Horse & Hound
Who Is This Horseman?
Horseman on a US Cavalry mount at Fort Riley, Kansas
The earliest time-stamped email from the reader who correctly identifies the horseman in the image will receive a year’s Combination Electronic/PDF Subscription free of charge. If the winner curently has an unexpired active subscription, the free year will be added to the end of the current term.
Update: we have a winner.
You Might Be a Foxhunter If…
John Anderson, writer/editor/foxhunter / Douglas Lees photoIt’s been said that a “highbrow” is someone who can listen to Rossini’s "William Tell Overture" and not think of the Lone Ranger. In the hunting world, that might be said of anyone who’s never heard of Jeff Foxworthy’s “You Might Be A Redneck” jokes. Leader of the Blue Collar Comedy genre, Foxworthy’s shtick consists of such gems as:
If you can recognize your friends by the sound of their mufflers, you might be a redneck.
If your school fight song was “Dueling Banjos, …”
If you’ve ever cut your grass and found a car, …”
If you refer to the sixth grade as “My senior year, …”
Borrowing from this concept, herewith are a few examples of “You Might Be A Foxhunter.” (Some of these apply to horse people more broadly, but all of them apply to foxhunters.) So here we go.
Orchestra Leader Resumes Winning Habits at Warrenton
Open Hurdle Race: (l-r) Praeceps (Alex Leventhal up) 4th; Orchestra Leader (Mell Boucher up) 1st; Noah And The Ark (Eddie Keating up) 2nd / Douglas Lees photo
Eleven-year-old Orchestra Leader, a grandson of Seattle Slew on the distaff side, has been winning Open Hurdle races for at least five years. Owned in his earlier racing days by the late Bruce Smart and trained by Jimmy Day, the brown gelding now races for Team Ollie, is trained by Lilith Boucher, and was ridden to the wire by Mell Boucher at the Warrenton Point-to-Point on Saturday, March 14, 2020. Orchestra Leader was the Leading Hurdle Horse in 2018 and won this same race over the same Airlie racecourse last year.
Keeping Score in the Hunt Field
Judith on Parker, the Perfect
With the close of the recent hunting season, I’m feeling the need for some deep reflection since I fell six times. That’s right—six times—this season! Read on, as I evaluate each fall and its root cause.
Fall # 1: I was behind Ken Trogden when he and his horse, Moseby, took a bad jump over the coop into Gentlemen’s Hill. Ken hit the ground on landing and broke his wrist. My horse, Parker, and I were landing after jumping the coop just as Ken hit the ground and his air vest deployed. Parker spun at the sight and sound. I almost stuck it but, in the end, had to bail. When I ask myself how this ride went, I can hear Barbara Lee, one of my riding instructors, in my head, “You were following too close!” Okay. Mea Culpa.
HORSE-0 RIDER-1
Hunting in Style on Dartmoor: Where and How?
Watching huntsman and hounds draw across Dartmoor, 365 square miles of wild, open, and uniquely English moorland.
“I hope they’re feeding Royally properly,” murmured my grandmother (ninety-three), as she departed peacefully from this earth. Sixty years earlier, back in 1926, the foxhunter and show rider had won the ‘Girls Hunter’ class at London’s International Horse Show, riding her beloved Right Royal side-saddle, and I don’t think anything ever quite matched up. I’m gazing at her huge cup as I write.
Little did anyone dream that I’d continue the family equine theme, but earlier this year I opened a new business for experienced riders from around the world, offering riding and hunting holidays direct from my home, Wydemeet. Nestled in the heart of remotest Dartmoor—the wildest, most open landscape in Southern England—Wydemeet sits at the cusp of all four Dartmoor hunts: Dartmoor, South Devon, Spooners and West Dartmoor, and the Mid-Devon Foxhounds.
The “O” Boys
Red Rock Master and huntsman Angela Murray with her “O” boys, (l-r) Oslo and Oops / Nancy Stevens-Brown photo Just before the start of the current season, Nancy Stevens-Brown shot this photo of Master and huntsman Angela Murray, Red Rock Hounds (NV), telling two of her up-and-coming “O” boys that hunt season is only weeks away. Oh, boy, were they ready! The two young dog hounds, Oslo and Oops, were unentered two-year-olds from a litter of six drafted from Walter Epp, the gentleman who started Red Rock founder and Master Lynn Lloyd with her Walker hounds. “They’re all rock stars,” says Angela. She reports that the pair are hunting brilliantly and maturing into what she hopes to be incredible breeding stock for the pack. Masters and staff are in love with the drive, stamina, grit and biddability of their “O” boys, and Oslo now has a litter on the ground. Posted March 16, 2020
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Irish-Breds Dominate at Rappahannock Point-to-Point
Point-to-Point host Larry Levy in the paddock for the first race over his new racecourse at The Hill with jockey Emme Fullilove. Levy’s Easy Exit reached the wire for a third place finish...preceded by two Irish-breds! / Douglas Lees photo
Saturday, March 7, 2020 marked the return of the Rappahannock Point-to-Point Races to the spring schedule after a twelve-year absence. Larry Levy had a brand new racecourse ready for entries at The Hill in Boston, Virginia, and, except for the two-horse Lady Rider Timber race, all races were well filled.
Of six races, Irish-bred horses won five! And in two of those races they finished one-two. In the First Division of the six-horse Open Flat race, Irish-breds placed first through fourth. Just saying.
The Reluctant Foxhunter
Author-editor Steve Price was so smitten with Dickie Power’s Scarteen hunt report in our last issue, that he offers this slice of his own experience at Scarteen. Steve is in the process of writing his equestrian memoir, "The Outside of a Horse," and has allowed us to publish this advanced peek at his work-in-progress in which he recalls a day with the Scarteen while on a 1973 equestrian journalists’ junket to Ireland.
Steve Price (right-center) and Carol Clark (left-center) hunting with the Scarteen in 1973
Carol Clark, then editor of the Practical Horseman, had done her homework. During our Friday-morning drive to the village of Knocklong on the Limerick-Tipperary county line, she told me about our host, Thady Ryan. The Ryans had owned the Scarteen pack, named after their ancestral manor house, since 1798. Thady (né Thaddeus) was the most recent in the chain of Ryan men to serve as Master and huntsman. In addition to breeding, training, and caring for his hounds, and breeding and hunting his horses, Thady was a Dublin Horse show official and chef d'équipe of the Irish Olympic three-day team at the Tokyo and Mexico Olympics.
North Galway Foxhounds at Shrule, County Mayo
Huntsman David Masterson with Masters Tom McNamara, Michael Lennon, and Jackie Lee with whipper-in Gabriel Slattery at Shrule Castle directly across from TJ Gibbons Pub. Shrule Castle, a Norman keep, was built by the de Burgh family in 1238. / Noel Mullins photo
The hunting country of the North Galway Foxhounds was originally hunted by the Bermingham & North Galway Foxhounds, founded in 1946 by Sir Dermott and Lady Molly Cusack-Smith. Lady Molly had hunted the Galway Blazers during World War II. When the Bermingham and North Galway was disbanded in 1985, the North Galway Foxhounds was formed.
The meet was at TJ Gibbons Pub in Shrule, County Mayo, which has been in the family since 1925 and is now managed by Ronan Gibbons. The Quiet Man, starring John Wayne as Sean Thornton and Maureen O’Hara as Mary Kate, was filmed in nearby Cong and The Neale.
Scarteen Black and Tans at Emly
Huntsman Raymond O'Halloran and the hard hunting Kerry Beagles of Scarteen / Catherine Power photo
The earliest records of the Scarteen and the Ryan family goes back to 1640, coming after the flight of the Earls in 1607, another incident in the long history of Irish-British conflict. Around 1820, Daniel O’Connell (the Liberator) disbanded his pack of Kerry Beagles, and his hounds were sent to Scarteen to augment the Scarteen pack. The Ryans of Scarteen were closely related to the O’Connell’s of Caherdaniel. Chris Ryan, now in his thirty-fourth season as Master, is the eight generation of his family to have carried the horn at Scarteen.
The morning of February 11, 2020 at Emly, County Limerick, started with squalls of rain, sleet, and even some snow, but riders were undeterred and a large field gathered just outside the famed and historic village of Emly, where the pent-up excitement was palpable. It may have been the thought of jumping the Emly banks and their attendant trenches, any one of which could swallow up both horse and rider leaving little more than a ripple.
