Watch Now for Fox Cubs On the Move
Watch for a glimpses of red fox cubs hunting with their parents at about this time of year, suggests KRCU.org, a PBS-affiliate in Missouri. As in much of this country, there are two species of foxes in Missouri—the red and the gray fox. Red foxes prefer the borders of forested areas and adjacent open lands […]
Why Worry’s Heythrop Rachel Is Grand Champion at Carolinas
Why Worry Hounds’ Heythrop Rachel 2011 is Grand Champion of the 2016 Carolinas Hound Show.
Why Worry’s Heythrop Rachel 2011 was judged Grand Champion at the fortieth annual Carolinas Hound Show held at the Springdale Racecourse in Camden, South Carolina on May 7, 2016. It’s one thing for a visiting MFH to pick up a nice draft to bring back to the home kennels; it’s another thing entirely to know what to do with it. Here’s where George and Jeannie Thomas, MFHs, Why Worry Hounds (SC), showed their breeding acumen.
While visiting friends in England and judging a puppy show at the Heythrop kennels, George mentioned that he needed a bi*ch* to introduce new bloodlines into his breeding program. We have just the hound for you, he was told. So he brought home a nicely-bred entered bi*ch, Heythrop Rachel 2011.
Bill Backer (1926–2016): “The Real Thing”
Bill Backer, singing one of his foxhunting ditties while accompanying himself at the keyboard, at the National Sporting Library & Museum. / Douglas Lees photoWilliam M. Backer, a foxhunting man who put phrases and tunes on the lips of people in every corner of the globe, died in Warrenton, Virginia on Friday, May 13, 2016, after a short illness.
A member of the Advertising Hall of Fame, Bill Backer created iconic advertising campaigns such as the 1971 Coca Cola commercial featuring his jingle, “I’d like to Teach the World to Sing.” Click for a televised clip of Bill being interviewed for and playing what is arguably the most famous commercial of all time.
Bill added “Miller Time” to the language of those who needed a substitute for “cocktail hour” and created the long-running television argument for Miller Lite: “Tastes Great; Less Filling,” one of the best-liked campaigns in the history of advertising. For Campbell Soup, he persuaded customers that “Soup is good food.”
Bill was a longtime member of the Orange County Hunt (VA) and served on the Board of Stewards for fifty years, part of that time as President. At his Smitten Farm in The Plains, Virginia he bred and raised racehorses and was an active member of the Jockey Club and the Virginia Thoroughbred Association.
Vixen Evens the Score with Valor: Is Grand Champion at Central States
Fort Leavenworth Vixen, Grand Champion of Show, handled by Stephanie Wilcox Carter, MFH and huntsman. Judge Vincent Tartaglia is standing (middle). / Angela Fain photo
Last year was the boys’ year. This year the Crossbred female, Fort Leavenworth Vixen 2013, evened the score with her littermate Valor by winning the Grand Championship at the Central States Hound Show.
Vixen is a speckled, mostly white tricolor by Brazos Valley Baxter ‘08 out of Fort Leavenworth Piper ‘07. American and Crossbred bloodlines are predominantly from Fort Leavenworth Hunt (KS), Brazos Valley Hounds (TX), and the Piedmont Fox Hounds (VA). The most recent contribution of pure English blood to this lovely Crossbred was from the Arapahoe Hunt kennels (CO), three generations back.
Stephanie Wilcox Carter, MFH and huntsman of the Fort Leavenworth pack describes Vixen as conformationally correct, happy, and unflappable.
Myopia Gammell 2012 Is Grand Champion at New England Hound Show
Myopia Gammell ’12, a proud son of Potomac Jefferson ’05, shown by huntsman Philip Headdon, was judged Grand Champion of the 2016 New England Hound Show. / Photo by Nature of Light Photography
Myopia Gammell 2012 is the second foxhound this season carrying the blood of the inimitable Potomac Jefferson to be named a Grand Champion of Show, this at the New England Hound Show held on Sunday, May 1, 2016.
Gammell was bred by now-retired huntsman Larry Pitts at Potomac, and drafted unentered to huntsman Tony Gammell at the Keswick Hunt (VA) in exchange for another breeding. Tony in turn drafted the still unentered pup to his pal, Brian Kiely, then huntsman at the Myopia Hunt (MA), who named the hound for Tony. Brian, of course, is now huntsman at Potomac, so that completes another circle, entirely!
George “Frolic” Weymouth (1937–2016) Inspired Conservation-Minded Hunts
George A. “Frolic” Weymouth, visionary conservationist, philanthropist, artist, and sportsman, died on April 24, 2016. In 1967, Weymouth and two friends purchased two parcels of land in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania totaling forty-seven acres that were threatened with industrial development. That act of preservation marked the start of the organization that was to become the Brandywine Conservancy. That conservancy, led by Weymouth, and the nearby Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds, led by Mrs. John B. Hannum, MFH, saved the Cheshire hunting country when the King Ranch was sold off. Their success served as a model and inspiration for other conservation-minded foxhunting clubs across North America to preserve their open space and educate their juniors.
Today, the Brandywine Conservancy is one of the leading land trusts in country, with 62,000 acres of land permanently protected in Pennsylvania and Delaware. Weymouth received the MFHA/Chronicle of the Horse Conservation Award in 2013, just one of numerous other awards received for his contributions to land preservation and the arts.
Potomac Hunt Master’s Horse Wins Maryland Hunt Cup
Potomac MFHs Irvin “Skip” Crawford, owner of Maryland Hunt Cup winner Senior Senator (left) and Vicki Crawford, cradling the hunt cup, with John Coles, MFH, Orange County Hounds (a three-time rider over the Maryland Hunt Cup course in the 1980s). / Douglas Lees photo
Skip Crawford, MFH, Potomac Hunt (MD) left his golfing buddies and flew home to watch his horse run in the Maryland Hunt Cup. A good decision, as it turned out. With young Eric Poretz in the irons, Senior Senator won the stiffest timber race in the world by half a neck in an exciting finish. The date was April 30, 2016 at Worthington Farms, Glyndon, Maryland.
From the start, Poretz allowed his horse to go to the front and set his own pace, a pace which gave him a lead of as much as twenty-five lengths over much of the four-mile course. “That’s the way Senior Senator likes to run,” said Skip’s better half, Vicki Crawford, MFH. “He likes to be in front.”
The horse sure looked like he makes a lot of his own decisions. On the course, at whatever speed he was running, he seemed to judge distances on his own, meeting every fence well, jumping cleanly, and going away without a hiccup. Maybe Poretz was helping, but if so, it was so quietly and sympathetically, that this scribe couldn’t see it.
RSPCA Intrusions Reach a New Low in England
Police Chiefs in the UK have called for an end to prosecutions of animal abuse cases by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA). Recently, some RSPCA employees with extreme views on animal rights have brought the once reputable organization to a new low. Employees of the society took the Byrnes […]
Middle-Aged Mom Is Grand Champion at Southwest Hound Show
Brazos Valley Marley 2010 (Brazos Valley Catfish 2006 – Their Meadow 2007) / Greg Germann photoImagine a middle-aged mother with teen-aged children winning a beauty pageant. Nice! But rare. That’s what happened at the Southwest Hound Show on Saturday, April 16. Brazos Valley Marley 2010, a seven-year-old brood bi*ch* that has hunted for six seasons, was judged Grand Champion of Show.
Marley was also judged Grand Champion at the Central States Hound Show, but that was back in 2012. She’s been mostly in the shadow of her littermate, Mystic, who was Grand Champion of the Southwest Hound Show for three years running from 2011 to 2013.
“She’s had a litter, and since then she’s been holding more weight,” explained huntsman Sandy Dixon, MFH. “She’s lovely.”
Marley’s and Mystic’s success is no stroke of luck. They’re the product of a royal breeding engineered by Dixon. She put a dog hound of her own breeding—Brazos Valley Catfish 2006—to a Potomac-bred bi*ch that she entered in 2006—Brazos Valley Meadow.
Southern Hound Show Champion Is a Sober Demon
Grand Champion Midland Striker 2015 (Midland Rocket ’11 ex Staffordshire Moorland Stunning ’11) with (l-r) Daphne Wood, MFH, LIve Oak; Mason Lampton, MFH, Midland; Mary Lu Lampton; and Marty Wood, MFH, Live Oak / Leslie Shepherd photo
“I can’t take credit,” admits Midland huntsman Ken George, “because I didn’t breed him, but he’s one of a kind!”
A sober demon could be considered a contradiction in terms, but Ken describes Midland Striker 2015 as a foxhound possessing surprisingly contradictory traits. The handsome Crossbred dog hound was judged Grand Champion of Show at the tenth annual Southern Hound Show on April 9, 2016 at Live Oak Plantation in Monticello, Florida.
“The whole litter is fantastic,” continued Ken. “As an unentered hound last season, Striker was in on ten kills. He’s always right there.
Huntsmen sometimes worry about a first-year hound being too precocious. Often, by the second or third year, such hounds begin to think too much of themselves as individuals to fit in as good team members of the pack. Ken’s not worried about Striker in that way.