Stella Smith: Eighty-Five Years Following Hounds
Stella Smith celebrates her ninetieth birthday hunting with the Tara Harriers (IRE). Her son, Henry Smith (shown right) is Master and huntsman. / Noel Mulliins photo
What does one do to celebrate a ninetieth birthday? Well some people probably go on a cruise, while a few may go on a religious pilgrimage, then others are just happy to be upright. But not Stella Smith. To her, age is just another number. So she went for a day’s hunting with the Tara Harriers, hunted by her son Henry. This was not just impulse, as Stella rides out most mornings on her family farm at Corballis, Donabate, in North County Dublin, Ireland, on her coloured hunter out of a mare that happened to be in foal without them knowing. Hence the name, Surprise.
Michael Dempsey, longtime Master and former huntsman of the Galway Blazers, describes Stella as the most natural horsewomen ever to cross Galway stone walls, getting the most from any horse she rode. Stella (Briscoe) who her mother described as a lovely mistake, there being such an age gap between her brother George and her sister Constance, was born into a hunting and racing family.
Popular Riding Safari Leader Murdered in Kenya
Tristan Voorspuy could identify every tree, every bird, and every creature that walked the landscape, and was a force for preservation. / Garth Thompson photo
Tristan Voorspuy, sixty, was ambushed and murdered on his Sosian ranch on March 4, 2017. We report this breaking news because Tristan was well-known and respected by so many foxhunters across North America who traveled to Kenya for his riding safaris.
Tristan led most of the safaris. He could identify every tree, every bird, and every creature that walked the landscape, and had stories to tell about each. His death at the hands of renegade tribal warriors comes as a painful shock to those who remember him as a gifted horseman, pilot, former foxhunter, bold and rugged friend, naturalist, and a force for conservation in Africa. He truly cared about and and worked for the preservation of his natural world.
In fact, in a bizarre way, Tristan’s murder can be directly related to his conservation success. In 2005, Tristan and six investors purchased Sosian, a 24,000-acre ranch that was badly degraded. Tristan turned it into a highly successful wildlife conservation project, one of a number of large ranches that double as wildlife conservancies. Tribal warriors, members of Kenya’s Samburu and Pokot ethnic groups who live in an area denuded by drought and livestock, have recently seized several of these ranches so they may now graze their goats and cows.
Dartmoor and Doyle
From Foxhunting Life archives, now that we all have more reading time on our hands, here is this issue’s Bonus Article to fatten the content for our subscribers and to open more articles, previously restricted, to our non-paying registrants. We were reminded of Sir Arthure Conan Doyle’s poem since we’ve been talking about Dartmoor in recent issues.
Janet Ladner photo
Photographer Janet Ladner was out following the Mid-Devon Foxhounds when she came across these wild ponies taking shelter from the snow. I have hunted on Dartmoor, in England’s West Country, and found it to be a fascinating landscape of bleakness and beauty, with visible reminders of cultures that serially take one back in time all the way to prehistory. While hunting, one comes across ditches left by tin mining activity that began in pre-Roman times and continued to the twentieth century, evidence of farm tillage going back to the Bronze age in the parallel rows running across the slopes, and standing stones erected in prehistoric times. During quiet moments when hounds check, one can allow the imagination to soar.
For me, Dartmoor also conjures memories of cold winter boyhood days at home, reading the spooky mystery, Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle. It was the third of his Sherlock Holmes novels to be published, and this Dartmoor mystery filled my young head with delicious terror.
By coincidence, Janet Ladner’s photos of the ponies on Dartmoor arrived just as writer/editor Steve Price sent me this foxhunting poem, written by Arthur Conan Doyle. A confluence of Dartmoor and Doyle. Who knew he wrote foxhunting poetry?
Preparation’s a Pain; Hunting’s a Hoot
Lori and OzzyIt took forty minutes in the pea soup fog early this morning to bring the horses in. Something about the early morning darkness convinces them they are feral. Although with Ozzy’s skin he would last about two minutes in the wild. Not to mention his feet….
Horses are apparently unable to connect the sight of human figures in the dark with the same people they see at least twice a day 365 days a year. This mental dilemma triggered an extended episode of BAF.*
Last night, also in the dark, found me in the backyard manning the grill. I was making dry-rubbed drumsticks for the tailgate, following Roger Mooking’s recipe, whoever he is.** My original plan was to grill them in the morning, and then I came to my senses. Also baked some S’mores cupcakes. I did not have a cupcake tin so I just filled the paper cups and crammed them tightly into a baking pan. My hope was that maybe squeezing them together would give them more support and shape. They exited the oven shaped like amoebas but luckily they tasted better than they looked. Hubby liked them but was suspicious and wanted to know “what is the brown stuff on the bottom?” That would be Graham Crackers, Rick. As a Boy Scout, Rick went home with a headache before his first overnight. Obviously before the campfire was even lit. The chicken looked just like the photo in the magazine.
Larry Wheeler at the Willcox
Cross Gate Gallery (Lexington) has curated a one-man exhibition of paintings by renowned sporting artist Larry Dodd Wheeler at the Willcox Hotel in Aiken, SC. The Opening Reception was held on Feb 24, 2017, and the paintings will hang through April 14.
The Willcox Hotel is a popular Aiken meeting place for horsepeople of many disciplines—foxhunting, eventing, racing, and polo—and Larry Wheeler’s art should find an enthusiastic audience there. Members and hunting visitors from the Aiken Hounds (SC), Whiskey Road Foxhounds (SC), Why Worry Hounds (SC), and Belle Meade Hunt (GA) are seen at the Willcox throughout the season for cocktails and dinner and especially on Hunt Nights (Tuesdays).
Georgia Declares War on Coyote
In an effort to reduce the high population of resident coyotes, the state of Georgia has introduced new incentives for hunters and trappers to target the predator. The Coyote Challenge is a program sponsored by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources’ Wildlife Resources Division to reward those who kill coyotes. Monthly drawings for lifetime hunting […]
100 Horses in History
Book Review by Norman Fine
100 Horses in History: True Stories of Horses Who Shaped Our World, Gayle Stewart, Blood Horse, LLC (2015), large format, flexible cover, illustrated, color, 168 pages, available from the author and Amazon.How insipid would be the history of man were it not for the horse. By magnifying our feeble efforts with its speed, strength, and endurance, horses have injected color and romance into our very lives and amplified man’s physical impact on the history of the world.
Pegasus Award-winning writer Gayle Stewart tells the stories of one hundred special horses, which she has organized into eight categories: Trailblazers; Movies, Music, and Timeless Tales; War; Racing; Celebrities; Heros and Heroines; Show Stars; and Legend and Lore.
Do you know about Old Billy, most likely a Cleveland Bay cross? He went to work on the river bank at the age of two or three, and worked for fifty-six years to provide the power for the hoist that loaded and unloaded heavy goods from river barges. He lived another three years in retirement before dying at the age of sixty-two.
Robert Brooke: America’s First MFH
This essay is adapted from J. Blan van Urk’s The Story of American Foxhunting as published in The Derrydale Press Treasury of Foxhunting edited by Norman Fine. At the time of van Urk’s writing (1940), the Brooke family had maintained the breeding of their hounds for nearly three hundred years. Today, while it may be doubtful that a purebred Brooke hound could still be found, the genes live on in various old American foxhound strains.
Walker foxhound. Foundation bloodlines were contributed by the Brooke hound.
Robert Brooke, Esq., came to Maryland from England in 1650 with a pack of hounds. He’d been appointed a member of the Privy Council of State for the Province of Maryland by Lord Baltimore, who wished to increase Maryland’s population.
Arriving with Mr. Brooke and his hounds aboard his private ship were a wife, ten children, (eight of whom were boys), twenty-one man-servants, and seven maid-servants—forty persons in all and a meaningful contribution to the fulfillment of Lord Baltimore’s wishes. Brooke’s hounds more than satisfied another of Lord Baltimore’s foremost requirements—that each colonizing family bring at least one dog.
A Huntsman’s Life on the Ol’ Plantation
Martyn Blackmore was destined to work with foxhounds. Born in Somerset in the southwest of England, both his grandfather and his great-grandfather worked as harbourers* with the Devon and Somerset staghounds. These are true countrymen who help maintain a robust wild deer population by selecting the stag to be separated from the herd by the tufters** for the pack to hunt.
The harbourers don’t have to ride. Nor was Martyn eager to be a horseman. “They bite at one end, kick at the other, and they’re uncomfortable in the middle,” was his impression. Eventually, however, he met a girl who changed his mind…even about horses.
The Horse of Your Heart
William Henry Ogilvie was born in Scotland, but spent the decade of his twenties in Australia, a country that captivated him. He had a deep love of horses and traveled down under breaking horses and droving at the cattle stations. He explored the outback widely, camping as he went, and much of his poetry was written in and about Australia. Upon returning to England Ogilvie settled into a countryman’s life of riding, foxhunting, and writing.
William Henry Ogilvie / John Kinmont Moir portrait, 1937When you’ve ridden a four-year-old half of the day
And, foam to the fetlock, they lead him away,
With a sigh of contentment you watch him depart
While you tighten the girths on the horse of your heart.
There is something between you that both understand
As it thrills an old message from bit-bar to hand.
As he changes his feet in that plunge of desire
To the thud of his hoofs all your courage takes fire.