The Amazing Colors of Fauna and Flora
Photograph by Liz Callar Photographer Liz Callar says this was “just a great moment after trying for ten years to get a great Orange County fox!” Liz not only captured her fox—one that invites me to rub my hands on its fur—but a photograph that includes all the colors of nature both in crisp focus […]
Read Your Horse
This Douglas Lees photograph captures the huntsman’s horse expressing himself most clearly!
A horse walks into a bar.
“Why the long face?” asks the bartender.
Scientists at the University of Sussex must have heard that old joke and taken it seriously. They have discovered that horses are able to employ seventeen distinct facial expressions—three more than chimpanzees and one more than dogs. Humans, by way of comparison, are able to communicate their most subtle feelings by twenty-seven different facial expressions through our exceedingly dexterous facial musculature.
Duke of Buccleuch Foxhunters Not Guilty In Scotland
A Master and whipper-in, both of the Duke of Buccleuch’s Foxhounds accused in the Jedburgh Sheriff Court on October 8th of breaching Scotland’s fox-hunting laws, were found not guilty by Sheriff Peter Paterson on December 8, 2018. The five-day trial of Huntsman Timothy Allen, MFH, and whipper-in Shaun Anderson centered on video recordings covertly filmed […]
On the Grass With Blue Ridge and Thornton Hill
Photographs by Liz Callar
By the north-western banks of the Shenandoah River, just under the sweep of the Blue Ridge Mountains, huntsman Beth Opitz, MFH, Thornton Hill Hounds (VA) readies to move off to the first draw with her pack of Penn-Marydel foxhounds. Husband and Joint-Master Erwin Opitz (in scarlet) helps to keep the pack together.
The joint-meet at the southern-most end of the Blue Ridge Hunt country at Blue Ridge Master Jeff LeHew’s beautiful Shannon Hill fixture was held on Tuesday, December 4, 2018. It was new country for Thornton Hill’s Penn-Marydels, and a different experience for the Blue Ridge hosts who regularly follow their Crossbred pack of Modern English and American lines, but also includes some pure Old English, pure Fell, and crosses on these bloodlines as well. (See “A Level Pack or a Team of Specialists?”)
Robin Bledsoe: A Sporting Reader’s Resource
The Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter) by Franz Marc provides Robin’s logo.I don’t know why it took so long, but Robin Bledsoe, Bookseller is the first purveyor of books to appear in Foxhunting Life‘s outstanding lineup of commercial sponsors. I mark this event because, as our readers know, foxhunting literature is one of our favorite […]
Bruce Smart: Horseman, Conservationist, Executive, Author, Reagan Appointee
Douglas Lees photoStephen Bruce Smart, Jr., a well-known, highly respected, and popular figure in Virginia’s horse country, died at his home in Middleburg on Thanksgiving Day at age ninety-five.
In his retirement from commerce and government, he established Trappe Hill Farm in Upperville, Virginia, where he owned, bred, and sent winning steeplechase horses to the racecourses. The successful racing and breeding operation, however, was just the tip of the iceberg that encompassed his passion and commitment to horses, foxhunting, showing, conservation of open space, and all the working people and institutions that make up the Community of the Horse. Which was the title of a three-volume set of books he wrote and published, synthesizing how horses play a unique role in knitting entire communities together.
Bruce Smart’s “community” has suffered an immense loss.
Urban Foxes
If the lives of 10,000 foxes per year have been saved by the Hunting Act of 2004 in England, and if four cubs in each litter survive to mate each succeeding year, how many foxes and their progeny have been exponentially added to the formerly sustainable fox population in the countryside and where have they gone? Why, to the cities, of course.
Foxhunting Life gets mail, even from Sunny Sutton in London. Here’s one recent exchange.
The Fox’s Kitchen: Recipes for Foxhunters
The Fox’s Kitchen: Cherished Recipes from Philadelphia’s Historic Radnor Hunt, Virginia Judson McNeil, The Derrydale Press, 2018, hardbound, color, 300 pages. Available from Radnor Hunt and Amazon, $46.00.Lively, sophisticated, sumptuous. Here’s a book of recipes and ideas for entertaining foxhunters in memorable fashion. The Fox’s Kitchen: Cherished Recipes from Philadelphia’s Historic Radnor Hunt is the first-ever cookbook made available to the public by the Radnor Hunt. With kennels in Malvern, Chester County, Pennsylvania, Radnor lies just twenty-five miles west of the venerable city of Philadelphia.
Published by the Derrydale Press, the three hundred-page, full color hardback features recipes from Radnor Hunt members and friends, color photos of mouth-watering dishes, and anecdotes of foxhunting history and etiquette. As the book explains, “It’s no secret that foxhunters love a good party, a good drink, and especially good food.
A Level Pack or a Team of Specialists?
The sheer beauty of a level pack of foxhounds is indisputable. There is a uniformity of appearance and traits, and such a pack tends to run well together. But isn’t there another option?
Why not a pack consisting of foxhounds of various types, welcoming the unique attributes of each hound type? Breeders know that no single type offers all the best attributes we want in a pack; hence the English-American Crossbred. But within those two categories there are still more individual types with more concentrated attributes that could allow each type to contribute at the appropriate stage of any hunt just when needed.
Judge to De Blasio: Hold Your Horses
It’s been over a year since we last reported on New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s continuing campaign to rid the city of its iconic carriage horses. In my view, the carriages horses play a romantic and historic counterpoint to the powerful, bustling, modern city. Foxhunting Life has been reporting to you on de Blasio’s machinations in this silly war, financed and urged on by animal rights activists, since 2014.
So far, de Blasio’s efforts have been thwarted. But working on the principle—if you can’t beat ’em, just keep nibbling away—the city recently proposed to enact new Department of Transportation rules moving the horses and carriages off the city streets to designated spots inside Central Park. Only in the Park would they be allowed to pick up and drop off customers.