Ron Black: A Foxhunting Purist
Author/historian Ron Black, a fourth-generation foot hunter who strove to preserve the foxhunting history of his beloved Cumbria.I never met Ron Black in person, but I knew him so well. We’d been carrying on an email friendship for years. Ron died of cancer on September 5, 2017.
Over the years our correspondence covered all sorts of subjects—foxhunting, politics, world affairs. (He was for Hillary, all the way.) He scoffed at us mounted foxhunters for our preoccupation with horses and fancy clothing, and he would start most notes with, “How are things in the Colonies?” His sense of history was a huge part of who he was. And it was to preserve the history of foxhunting in his beloved Cumbria, after the despised Hunting Act became law, that possessed him to start a website and begin collecting that history.
That’s how John Harrison became friends with Ron Black. Harrison is currently hunting the Deep Run Hunt (VA) foxhounds, but twenty years ago Harrison was huntsman for one of the storied foot packs in the Lake District, the Ullswater Foxhounds. Ron was writing a book about the Ullswater. It was the hunt of Harrison’s boyhood, and he had returned to England from Toronto and North York (ON) to take up the horn there. It is a hard and dangerous place: climbing borrans (stone piles), crags (cliffs), and crossing the scree beds (fallen stone from the crags). It’s country that would ruin a horse the first time out. Harrison hunted the Ullswater hounds on foot there for eighteen seasons before returning to North America three years ago.
Two Virginia Farms Quarantined for EHV-1
Horses in Virginia have tested positive for Equine Herpesvirus-1 (EHV-1) at two farms in two counties within a two-week period in August. The most recent cases are at a private pleasure horse farm in King William County. Of the four horses showing clinical signs, two tested positive and both were euthanized. Ten days earlier, horses […]
Fox Hunting or Foxhunting?
Karen L. Myers photoI have been asked by writers, publishers, and even by just curious individuals over the years, which written form is correct—fox hunting (two words) or foxhunting (one word)?
From what I have seen, the style of the term most commonly used by people who do not hunt is fox hunting (two words). Supporting this choice is a highly respected reference book for writers and publishers, the Chicago Manual of Style, that recommends two separate words. To be sure, there are also some highly respected experts on hunting who also use the two-word version. So, you can’t go wrong using fox hunting. Nevertheless, I use the one-word form, foxhunting, in all my articles, books, and published material. Here’s why.
Seventy-Five-Year-Old Hound Manuscript Published
In Search of the Kerry Beagle by Stanislaus Lynch with a Foreword by Chris Ryan, MFH, The Scarteen HoundsA manuscript on the Kerry Beagle that languished for nearly seventy-five years has been rescued, edited, and published twenty-seven years after the author’s death by Irish author and photojournalist Noel Mullins, from whom the book may now be purchased.
In Search of the Kerry Beagle by Stanislaus Lynch attempts to trace the roots of this unique breed of Irish hound, most widely known as that bred for more than four hundred years at Scarteen in County Limerick, the Black and Tans. The ancient hound is believed to have descended from hounds that swam ashore from shipwrecked Spanish boats sunk off the southwest coast of Ireland.
Foxhunting Junior Wins USEF Pony Medal Final
Ada Catherine hunting at Moore County on a lovely Thoroughbred mare owned by T.J. Watson, a hunting friend.
Ada Catherine Hays has been on the foxhunting scene since she was in diapers. “She was an infant in her father’s arms waiting for me at the breakfast after a hunt,” said her mom Elizabeth Hays. “She started hunting on a lead line at the age of four, sharing an 11.3-hand pony field hunter with her brother. She was off the lead and hunting on a great pony at the age of six.”
In mid-August, Ada Catherine, now twelve, took her show pony, Center Field, to her first-ever major show, and won the USEF Pony Medals Final over 164 entries. That’s what the foxhunting experience gives talented young riders. It’s interesting that this story of Ada Catherine’s experience follows so closely on the heels of our recent article about seventeen-year-old Caelinn Leahy, foxhunter and Grand Prix jumper winner.
Huntsmen On the Move: II
As the new season gets underway, Foxhunting Life updates its March 31 report on the recent moves of huntsmen across North America.
Huntsman Ashley Hubbard leads the Green Spring Valley hounds on summer exercise. / Tammie Monaco photo
Round I
Ashley Hubbard is the new huntsman for the Green Spring Valley Hounds (MD). Hubbard has served as kennel huntsman for the Fox River Valley Hunt (IL) for nearly ten years, assisting Tony Leahy, MFH, and carrying the horn when necessary.
“Tony didn’t want to lose him,” explained Duck Martin, MFH at Green Spring Valley, “but he thought this would be a good opportunity for Ashley.”
Since the end of World War II, Green Spring Valley has had just four huntsmen: Leslie Grimes, Andrew Barclay, John Tabachka, and Sam Clifton. Both Grimes and Barclay have been enshrined in the Huntsmen’s Room at the Museum of Hounds and Hunting.
Big Year Ahead for Junior Field Hunter Championships
The 2017 Finals of the JNAFHC will be hosted by the Belle Meade Hunt (GA) on November 10-12. In this photo, Belle Meade Masters and juniors celebrate an Opening Meet on the front steps of the clubhouse, Boots Hall. Masters, standing in the back row are: (left) Epp Wilson, (middle) Dr. Gary Wilkes, and (right) Charlie Lewis.
How much foxhunting excitement can juniors buy for $75.00 these days? A junior with turbo-jet-powered horse transport could conceivably hunt with up to twenty-two packs of hounds in twelve states from the East to the Mid-West in qualifying meets over a three-month period this fall. Juniors without such a machine will still find several meets in their region plus an exciting weekend at the finals.
Information for the coming season’s schedule of meets and a single entry form for the entire series is available on the JNAFHC website. MFHA President Tony Leahy, MFH will be Chief Judge at the championship finals the weekend of November 10 to 12.
Some years ago, as the field was walking through the country during one qualifying meet, a child stared at an attractive house and asked a question that warmed the hearts of the organizers. “Why,” she asked, “would someone build a house in the middle of such nice hunting country?”
Sculpting With Paint: The Art of Brooke Major
“Being original is for true artists,” says Brooke Major.
While auditing art classes at the fine art school in Paris, France, Brooke Major, an American artist, was told that painting was finished. There was nothing new to be discovered. Since her passions included both painting and sculpting, she decided to prove the art professor’s statement wrong, and sculpt paint.
“I have chosen monochrome white,” said Major, “since white is a reflection of light and can be changed into any color.” By changing the color of the lighting, by lighting from different directions, and even by lighting from behind, the optical illusions produced by a single painting may be completely transformed.
Caelinn Leahy’s Horse Hunts, Wins $50,000 Grand Prix
Caelinn Leahy and Splendor go airborne, celebrating their Grand Prix Jumper win at HITS Balmoral in July. “He’s so laid back out hunting!” Caelinn says. / Andrew Ryback photography
Back in the day, horsemen and women used to show or event their horses in the summer and foxhunt the same horses in the fall and winter. We don’t see that any more, except maybe in Ireland where they still believe that foxhunting teaches horses about some of the fun in life, how to handle the terrain, and how to get themselves out of trouble by finding that fifth leg when needed.
Fifteen-year-old Caelinn Leahy, who has a connection to Irish ways through her dad, Tony, foxhunts an eighteen-year-old bay Hanoverian gelding. His name is Splendor, and he’s a show jumper, too. On July 22nd, Caelinn and Splendor won the $50,000 HITS Balmoral Grand Prix in Illinois.
How Charles Montgomery Shaped the Foxhound Performance Trial
Trial huntsman Charles Montgomery and competing hounds at the 2016 Belle Meade Hunt hound trials / Bella Vita Fotografie photo
The Brits must be getting used to this. Teach the Yanks something worthwhile, like foxhunting, and they go ahead and change it. They did it first with the foxhound. A braggart named Harry Worcester Smith came along at the beginning of the twentieth century with his long-eared, mouthy, hare-footed hounds, and claimed they were better than ours! He put together a Great Hound Match and tried to prove it. We spent two hundred years developing the perfect model of what a foxhound should look like, and then along came another American named Ikey Bell who started another revolution. And just twenty years ago—yesterday in the proper scheme of things—a couple of rebels named Ben Hardaway and Mason Lampton started painting numbers on foxhounds. Whatever for?