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Karen L. Myers photoLast month we announced a new feature on Foxhunting Life --- Hunt Club Pages. We have a page for every North American hunt with all the articles we have published about that hunt or referring to it. Now we want to make your hunt’s page even more informative.

We have added space for historical or descriptive text about each hunt plus a link to the hunt’s website. The description and link will always appear first on that hunt’s page—before the articles.

Returning to our Tell-Me-a-Story series, we’ve already covered “How I Came to Foxhunting” and “My First Foxhunt,” and we’ve received some good stories from our readers in return. For the next subject, let’s tackle “A Most Memorable Hunt.” There has to be at least one day, among all the days in all the seasons past, that remains as clear in your memory as the day it happened. There are probably several such days. I’m going to pick one that has remained for me a constant joy to recall. I’ll tell you my story. Please tell us yours.

My memorable hunt doesn’t equate to the best, the fastest, or the most exciting. Many of the most thrilling hunts I’ve experienced remain simply a blur. I recall such days with hounds roaring, hooves pounding, fences disappearing below the girth, and no thought but to keep up. However, there was never time for my mind’s shutter to capture and freeze those images with clarity for a lifetime.

Rather, I recall one slow, bluebird day, when scent was less than ideal, hounds had to work for every inch of the line, and the pace was never brisker than a trot. After twenty-five years at least, the images are still vivid. What made that day so memorable would be a fair question to ask.

Hugh Robards in a blue bird's-eye stockI have a confession to make. Hugh Robards, as I hope you know, is a distinguished member of Foxhunting Life’s Panel of Experts. He is a brilliant huntsman, author, and student of the noble art. For twenty-seven seasons he hunted the County Limerick Foxhounds in Ireland for Lord Daresbury and showed world-class sport.

Yet each time I publish his photo with one of his “Ask the Experts” contributions, I cringe a little. What will my readers think of an “expert” that ignores the precepts of “correct” turnout? What could he have been thinking of that morning as he dressed himself to hunt hounds?

Karen Myers photoOne of my recent blogs was titled “Adopt-a-Kid.” It talked about how individual field members can help bring children to the hunting field. Elisabeth Harpham from Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds suggested through the Comments box that we check out what her hunt is doing in Unionville, Pennsylvania. We asked her to tell us, and she did. See her article following this blog.

In addition to the traditional junior activities sponsored by most hunts, the Cheshire Masters recognized that the challenge doesn’t end with simply getting children into the field. You need to offer them enough excitement and incentive to keep them there. Evidently they succeeded, because Elisabeth tells us that in the past six or eight years they have seen a huge increase in the number of children actively hunting.

Martin Scott, ex-MFH“Are the words scarlet and pink interchangeable?” asks Leslie Shepherd. “Is one more correct than the other? Is pink a word of the past? I always thought that scarlet referred to formal attire such as worn at a hunt ball or the Masters Ball, while pink described the color of the frock coat in the field. Could you clarify for us?”

I love this question because it endures as one of the great controversies of foxhunting’s arcane language. We asked Martin Scott, ex-MFH, Vale of the White Horse (UK), Hugh Robards, ex-MFH, Rolling Rock Hunt (PA), and C. Martin Wood, MFH, Live Oak Hounds (FL) for their opinions. All three gentlemen are not only internationally-respected practitioners of the art but students as well: Scott and Wood as master breeders and judges of foxhounds, Robards as a brilliant huntsman. All are intellectually curious and have access to extensive libraries.

I’m excited to announce a new feature on Foxhunting Life. If you go to the Horse and Hound drop-down menu (above) and click on Hunt Club Pages, you will land on a new page that lists all the North American hunts. (We plan to add English and Irish hunts as well.)

Each hunt name is a clickable link. Click on any one, and every article published on Foxhunting Life about or referring to that hunt will be retrieved in chronological order, most recent first.

Karen Myers photoIn my last blog, “How I Came to Go Foxhunting,” I told my story, and readers gave us some good stories in return. (See the Comments section after the blog and our Facebook page.) The next logical step in this tell-me-a-story series is “My First Foxhunt.” What do we remember aside from that kaleidoscopic blur of new images and sensations? Once again, I’ll tell you my story, then you can tell us yours.

The things that stick in my mind from my first foxhunt forty-five years ago, surprisingly, have little to do with foxhunting. Hounds? I’m sure there was a pack of foxhounds involved, but they certainly don’t stand out in my mind. As I explained in my last blog, I came to hunting through a love of horses.

Like most first-time foxhunters, I suppose I was primarily concerned with complying with the bewildering rules of hunting etiquette and with keeping me and my horse out of trouble. There are, however, two things I do remember about that day with perfect clarity: (1) romance and (2) the late J. Quincy Adams, MFH.

Most of us didn’t wake up one morning and say to ourselves, “I think I’ll go foxhunting today.” It just doesn’t happen that way. Some come to the hunting field through long-time family experience. Others are encouraged by a friend. For others—you  romantics—it’s the fulfillment of a dream.

Surely there are other reasons which only you can tell, so here’s your chance. This is the first in a series of upcoming blogs that were suggested by Steve Price, a member of FHL’s Panel of Experts. The series will be rooted in one of the most enchanting sentences in the English language: “Tell me a story.”

I’ll tell you mine. Then you can tell us yours.

Jim Wofford photoWe all rue the end of the foxhunting season in March. And now that the point-to-point season has ended and the final hound show of the year is only a few days away, what to do until September?

Well, after crying over the season’s end, we all seem to find a lot to do. Sometimes it’s just the same old things that produce the familiar rhythm of the year’s cycle. I’m always anxious to get my tomato plants in and toil away for what sometimes results in a rewarding harvest and other times ends in a tangle of limp and barren vines. No matter. I do it again the following year with renewed hope.