Bowerman the Hunter: A Story for Halloween
Bowermans Nose, Dartmoor, UK
On Dartmoor, in days of yore—even before Sherlock Holmes’s Hounds of the Baskervilles roamed that fog-swept moor terrifying young readers—a tall, strong man with a sunny disposition lived and hunted his hounds. Kindly and personable, Bowerman the Hunter, was a popular man on the moors, according to legend. He was often seen drawing across Dartmoor with his pack of hounds, reputed for relentless pursuit of their quarry.
His day was a time of witchcraft, and Bowerman’s neighbors on Dartmoor believed that witches congregated in secluded, remote areas of the moors to perform their spells. The villagers shunned such places, but the affable Bowerman laughed off all talk of such superstition and hunted the country wherever he liked.
Benjamin Hurt Hardaway, III, American Foxhunting Icon
Benjamin H. Hardaway, III, MFH died peacefully at his home on Thursday, October 19, 2017 at the age of ninety-eight. Funeral services were held Tuesday, October 24th. Interment at Linwood Cemetery was private. A memorial service was held at 2:00 pm, followed by a reception at Hardaway Hall in Midland, Georgia.
Ben was arguably the most widely-known American foxhunter throughout the foxhunting world and the most influential American breeder of foxhounds of the twentieth century. He had a passion for hunting all manner of wild game from his childhood days until his last. He hunted small game and birds with a gun, rabbits and coon with hounds, foxes with foxhounds and deer with lurchers.
He established the Midland Fox Hounds (GA) in 1950 and served as Master for sixty-seven years and huntsman for much of that period. He adored the July foxhound for its activity and aggressive hunting style, traits to which he could well relate. Ben’s favorite description of a successful foxhunt was “short, sharp, and decisive.”
Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds Dominates Hunt Night at Penn National
The Kimberton Hunt (PA) had the honor of parading foxhounds on Hunt Night. / Al Cook photo
Foxhunters from Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds (PA) dominated Hunt Night at the Pennsylvania Horse Show in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on October 16, 2017. Cheshire riders won three classes and received ribbons in all five events on Monday night to claim the overall hunt championship title over the thirteen competing foxhunts. This was the eighth hunt championship won by Cheshire since the inception of Hunt Night. Riders from the Bull Run Hunt (VA) and the Green Spring Valley Hounds (MD) were also class winners.
One surprising contributor to Cheshire’s Championship team was Olympic veteran Boyd Martin who competed in and won the Gentlemen’s Hunter Under Saddle class with Right On Que, owned by Tanya Emslie of Unionville, Pennsylvania. Martin had just placed third in the Fair Hill International Three-Day Event CCI*** this past weekend and decided to drive up at the suggestion of one of his fellow Cheshire members.
Ben Hardaway: 1919–2017
Ben Hardaway, founder and MFH for sixty-seven years of the Midland Foxhounds (GA), died this morning at age ninety-eight. Ben was arguably the most widely-known foxhunter and the most influential foxhound breeder in all of North American foxhunting history. He had a passion for hunting all manner of wild game from his childhood days until […]
Thank You for Donating Your Land; Now Get Off It
Karen L. Myers photoAnti-hunting lobbyists in England are pressuring the National Trust to curtail even drag hunting on National Trust lands. The National Trust in turn has recommended that their members vote to do just that. I feel like I’ve walked through Alice’s looking glass into an alternate world. Where do these people think this land came from, anyway?
Historically, the National Trust was the beneficiary of English country houses which still make up the largest part of its holdings. Many estates even came with requests that foxhunting may continue there. Now, foxhunters and drag hunters are to be excluded from the very land that their forebears placed into the Trust generations ago. Are fairness and equity totally inoperable concepts in today’s Britain?
New Casanova MFH Kathleen O’Keefe: Riding Since Age 6 Months
Kathleen O’Keefe is a multi-time winner of both the North American and the Virginia Field Trial Championships / Liz Callar photoKathleen O’Keefe has been named Joint-Master of the Casanova Hunt. Many feel her appointment to be a natural progression for this accomplished horsewoman. O’Keefe takes the reins of one of Virginia’s oldest foxhunting clubs, expanding a lifelong love affair with horse and field sports.
O’Keefe, fifty-four and a native of Stephens City, Virginia, started riding when she was six months old in a wicker basket saddle, she says. A fourth-generation foxhunter, her late father, grandparents and great-grandfather were riders, and she grew up foxhunting with her grandmother at the Blue Ridge Hunt in Clarke County, Virginia. “I am especially proud of my father, Peter Drinkwater,” O’Keefe says, noting he won the Virginia Field Hunter Championship twice, a feat O’Keefe repeated in 2000 with her Thoroughbred field hunter Lord Hugh.
Foxhounds from Five Hunts Compete at Beautiful Millbrook
Nancy Stahl, MFH, and her Joint Masters Parker Gentry and Lelee Brandt welcomed visitors to the gorgeous Millbrook country and made certain everyone was happy to be there. / Karen Kandra Wenzel photo
Foxhounds from five hunts faced off for the second Performance Trial of the Hark Forward season. The trials were hosted by the Millbrook Hunt in their scenic and mountainous country in the Hudson River valley of New York State, just ten miles west of the Connecticut border, ninety miles north of New York City.
Hounds met on Monday and Tuesday, September 25 and 26, 2017 under conditions reminiscent of mid-summer rather than the early days of autumn. Temperatures rose well into the eighties on both days as riders sweltered and hounds struggled to find quarry in the usually productive coverts. Yet hounds worked as a veteran pack and displayed outstanding work during their brief moments of action.
Each competing hunt had selected the seven-and-a-half couples of hounds from their kennels to best represent them. The thirty-seven-and-a-half couples of proven hounds melded quickly into a single pack (more about that later), reflecting positively on every huntsman: Bart Poole from the Essex Fox Hounds (NJ); Marion Thorne, Genesee Valley Hunt (NY); Codie Hayes, Golden’s Bridge Hounds (NY); Don Philhower, Millbrook Hunt; and Sean Cully, Rose Tree-Blue Mountain Hounds (PA).
Fifth Annual Sporting Art Auction at Keeneland
Heading Home, oil on canvas, Andre.Pater
The upcoming Sporting Art Auction on Sunday, November 19, 2017, at the Keeneland Sales Pavilion promises to be another outstanding sale for sporting art lovers. Several lots by contemporary American and European artists such as Michael Lyne, Andre Pater, and Juli Kirk feature both British and North American foxhunting. Estimated prices for the various foxhunting works range from $3,000 to $150,000. Click to view the catalog.
The hammer will fall on paintings by renowned artists such as John Frederick Herring, Jr., Henry Stull, Harry Hall, Henry Alken, Sr., John Emms, Gustav Muss-Arnolt, Franklin Voss, Lionel Edwards, Richard Stone Reeves, and Alfred Munnings. In the category of sculpture, works by Pierre Jules Mene, Alexa King, Marilyn Newmark, LeRoy Nieman, and others will be auctioned.
Artwork of Lisa Curry Mair: Unroll It, Hang It, or Lay It
Original painted canvas wall hanging by Lisa Curry Mair (3 feet x 6 feet)
Artist Lisa Curry Mair works in a unique genre from her studio in an eighteenth-century farm at the base of Mount Ascutney in Perkinsville, Vermont. She creates paintings, custom murals, and floorcloths on canvas in a folk-art style. Much of her work includes foxhunting scenes.
Mair’s commissions have come from Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, several National Historic Sites, and hundreds of homeowners with specific ideas of what they wanted painted for their homes. Over the last twenty-five years of research, study, and “lots of mistakes,” she has developed the tools and knowhow to bring the client’s vision to light. Mair has attended classes and workshops since minoring in Art at Acadia University in Nova Scotia (while majoring in Mathematics and focusing on a career in riding).
KT Atkins Is New MFH at Warrenton
Douglas Lees photo
In the announcement of Katharine T. (“KT”) Atkins’s election to the Mastership at the Warrenton Hunt (VA), Kim Nash, MFH wrote, “Her extraordinary wealth of foxhunting knowledge and equestrian skills bring remarkable depth to our team of Masters.”
KT whipped-in to her late husband, Jim Atkins, for nearly thirty years in Virginia, all through his service as professional huntsman to the Old Dominion Hounds, Piedmont Fox Hounds, Dr. Gable’s Foxhounds, and the Warrenton Hunt. Jim was inducted into the Huntsmen’s Room at the Museum of Hounds and Hunting last May, and, as his whipper-in through all those years, KT has seen some outstanding hound work. And she knows what it takes to produce it.