You’re Invited!
Stop by the Foxhunting Life booth at the Virginia Foxhound Show and meet our guest, Mary Kalergis. She’ll be talking about her new book, Foxhunters Speak: An Oral History of American Foxhunting, and signing copies. The book has received high praise from readers.
Also, we’ll be previewing and accepting advance orders for our 2018 Foxhunting Life Calendar. We have a special deal for pre-orders!
Our new calendar is affectionately dedicated to Hugh Robards, just retired from a brilliant fifty-five-year career in hunt service. He appears on the cover (and on a page inside) in his final hunt as a professional huntsman. We are proud to publish Middleburg Photo’s gorgeous composition of Robards and the foxhounds of the Middleburg Hunt (VA) on the grass, framed by the bare trees of early spring, all against a blue sky adrift with fair weather clouds.
Southwest Hound Show Grand Champion Is Born Closely to the Crown
Southwest Grand Champion of Show Brazos Valley Precious 2016, shown by Sandy Dixon, MFH, is a lucky mistake. Standing is judge John Tabachka, professional huntsman for the Sewickley Hunt (PA). / Tara Tibbetts photo
Brazos Valley Precious 2016, an American foxhound, was crowned Grand Champion of the Southwest Hound Show on April 22, 2017. Precious is closely inbred; her sire and dam were littermates, Brazos Valley Mystic 2010 and Molly 2010, respectively. An unusual breeding practice for sure, and about which I was anxious to talk to breeder Sandy Dixon, MFH of the Brazos Valley Hounds (TX).
Both Mystic and Molly were hound show winners in Virginia, and their sire and dam were hound show winners. The four foxhounds comprising the first two generations from Precious account for eight grand championships at MFHA-sanctioned hound shows! And if you go back just one more generation, who appears in Precious’s pedigree (top and bottom, because her paternal and maternal grandparents are the same) but Potomac Jefferson 2005, the MFHA Centennial Grand Champion Foxhound…the king…the Clarke Gable of the North American foxhound world.
Foxhunters Speak: Meet Author at Virginia Foxhound Show
Mary Kalergis’s new book Foxhunters Speak was launched this spring. Mary will be in the Foxhunting Life stand at the Virginia Foxhound Show to greet readers and sign her books. Please stop by and say hello.
We’ve published two sneak previews of Mary’s book over the last couple of months in FHL WEEK. I hope you had a chance to read Melvin Poe’s story in March and Tot Goodwin’s story in April. It’s as if you had sat down with each of these respected huntsmen in their own dens, shared a tumbler, listened to the experiences that formed their personal hunting philosophies, and met the mentors who shaped them.
Melvin and Tot represent just two of fifty foxhunting personalities whom Mary sought out, sat with, and interviewed. Her experience in this genre shows. She’s published similar books on subjects from teenagers to adoption to childbirth. She’s traveled the country for her interviews and edited them into coherent essays that are both personal and frank. Now she’s done it for the foxhunting world, and I heartily recommend it. Even the interview of ten-year-old Colin Smith, son of a professional huntsman, is charming.
Henry Hooker, MFH, Sportsman and Raconteur (1933-2017)
For all his important accomplishments, Henry Hooker could just crack you up with a story.
Henry Hooker, MFH since 1963 of the Hillsboro Hounds in Nashville, Tennessee, passed away at home on April 24, 2017, following a long illness. He was eighty-four.
Sadly, the world of field sport has lost a genial, enthusiastic, humorous, and visionary citizen. With his deliberate and clear Tennessee-inflected drawl, dry wit, and a sparkle in his eye, he was one of the most amusing raconteur’s ever to unfold a story. From the field or the podium—he was a highly-sought speaker—he could just crack you up.
In his memoir, Fox, Fin, and Feather: Tales from the Field (The Derrydale Press, 2002), he took his readers, on a raucous jaunt—foxhunting, fishing, and shooting—from the dark hills and hollows of the Tennessee night hunters to the exclusive quail-shooting plantations of South Georgia. He connected the “Brahmins of the chase” (English-inspired mounted foxhunters) to their American roots (southern night hunters and field trialers). The characters he ran across in the course of his sporting adventures furnished all the material he ever needed for his hilarious and touching anecdotes. For example…
Breakthrough in Preserving Live Horse Sperm for AI
Researchers in Australia have developed a new scientific method they claim could boost the success of horse breeding via artificial insemination (AI) around the world. With their discovery, semen can be stored, shipped, and used at ambient temperature. Chilling or freezing, which can damage cells, would not be necessary. Scientists at the University of Newcastle […]
Flying Fox a Threatened Species
The flying fox, so called for its large eyes and pointed ears and snout, is not really a fox at all. The other common name for the mammal is fruit bat. It’s the largest of all bats in the world with a wingspan of nearly five feet. Its senses of smell and eyesight are well-developed, […]
Hillsboro Godfrey Is Grand Champion at Southern Hound Show
Grand Champion Hillsboro Godfrey 2016 / Leslie Shepherd photo
It could not have been a more perfect day for the eleventh Southern Hound Show at Live Oak Plantation, Monticello, Florida, held on April 8, 2017. With fifty-two degrees rising into the low seventies, hounds and staff were showing at their best.
The Grand Champion of Show, Hillsboro Godfrey’16, was Unentered Champion here last year, bred and shown at the time by Tony Leahy, Master and huntsman of Fox River Valley Hunt (IL). Leahy graciously gave Godfrey to Hillsboro at the conclusion of the 2016 Southern Hound Show.
We have reproduced last year’s show photo of Godfrey (below) to illustrate the difference one year’s development made in transforming an unentered youngster into an adult foxhound and a Grand Champion. Note the deeper chest and added muscle easily seen over the loin and hindquarter, and the generally increased bone and substance all over.
Murphy Sweeps Open Jump Races at Old Dominion
Featuring the photographs of Douglas Lees
Easy Exit and Jeff Murphy (left) are Open Hurdle winners over Del Bando and Liam McVicar. / Douglas Lees photo,
Six jump races—three hurdle and three timber—and two flat races completed an eight-race card at the Old Dominion Point-to-Point at Ben Venue Farm in Virginia on Saturday, April 8, 2017. Jeff Murphy swept both the Open Races—Hurdles and Timber.
In the Open Hurdles, Murphy rode Easy Exit to an easy win by a seven-length margin for trainer Doug Fout. This was Fout’s first of two wins for the day.
Randy Rouse, MFH and Steeplechase Icon, Dies at 100
Randy Rouse on his steeplechase champion Cinzano. The pair went to the starting line 11 times, and won every race. / Douglas Lees photo
Randolph D. “Randy” Rouse—Master of Foxhounds, retired champion race rider, Thoroughbred trainer, musician, and national steeplechase icon, died early Friday, April 7, 2017 at age one-hundred.
He was the oldest trainer in North American Thoroughbred history to saddle a winner, ever. He was ninety-nine last April when his Hishi Soar won the Daniel Van Clief Memorial at Foxfield Spring Races. This season, at age one hundred, just one week before his death, he sent Hishi Soar to the starting line again and won the Open Hurdle Race at the Orange County Point-to-Point in Virginia.
Randy Rouse, 100, Sets New American Record at Orange County
Hishi Soar, owned and trained by Randy Rouse wins the Locust Hill Open Hurdle Race with Gerard Galligan in the irons. / Douglas Lees photo
In May, last year, at age ninety-nine, Randy Rouse, MFH of the Loudoun Fairfax Hunt (VA), saddled his Hishi Soar, put Gerard Galligan up, and won the featured race at Foxfield in Charlottesville—the sanctioned $25,000 Daniel Van Clief Memorial optional allowance hurdle. That feat made Rouse the oldest American ever to train a Thoroughbred winner.
Last Saturday, April 2, 2017, Rouse, brought Hishi Soar to the Orange County Point-to-Point Races at Locust Hill Farm, put Galligan up again, and won the Open Hurdle Race in a five-horse field. That feat, by our reckoning, makes Mr. Rouse the first one-hundred-year-old American ever to train a Thoroughbred winner.