Jed Forest Members Found Guilty in Scotland
Two members of the Jed Forest Foxhounds have been found guilty of breaching Scotland’s Protection of Wild Mammals Act. The conviction was the first under the act since its passage in 2002. Johnny Riley and his father John Clive Richardson, MFH were fined £400 and £250 respectively for deliberately hunting a fox with dogs near […]
Why The Eastern Coyote Merits Separate Species Status
The eastern Coyote or coywolf is larger and has a thicker body, shorter muzzle, and shorter ears than the western coyote.
Jonathan Way, a research scientist at Clark University in Massachusetts, makes a case for renaming the eastern coyote that populates the northeastern U.S. He sees it as a separate species of canid.
Way argues that the so-called eastern coyote looks unlike the western variety, exhibiting characteristics of coyotes, wolves, and dogs. There is a current debate among scientists as to what to call this creature.
Six Centuries of Foxhunting: An Annotated Bibliography
Book Review by Norman Fine
Six Centuries of Foxhunting: An Annotated Bibliography by M.L. Biscotti, Foreword by Norman Fine, Rowman & Littlefield, 2017, 499 pages, illustrated, $85.00 hardbound, $80.00 eBookWithin Six Centuries of Foxhunting, Matthew “Duke” Biscotti has collected the essential facts of every bit of literature on the subject of foxhunting that was published prior to the year 2000. A lot of years, a lot of sport, a lot of huntsmen, horses, hounds, and foxes for many lifetimes.
Biscotti’s volume is destined to be a bible for antiquarian booksellers, scholars, collectors, and writers of sporting literature. But the book’s appeal will be a great deal broader. Biscotti gives us so much related and fascinating information about the listed author, the subject, and the times that the volume invites browsing, as does a good encyclopedia.
Scouring the World’s Most Prominent Work of Equine Art
It takes a village to maintain the White Horse of Uffington
Not all art restoration is done with mild cleaners and painstaking brushwork every hundred years or so. In Oxfordshire, England, it takes a village equipped with hammers, buckets of chalk, and kneepads every few years.
Carved into the chalky grasslands of the Berkshire Downs three thousand years ago by an ancient people, the White Horse of Uffington covers the size of a football field and is visible from twenty miles away. And were it not for the people who originally created it, and all the tribes people and villagers who have resided in the vicinity ever since and maintained it, this amazing artistic accomplishment would have completely disappeared thousands of years ago.
Hark Forward! An Exciting Season Is Ahead
MFHA President Tony Leahy, MFHIt was ten years ago, but MFHA President Tony Leahy yearns to recapture the fun and enthusiasm of the 2007 MFHA Centennial Season. We had Regional Joint Meets, Foxhound Performance Trials, and Field Hunter Trials all across North America, and Tony wants to do it again! Accordingly, the upcoming 2017/2018 season has been designated a season to Hark Forward!
All events are accompanied by dinners, parties, and the company of sporting cousins from all across the country. No one goes home hungry or thirsty! The MFHA is maintaining an up-to-date schedule of events on their website. Click for planning your own participation. Take note of the dates and geography. If you join the caravans for all or part of any of the event tours, you’ll find hunt clubs along the route that have scheduled Friendship Meets and more hospitality to break up your long drives.
Un-Entered Hillsboro Stafford Is Grand Champion at Carolinas
Grand Champion Hillsboro Stafford is one member of an exceptional un-entered litter by Midland Striker ’15. / Geri DeSousa photo
Hillsboro Hounds (TN) huntsman Johnnie Gray sidestepped his usual protocol and made a breeding decision that turned out quite well. Two years ago in the show rings his own hounds came up against Midland Striker a few times, and Johnnie liked the yet un-entered Midland dog hound. Before sending a bi*ch* out to be bred, however, Johnnie’s practice is first to see the potential sire in the hunting field so he knows that it hunts well. At that point, no one had yet seen Striker in the hunting field.
“I didn’t want to take a chance and wait another year—who knows what might happen?—and I knew Striker’s sire and dam were good hunting hounds. The bi*ch I wanted to breed was Warwickshire Daylight 2012. There was no question about her hunting ability, so I went ahead and sent her to Striker at Midland.”
Arapahoe Hunt Pony Club Wins Foxhunting Challenge
Zina Balash photo The United States Pony Clubs, Inc. has recognized the Arapahoe Pony Club as winners of the eleventh annual Live Oak Hounds USPC Foxhunting Challenge. The Live Oak Challenge encourages Pony Club members who do not hunt regularly to try the sport. Through the support of Mr. and Mrs. C. Martin Wood III, […]
Persistence Pays Off for Midland Striker at Bryn Mawr
Bryn Mawr Grand Champion Midland Striker 2015 (Midland Rocket 2011 ex Staffordshire-Mooreland Stunning 2011) / Karen Kandra Wenzel photo
Midland Striker 2015 was judged Grand Champion Foxhound at the 2017 Bryn Mawr Hound Show on Saturday, June 3, 2017.
Bryn Mawr is the one that got away from Striker last year. In 2016, this graceful moving, handsome Crossbred dog hound had a big year in the ring. He was judged Grand Champion at the Virginia Foxhound Show and at the Southern Hound Show. But the hat trick at Bryn Mawr wasn’t to be his. Now, Striker can add the Bryn Mawr notch to his collar.
Hobbyhorse Showjumping Craze Sweeps Scandinavia
I can’t believe I’m reporting on this, but I assure you it’s not fake news. Riders, mostly girls between five and eighteen, but some boys as well, are riding, practicing, and competing in dressage and showjumping events on hobby horses. Riders can buy their mounts—stuffed heads on a stick—for about two hundred dollars; other riders […]
Woodbrook Kent Is Grand Champion at Western States
Huntsman Jennifer Hansen and Western States Grand Champion of Show Woodbrook Kent 2014. Judges are huntsman Larry Pitts and Mary Ewing, MFH. / Nancy Stevens-Brown photo
Honorary huntsman Jennifer Hansen credits the Woodbrook Masters who encouraged her to take hounds on a one-thousand-mile trip (each way!) from Washington State to Southern California to participate in the Western States Hound Show. It was the first time that Woodbrook had shown hounds in many years, and it was the first time Hansen ever showed hounds. And she took home the Grand Champion Foxhound of Show, Woodbrook Kent 2014.
“I was as nervous as I could be,” said Hansen, but “I was so proud of Kent who held his stern high all day. [Judge] Mr. Pitts said, ‘That hound just can’t stand bad!’”