Hounds

Modern English Foxhound: Duke of Beaufort's Monmouth 1977 by New Forest Medyg 1969 Peterborough winner of the early 1900s --- thick and ponderous --- an example of the style of foxhound favored at the time.

Thousands of foxhunters and hunt supporters are expected to turn out in England and Wales on Boxing Day. Young and old, riders and spectators alike, entire families together for the holidays tumble out-of-doors the morning after Christmas for these traditionally celebrated meets.

“It’s the highlight of the season which starts in November,” said Peter Swann, MFH of the Curre and Llangibby Foxhounds in Wales. “This year we are expecting forty riders to take part and around five hundred spectators and supporters to join us on the green.

In Wales, the Curre and Llangibby and the Monmouthshire Foxhounds trace back to the 1600s and 1700s. The Curre remains of particular significance to foxhunters because we still see and enjoy the results of Sir Edward Curre’s bloodlines in our own Crossbreds and modern English foxhounds to this day.

It was Sir Edward Curre who provided Isaac “Ikey” Bell, father of the modern English foxhound, with the Welsh blood and the pale coloration of his breeding that has been preserved and carried on by forward-looking breeders in England ever since. Bell’s vision of the foxhound finally prevailed over the thick and ponderous, black-and-tan colored foxhounds that were fashionable early in the twentieth century. Bell’s efforts to breed lighter and more athletic foxhounds fell so afoul of the foxhunting establishment of the time that leading Masters would cross the street to avoid having to greet him.

The Ashland Bassets  /  Susan Monticelli photoWhen not following foxhounds on horseback, many foxhunters and their like-minded friends can be found following their local basset or beagle pack on foot—a perfect way to continue enjoying sport and a country lifestyle. Any foxhunter who thrills to the cry of foxhounds and hasn’t yet heard a pack of bassets in full cry must try a day’s hunting behind these wonderful hounds!

Even after dismounting from the saddle on a Saturday, many still yearn to hunt on before returning to an office on Monday. There are others who have hung up their tack for various reasons, and some who have never hunted astride yet love being outdoors on fall and winter afternoons. For all these sportsmen and women, the Ashland Bassets—hunting the territories of the Casanova, Old Dominion, Orange County, and Warrenton foxhound packs in Virginia—have provided a welcome window through which to extend one's weekend enjoyment of the countryside and venery.

Charter and Tyler / Cynthia Daily photo

The odyssey of Live Oak Charter—the frightened foxhound that escaped from the Virginia Foxhound Show last May, traveled from Leesburg to Middleburg (more than twenty miles as the crow flies), crossed two major four-lane highways, subsisted on whatever food he could find, lost part of his tongue and shattered his jaw—finally ended after six long months in Hollywood’s finest style.

Charter has been adopted by the vet tech that cared for him at Blue Ridge Veterinary Associates. He lives on a hundred-acre farm, sleeps on his new owner’s bed, and runs long distances with him every day. Charter’s survival literally “took a village,” and Live Oak MFHs Daphne and Marty Wood, who supported and monitored the efforts of so many dedicated people from afar, couldn’t be happier.

Masters, staff, and hounds at the 1926 New England Hound Trails in front of the Bowditch mansion. John Bowditch was MFH of the Millwood Hunt in Framingham, MA.

Yes, we've got the spelling right. Trails, not Trials. It's a race to prove which hunt can field the fastest and most accurate hounds following a drag scent, and it's been a fixture of the New England foxhunting scene since 1923.

Each hunt may enter up to 2 couple of hounds. Competing hounds may be cheered on and handled by their staff at the starting line, but at no other point in the race. Patrol judges are stationed at strategic places to penalize hounds that skirt or cheat (i.e., take shortcuts off the true line to get closer to the front runner).

The Port of Baltimore earned a place in American history two hundred years ago this month during the War of 1812. The British, after burning and sacking Washington, D.C. in August of 1814, turned their attention to Baltimore with an assault by naval and ground troops in September. Francis Scott Key, a witness to the naval bombardment of Fort McHenry, jotted down the words to what became our national anthem, “The Star Spangled Banner.”

The Port of Baltimore earned its place in American foxhunting history that very same month—September, 1814. After the British fleet withdrew to make its final assault of the War of 1812 on New Orleans, a merchant ship entered the Port of Baltimore and disembarked two foxhounds from Ireland, Mountain and Muse.

Unusual for their appearance, speed, aggression, hunting style, and pre-potency, Mountain and Muse turned out to be progenitors of our principal American foxhound strains: July, Birdsong, Trigg, Bywaters, and Walker. The Midland Crossbred, developed by Ben Hardaway, MFH, found today in kennels all over North America as well as England, and having its roots in the July strain, also goes back to Mountain and Muse.

What to do with the old hounds? / Nancy Stevens-Brown photo

Most hunts are beset by similar problems: what to do with old hounds, how to attract more members, how to pay the bills, how to train staff, how to train young hounds. Lynn Lloyd, MFH and huntsman of the Red Rock Hounds (NV), found that the solution to one problem provided the key to solving several others.

What to Do with Old Hounds
The average hunting life of a hound is perhaps six or seven years. That means it is retired from the pack at age seven or eight. Beyond that age, most hounds start falling behind the pack, lacking the foot and endurance to maintain the pace over a full hunting day.

But with several years of life still remaining for the retired hounds, most hunts are hard-put to expend their limited financial resources to keep and maintain them. And here’s where Lynn Lloyd found a way to turn a burden into an asset.

No members of your hunting community are loved by Masters and huntsman as dearly as the puppy walkers. Each year these intrepid folk accept the arrival of a couple of playful pups to their country home in early summer to teach them their names, walking on lead, a semblance of civilized behavior, and a taste of life outside the kennel.

In a couple of months, after the cuddly innocents have grown into marauding, thieving, hunting fanatics, the puppy walkers cry, “Uncle!” and the huntsman returns to reclaim them. The huntsman will be back the following summer, however, and these generous puppy walkers will smilingly welcome yet another couple of wide-eyed puppies to their property.

So, when your Masters praise the puppy walkers at the annual puppy show and bestow a small trophy upon those who walked the winning hounds, recall this poem by Will H. Ogilvie and give the puppy walkers their due!

Will You Walk a Puppy?

‘Will you walk a puppy?’ the Hunt enquired.
Being sportsmen, we did as the Hunt desired.
And early in June there arrived a man
With an innocent bundle of white and tan.
A fat little Foxhound, bred to the game,
With a rollicking eye and a league-long name,
And he played with a cork at the end of a string;
And walking a puppy was ‘just the thing.’

Hounds speak confidently in covert; the whipper-in on the far side lifts his cap to the sky; and hounds burst into the open in full cry.

Suddenly all of life is in motion. Your head fills with the sights and sounds of the chase—the cry of hounds, the huntsman’s horn, the thud of hooves, the wind in your ears. Bliss. Then it all goes quiet.

The pack fractures, hounds searching for the lost line. The huntsman gives them a chance to recover it on their own. He doesn’t want the line to go cold, nor does he wants hounds to lift their heads and look to him for help every time they are at fault. Hounds make their own swing. The huntsman weighs all the factors—wind, scenting conditions, time passing, landscape, how the foxes have run here in the past. He decides to make a cast.

Coming soon: hounds speak confidently in covert; the whipper-in on the far side lifts his cap to the sky; and hounds burst into the open in full cry.

Suddenly all of life is in motion. Your head fills with the sights and sounds of the chase—the cry of hounds, the huntsman’s horn, the thud of hooves, the wind in your ears. Bliss. Then it all goes quiet.

The pack fractures, hounds searching for the lost line. The huntsman gives them a chance to recover it on their own. He doesn’t want the line to go cold, nor does he wants hounds to lift their heads and look to him for help every time they are at fault. Hounds make their own swing. The huntsman weighs all the factors—wind, scenting conditions, time passing, landscape, how the foxes have run here in the past. He decides to make a cast.

 Toronto and North York huntsman John Harrison gets his hounds moving for the judges. / Mary Raphael photo

Toronto and North York Clarence 2012 was judged Grand Champion of the Canadian Foxhound Show at the Ottawa Valley Hunt Farm on June 14, 2014. Judges were Messrs. C. Martin Scott, ex-MFH, Vale of the White Horse (UK) and Mason Lampton, MFH, Midland Foxhounds (GA).

It wasn’t too long ago that the Canadian hunts showed mainly English foxhounds, but the Canadian show now offers classes for both English and Crossbred Champions. With this in mind, it’s interesting to note that this year’s Grand Champion, while considered English based on the high percentage of English bloodlines in his pedigree, goes back in tail female to Midland Crossbred lines and on his sire’s side to a strong Blue Ridge female line of Crossbreds.

Clarence’s dam, Toronto and North York Clinic 2006, was a Crossbred hound out of a Midland female.* His sire, Blue Ridge Barnfield 2010, goes back in tail male to strong English lines of which Judge Martin Scott makes note: