Evelyn “Jeep” Cochran, MBH, Retires
Jeep Cochran and her Calf Pasture Bassets
As dedicated, passionate—some might even say fanatical—members of the global sporting community of those who hunt with hounds, we all feel the loss of our treasured activities as the COVID pandemic rages across our countries. During this time of suffering it seems insensitive to mourn the departure of a single individual from our sporting scene, but in this case a large group of people has lost the opportunity to celebrate the career, times, and exemplary hunting life of the retiring Master of the Calf Pasture Bassets, Evelyn “Jeep” Cochran.
What? Is she dead? Emphatically not! But the pandemic has robbed all her friends of the chance to celebrate her life, her hounds, her triumphs too numerous to tally…at hound shows, at field trials, and over the course of a sporting life lived over an impressive span of years.
How to Blow the Hunting Horn
Surely, one of the thrills of the foxhunting field is the sound of the huntsman’s horn. When huntsman and hounds are out of sight, the horn keeps the knowledgeable foxhunter informed as to the progress of the hunt.
When the huntsman doubles it in covert, that’s a good time to check your girth. When you hear the Gone Away, you watch your Field Master and anticipate that moment when the saddle tosses you standing in your stirrups and dancing to that seductive three-beat rhythm. The knowledgeable foxhunter can distinguish when the huntsman is blowing Gone to Ground to celebrate a successful conclusion, or simply collecting hounds after a loss. But have you ever tried to blow the thing yourself? Not easy!
How to Blow the Hunting Horn
Surely, one of the thrills of the foxhunting field is the sound of the huntsman’s horn. When huntsman and hounds are out of sight, the horn keeps the knowledgeable foxhunter informed as to the progress of the hunt.
When the huntsman doubles it in covert, that’s a good time to check your girth. When you hear the Gone Away, you watch your Field Master and anticipate that moment when the saddle tosses you standing in your stirrups and dancing to that seductive three-beat rhythm. The knowledgeable foxhunter can distinguish when the huntsman is blowing Gone to Ground to celebrate a successful conclusion, or simply collecting hounds after a loss. But have you ever tried to blow the thing yourself? Not easy!
Ken Adams, ex-MFH (1930–2020)
Masters Ken and Arle Adams, Palm Beach Hounds in the 1980s
Wellington, Florida pioneer and a founder of the Palm Beach Hounds, Kenneth Adams, died after a prolonged illness on Wednesday, November 11, 2020. He was ninety.
Ken served with his late wife, Arle, as the first Masters of the Palm Beach Hounds from its inception in 1980 to 1990. He was huntsman for most of that period.
A retired U.S. Air Force Major, Ken sold his chain of True Value Hardware stores in upstate New York to settle with Arle in Palm Beach County, Florida. The couple made their home in the Little Ranches neighborhood in 1978, where they kept horses and foxhounds. Ken started the first foxhunt in Wellington with the help of fellow Wellington pioneer A.W. “Bink” Glisson in the then-undeveloped area that came to be known as Bink’s Forest.
Orange County Donates Hunt Property to Conservation Easement
Orange County Hounds Masters (l-r) Neil Morris and John Coles. (Malcom Matheson, MFH not shown) / Douglas Lees photo
The Orange County Hounds—founded in 1900 by sportsmen and women in Orange County, New York, and hunting country in The Plains, Virginia, since 1905—has donated the hunt’s seventy-one-acre property to permanent conservation easement. By so doing, the hunt—many members having long been active proponents for open space conservation—relinquishes in perpetuity the right to subdivide its acreage.
In short, the hunt practices what it preaches.
Rebuilding the Mells Fox Hounds
Mells Opening Meet 2020 / Drone photography by Michael Gomez
The history of the Mells Fox Hounds (TN) goes back to a universally known nursery rhyme—“Little Jack Horner.”
Really. Stay with me. This innocent-sounding rhyming couplet is believed to be based upon a sixteenth-century real estate swindle at the highest levels of church and government in jolly old England.*
When “Little Jack Horner sat in a corner eating his Christmas pie, he stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum.” Jack’s plum was metaphor for a far dearer prize.
Bound to the Country by Jim Graham
Book Review by Norman Fine
Bound to the Country: 30 Years of Photographing Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds, photographs and text by Jim Graham, Brilliant Graphics, 2020, hardbound, 10-1/4 x 12-1/2, color, casebound, cloth, 100lb matte fine art paper, 196 pages with a gatefold, duotone and four-color with 400 line hybrid screening, $75.00 Click here for a video preview; click here to purchase.
This long-awaited, lushly-produced, oversized book of photographic art, Bound to the Country: 30 Years of Photographing Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds by Jim Graham, is available for purchase.
This is not just a book about the Cheshire, and it is not just a book about Chester County’s pretty landscape. It is a magnificent work of the photographer’s art. It is a book inspired by a unique sporting community precariously situated between the suburbs of Wilmington and Philadelphia. For more than a hundred years this community has been zealously preserved by people of character who desired to live out their own vision of family life, a vision not left to the local Board of Commerce. You must see Jim Graham’s portraiture of these individuals. The images stun me. Character and soul are not easily captured in photographs.
Larry LeHew, ex-MFH (1937–2020)
Douglas Lees photo
Larry Leon LeHew, ex-MFH of the Rappahannock Hunt (VA) and later the Thornton Hill Hounds (VA), passed away at his home, Bel Air, in Front Royal, Virginia, on Friday, October 23, 2020. He was eighty-three.
Born February 14, 1937 in Front Royal, Larry was a direct descendant of Peter LeHew, accredited with the founding of LeHewtown, which later became Front Royal. The LeHew family at one time owned much of the land which includes modern Front Royal.
The Blue Birdseye Stock Tie: A Smashing Style from the Past
Denya Dee Leake, who made her first appearance in the hunting field on a lead line at age 6, is an amateur whipper-in to the Blue Ridge Hunt (VA) and owner/trainer of First Flight Equestrian. She models the blue birdseye stocktie in the latest fabric. / Tyler DeHaven photo
Five years ago we published a story about a little-known, yet colorful article of attire from foxhunting’s earliest days that deserved to be resurrected—the blue birdseye stock tie. Originated in England, it can be seen in eighteenth-century foxhunting prints if you look closely.
We enlisted two friends at the time: Judy Allen, who makes stock ties for tack shops in Virginia, and the late Karen Ewbank, a custom hunting clothier. They both loved the notion of bringing back this attractive stock tie, so we scoured the web for an appropriate fabric and offered it in our Shop.
Hot Weather Hunting Is Hard on Hounds
Joanne Maisano photo
We’ve had hot weather hunting reports from many quarters across the Mid-Atlantic and southward. The West Coast as well. Hot weather hunting can be devastating to hounds because… bless them… they will try to keep up with the pack even when overheated and failing. Some hounds will be more susceptible to heat exhaustion than others, and the result can be fatal if neglected.