Hume, Virginia / Douglas Lees photo
David Hopkins Semmes—longtime Master of the Old Dominion Hounds (VA), amateur steeplechase rider, and deep-water sailor—died peacefully at his home, Indian Run Farm, near Flint Hill, Virginia, on New Years Day, just four days shy of his eighty-seventh birthday.
Born in Washington, D.C., Semmes graduated from Episcopal High School then served a tour of duty in World War II as an aviation radio crewman. He graduated from Princeton in 1949, and in 1950 served in Army intelligence on the Pusan perimeter during the Korean conflict. He worked as a government service officer in Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong before returning to Washington to practice law.
Semmes managed intellectual property for forty-one years, notably patenting the so-called “black box” used on airplanes, and the technology used for protective vests for jockeys.
Politics and Sport: The Berlin Wall and Drag Hunting
The state of Brandenburg in Germany (formerly a part of Soviet-controlled East Germany from 1945 to 1990) is known for its well-preserved natural environment. Ambitious preservation policies began there in the 1990s, following reunification of East Germany and West Germany. Berlin, which was also divided into East and West Zones until the fall of the Berlin wall, lies as a separate city-state within the borders of Brandenburg. Just a short twenty-five years ago the scenes in this video could not have taken place.
This video of the Brandenburger Hunting Club was recorded by a rear-facing camera attached to my wife’s helmet. The Club was founded in 1991—shortly after the fall of the Berlin wall and German reunification—in Seeburg, close to the capital of Brandenburg in Potsdam. The fall of the wall actually enabled drag-hunting in the area, as the required space was simply not available in the isolated city of Berlin. Needless to say, in socialist East Germany, drag hunting and foxhunting were certainly not sports encouraged by the state.
Quick on the Draw!
Photographer Jim Duggan, out with the Golden’s Bridge Hounds in New York, had to be as quick on the draw as Wyatt Earp to capture this amazing shot. “A slight movement in the weeds and there he was, and as quick as a flash, he was gone!” said Jim.
‘Dimple,’ A Memory of ’94
The Old Pytchley Hall
This poem, published in Baily’s in 1896, is not just timely (with Christmas and the New Year), but it links directly to contemporary subjects in two of our articles below: James Barclay’s “Sporting Tour“ and “Remembering the Curre on Boxing Day.” It’s a wistful poem, beginning with the mystery of whence this wonderful hound named Dimple. The mystery is resolved at the end, but no hope of ever seeing her like again is imagined. Why? Because she comes from Wales, and the type of hound anointed as stylish and desirable by the elite English foxhunting establishment of the time would never even consider a different way.
However, the very fact that this poem was written demonstrates that some foxhunters of the time, indeed even the superlative Pytchley huntsman, Young Will Goodall,* yearned for something better. But change in the form of a direct challenge to the establishment wasn’t to come until the twentieth century, and even then the process was painful for all concerned. So, here’s what can be considered a poetic prelude to both the Modern English foxhound and the American-English Crossbred foxhound of today.
The Pytchley Hounds are running hard across the Badby Vale;
They fly like swallows on the wing, altho’ it blows a gale.
’Twould make an old man young, I swear, to see so brave a sight,
As scarlet flashes past, and gleams the Pytchley collar white.**
A New Hunting Experience in the Lowcountry
South Carolina’s Lowcountry / Caroline Leake photo
I have been hunting for fourteen years now—since age six—and recently experienced a completely different way of hunting! I visited the Lowcountry Hunt in South Carolina to visit old friends—Lowcountry huntsman Martyn Blackmore and his lovely wife Sue. My mom Caroline and I drove down on Friday, December 12, to be ready to go hunting on Saturday. My first observation was everything is flat! Absolutely no hills. And the footing is sand—much different than what I am used to here in the Blue Ridge of Virginia.
Martyn was up by 4:30 in the morning and getting hounds ready since we had a two-hour drive ahead of us. The pack is mostly Crossbred, but when Martyn came to the Lowcountry he brought with him some puppies bred from his favorite Old English lines.
Sue was up getting the horses ready to go. The meet was at a place called Palmetto Bluff. I thought we had arrived because we pulled off the road into a smaller driveway. Wow, was I wrong! The driveway started as pavement and then went to gravel and then to sand and then we were not particularly on a road at all, just more of a path in the woods. We kept driving and driving, and fourteen miles later we ended up at the meet.
A Sporting Tour Through Merry Old…Part 1
Master and huntsman Adam Esom and the South Wold Foxhounds midst the sugar beets in Lincolnshire. / James Barclay photo
Join James Barclay—an ex-Master of five English foxhunts—for a personal and revealing tour of elite hunting establishments through Middle and Eastern England. Part 2 to follow.
This last summer has been one of the busiest for a while with a fair share of weekends spent judging various Puppy Shows, which is always a pleasurable thing to do, but sadly does nothing beneficial for the waistline! It is always nice to look at hounds during their restful period, and we can soon start to gauge what there is coming on from behind the scenes and start to assess the breed’s general standard.
On that note, it is a great relief to see a lot of nice hounds about, as there was a time after that dreaded day in February 2005 when the Hunting Act became law that many packs cut right back to a minimum. However, to see that confidence returning is most reassuring to all of us who take the breeding of the Foxhound seriously.
Now the time had come to dust off the camera and get out there and firstly to take some early morning pictures of hounds on exercise. This is a wonderful time of year as, given the blessing of some good weather, harvest starts to move, and with those dewy late summer mornings and a hint of mist in the air, our countryside comes to life in a way any true hunting man knows. So visits to Badminton, Belvoir and the Bicester were a particular pleasure this year, as last summer, I had decided to cover most packs in the Eastern Counties as well as the Midlands.