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Traditional foxhunting attire is important to me, but I’m not a fanatic. Why is it important? Respect...for three hundred years of sport, art, literature, and the men and women who had the passion, energy, and intellect to formulate and leave us one of the most exhilarating activities known to man. For these reasons it pains me to see the concepts of appropriate attire ignored in many hunting fields today.

One night in 1829, John Woodcock Graves sat in his parlor with John Peel, a farmer, horse dealer, and foxhunter whose hounds were highly celebrated by the local sheep farmers. From the adjoining room, Graves overheard his son's granny singing an ancient Irish melody to the child. Graves took that old melody and wrote a new set of lyrics to honor his friend, John Peel.

The puma (mountain lion, cougar), fourth largest species in the cat family, typically weighing a hundred or more pounds, coexists with the only other top predator in the Andes, the Andean fox at nineteen pounds.

Many hunts in North America during my hunting lifetime—just fifty years...a brief period in the scheme of thing—have migrated by necessity from foxhunting to virtually all coyote hunting.

Many of these hunts, whether by the size and nature of their countries or their long foxhunting traditions, would prefer to continue hunting the fox as opposed to the coyote. Conventional wisdom suggests that because the coyote and the fox compete for the same diet, the coyote will kill the foxes upon arrival in his new country or drive the fox away. This is certainly true in many areas and has been noted with dismay. But can the coyote and the fox somehow coexist?

Here is a concise history of foxhunting in North America from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, tracing the sport from its Colonial beginnings to organized foxhunting as we know it today. The work constitutes part of the first chapter in A Centennial View, published by the MFHA to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the establishment of the Association.

Surely, one of the thrills of the foxhunting field is the sound of the huntsman’s horn. When huntsman and hounds are out of sight, the horn keeps the knowledgeable foxhunter informed as to the progress of the hunt.

Traditional foxhunting attire is important to me, but I’m not a fanatic. Why is it important? Respect...for three hundred years of sport, art, literature, and the men and women who had the passion, energy, and intellect to formulate and leave us one of the most exhilarating activities known to man. For these reasons it pains me to see the concepts of appropriate attire ignored in many hunting fields today.