Hunt Breakfast Recipe Contest!
One interesting statistic from the FHL website that got our attention told us that our Hunt Breakfast Recipe pages receive a lot of hits. Since we want to feature subjects that are important to you, our readers, we had an idea. With Opening Meets occurring with increasing frequency over the next couple of weeks and cubhunting […]
2010 Hunt Roster
In cooperation with the Masters of Foxhounds Association, the 2010 Roster of Hunts in North America is now available on Foxhunting Life. Published this year as a supplement to Covertside magazine, the Hunt Roster may be viewed here electronically by going to the Resources drop-down menu and clicking on Hunt Roster under the Travel category. As traveling […]
Call for Art
I’m anxious to develop FHL’s coverage of sporting art still further, and to that end FHL invites artists to send us a selection of their images along with a brief description of their artistic background, their achievements, goals, and what they try to communicate in their work. Artists, please educate us so that we may […]
Thoughts on Outriding
I was an outrider at the Blue Ridge Fall Races on Saturday. Besides the fact that I love sitting on a horse and that outriding is a great way to see the races, it’s also a habit. I’ve been doing it on the Woodley racecourse in Berryville, Virginia for twenty-five years. The sun was shining in a brilliant blue sky, my horse looked handsome, the hospitality tent was filled with delicious food, and all was right with the world. Until it wasn’t.
Early Morning Light
Cubhunting is now underway in most hunting countries, and the early morning slanting light is a photographer’s wish come true. Some stunning photos are coming our way, and we will be sharing them with you. For a sample of Karen Myers’ photographic art on opening day of the Blue Ridge cubhunting season, click on Photo […]
Have Books; Will Travel
In case you haven’t noticed, I have a new book out: Foxhunting Adventures: Chasing the Story. It’s a collection of thirty-two of my foxhunting stories, the earliest ones written over forty years ago. I’ll be signing books at various locations over the next few months, and if you’re in the neighborhood or are planning on attending any of the following events, please stop and say hello. Here’s my schedule as it stands now:
September 5: Hunt Night at the Warrenton Horse Show. I’ll be with Jan Neuharth and Vicki Moon who will be signing their books as well.
September 15 (10:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.): Tri-County Feeds, Etc., Marshall, VA
September 17: Blue Ridge Fall Races Calcutta Night at Woodley, Berryville, VA
October 8: Locke’s Store wine tasting, Millwood, VA
October 18: Hunt Night at the Pennsylvania National Horse Show, Harrisburg, PA
October 27: Chevy Chase Club, Chevy Chase, MD
November 5: Belle Meade Opening Meet, Thomson, GA
Ring Happy
What a response we had from our recent free hunting horn ring-tone offer! We thought it would be a fun way of celebrating the start of the new foxhunting season, and we were right. Here’s what some of you had to say: Send me ‘doubling.’ I am enjoying your website immensely! Ilove the ring-tones! I […]
Where Do They Go?
Karen L. Myers photo Now that FHL has been riding the web for a couple of months, we’ve accumulated a list of articles that first appeared on the Home Page, but were gradually dropped off to make space for new material. “Where do these articles go?” a couple of subscribers asked me recently. “Are they […]
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.”