Our Hunting World

The world-famous Cooley Farm Irish Draughts hunted with the Wicklow Foxhounds in Coolgreany this past month.

On October 3, 2023, Scotland’s “Hunting With Dogs Bill” came into effect. The Bill was passed this January to ban all trail chasing (called a drag hunt in the U.S.) and any hunting with more than two hounds without a special license. This Bill replaces the Protection of Wild Mammals Act that has been in effect in Scotland since 2002. That Act allowed the hunting of foxes to protect livestock and ground-nesting birds or to prevent the spread of disease. The new Bill will affect eight foxhunt clubs and one mink hunt club located in Scotland. Two hunt clubs in Scotland now use bloodhounds as of this season to chase a group of runners (called “clean boot”) and should be unaffected by the Bill.

Photo by Gretchen Pelham.

“On Hunting” is a new podcast out of England where, as we know, mounted foxhunting with hounds has been banned since 2004. Its aim is to change the public’s perception of hunting in an effort to save it. The reasons behind the ban on traditional fox hunting are not based on fact, nor are they in the interest of animal welfare whatsoever, but rather on animal rights groups who have convinced virtue-signaling politicians to take up their cause for money, votes, and power. There is a huge difference between animal welfare and animal rights, as is explained in some episodes.

Photo by Gretchen Pelham.

The new year is only a few months old, but it has been a long one for foxhunters in Britain. To hit the “high notes”, there have been guilty pleas, protests, arrests, national and celebrity outrage, and an updated Scottish ban on hunting. But the worst is that two hunt clubs have disbanded in the wake.

Photo By Gretchen Pelham

Anyone who follows foxhunting in England knows that the sport has been under assault for decades. Illegal for 17 years, its successor, trail hunting, took a big blow last year following the hacking of an online meeting of the MFHA.

Red Fox (vulpes vulpes)  /   Mike Roberts photo

The genesis of the red fox in North America has long been a rich subject for discussion. DNA studies have furnished answers, revealed genetically distinct types, and led to informed theories about how distinctive alterations to those lines developed as the result of separation and isolation during the Ice Ages.

Liz Kierepka―Senior Research Biologist and Assistant Research Professor at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, North Carolina State University―describes herself as “a wildlife geneticist with broad interests across ecology and evolution.” Dr. Kierepka was interviewed by Laura Oleniacz for The Abstract, a publication of North Carolina State University. Here’s what Foxhunting Life learned.

The author, while still a teenager in India, had always wanted to see the world. So with fifty rupees in his pocket, he left home to do just that. After working in Hong Kong and Peking for a few years, he decided, upon the outbreak of World Wat I, to volunteer for the British Army. He struck out for London from China, crossing Manchuria, Siberia (from where we have excerpted a foxhunting piece), Russia, and Scandinavia. Upon arriving in London in 1915, he registered as a private with the 24th Middlesex Regiment.

Over the next three years, Karkaria saw combat action on three major World War I fronts and was wounded only once. After being discharged, he returned home to India and wrote a book about his years of travel and adventure. His memoir was published in 1922. One century later, brilliantly translated into English, it was released in April 2022.

Manchuria
From Manchuria station, a separate line goes towards Mongolia and Inner Manchuria, but we have nothing to do with it. We are going to board the train to Siberia, which leaves at nine in the morning.

-Tommy Lee Jones, David Wendler, and John J. Carle to be honored by induction to the Huntsmen’s Room
-Exhibition and sale of artworks by Sam Savitt and Kathleen Friedenberg

The mansion at Morven Park, Leesburg, Virginia

In concert with the Virginia Foxhound Show, the Museum of Hounds and Hunting at Morven Park, Leesburg, Virginia, is preparing for its “Annual” Reception and special events over the Memorial Day Weekend on Saturday, May 28, 2022, after a two-year hiatus.

At 4:00 PM, Robert Ferrer, MFH, Chairman of the Huntsmen’s Room Committee, will step to the podium and open the formal ceremonies. Ferrer will introduce the presenters for each new inductee to the Huntsmen’s Room―Bill Fendley, ex-MFH, Casanova Hunt (VA) for Tommy Lee Jones; Scott Tepper, ex-MFH, West Hills Hunt (CA) and the Red Rock Hounds (NV) for David Wendler; and Mrs. John J. Carle for her late husband, Jake. From three disparate but all-American backgrounds, the three huntsmen followed three separate paths to this honor by their peers. Read on.

At 5:00 PM, the Huntsmen’s Room in the Morven Park mansion will open for viewing, as will the art exhibit and sale of the works of two well-known equestrian artists, the late Sam Savitt and Kathleen Friedenberg.

 The author rides Merry on the family farm.  /   Cary McWhorter photo

Every year, fields, woods, copses, and little dells are turned into McMansions, strip malls, and highways. Occasionally, even some truly lovely or necessary structures are built. But the countryside is still gone in the process.

For hunters, this means that land available for shooting, riding, or chasing becomes increasingly rare and precious. Inevitably, there is competition for the wildlands that remain. This competition can be limiting for one group or another. But what if it were possible to share that land? Could different groups work it out to use the land, not perhaps simultaneously but at least during the same season? Wouldn’t that be better for everyone? Can it be done?