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Free Hunting Horn Ringtones
Select and download your favorite call on the hunting horn for your own cell phone ringtone! Courtesy of two-time National Horn Blowing Champion John Tabachka, Foxhunting Life will provide mp3 audio files of the horn calls (or M4R files specifically for iPhone) from John’s popular FHL video, Calls on the Horn. To get your free […]
London Fox Killing Video a Hoax
The recent horrific incident of an actual fox attack on a pair of young twins in London spawned, according to Chris Atkins and Johnny Howorth, a media hysteria there disproportionate to the extent of the problem. According to Atkins, the reporting, including by the BBC, was irresponsible and misrepresentative, and the reports never stressed that […]
Three British Hunts Face Prosecution under the Ban
Three hunts face prosecution for incidents which occurred last season that allegedly violated the terms of the Hunting Act of 2004: the Fernie and Sinnington Foxhounds and the Quantock Staghounds. The trials, which are expected to take place this autumn, will be prosecuted based on surveillance evidence provided to prosecutors for the Crown by the League […]
Remembering Lady Molly
Continuing my theme on the intersection of people and places, FHL subscribers might remember the story that Noel Mullins sent us last month about the Galway Blazers’ Puppy Show. The story was accompanied by a Mullins photograph of the Blazers’ long-serving MFH and huntsman Michael Dempsey. I was thrilled to see the photo, for I have my own memories of Michael Dempsey.
Before Dempsey became Master of the Blazers, he whipped-in to the late Lady Molly Cusack-Smith and the Bermingham and North Galway hounds. In that capacity both he and she are principal characters in one of the stories—a true ghost story that happened forty years ago—in my book, Foxhunting Adventures. So Mullins and I exchanged memories of our mutual connections.
John Denis, MFH
The intersection of people and places is sometimes wondrously coincidental. Irish photojournalist Noel Mullins and I have recently discovered foxhunting friends we have in common from County Galway some forty years since. More than friends, these were larger-than-life individuals enormously influential in the process that turned each of us into the foxhunting men we became.
Fast forward, and here is an excerpt from Chapter 2 of my book, Foxhunting Adventures: Chasing the Story, describing a large painting hanging in the dining room in Bermingham House, County Galway, home of the late Lady Molly Cusack-Smith, MFH:
“Dominating the end wall above the sideboard and presiding in spirit equal to Molly’s presence, gray-whiskered John Denis surveys all from the saddle. This dramatic nineteenth-century portrait of man, horse, and hound in a graceful swirl of motion and muscle was presented to him by grateful members of the Galway field.”
Travels with Betsy
Karen L. Myers Photo Our photojournalist friend Betsy Parker has set out on a cross-country horse-hauling journey with truck, trailer, two horses, her friend Beth, and Beth’s seven-year-old son John. Betsy is also carrying her laptop and camera and sending a daily journal of her experiences—a discourse that flies from her keystrokes tap-tapped in the harsh […]
Working Your Horse in the Heat of Summer
We’re all busy legging up our horses for the upcoming hunting season now. And the summer has been a scorcher. You’ve no doubt become hot and sweaty while exercising your horse, but did you know that horses are much faster than people to become debilitated by the heat? This weather calls for electrolytes.. The Summer […]
An Unforgettable Field Hunter
Our writer/foxhunter friend Martha Woodham from Georgia has sent us a touching memorial about the life and times of one of the best field hunters in North America. I realize that’s a bold claim, but Martha is telling us about a mare that, at the age of twenty-four, came to Morven Park as the oldest of the sixty top qualifiers from all over the country and placed third in the MFHA Centennial Field Hunter Championship. I watched all those horses go, and they were truly the cream of the crop.
But I have another stake in this story. I had the good fortune to ride that mare with the Bear Creek Hounds (GA) in her twenty-third year, and it was an experience to savor. My visit to Bear Creek constitutes Chapter 18 in my book, Foxhunting Adventures: Chasing the Story, and here’s an excerpt:
Iowa Invests in Plan for the Humane Euthanasia of Horses for Animal Consumption
On July 15 an Iowa state economic development board agreed to co-fund a feasibility study by a start-up company seeking a humane way to euthanize and process horses for consumption by animals. Responsible Transportation, LLC wants to develop innovative methods to collect and euthanize horses with no charge to the horse owners.