Horse & Hound
Pulling Out
"...you have hacked into another pack's territory."
There comes a day in the hunting field when, despite the sport, you have to pull out. Your horse has thrown a shoe, or maybe your wife is in labor. Possibly the hounds have crossed the ridge into the next county and you have a winded horse. Or you notice the sun has set and you are six miles from the trailers.
And here is the challenge: how do you get back to the fixture?
The Fox’s Kitchen: Recipes for Foxhunters
The Fox's Kitchen: Cherished Recipes from Philadelphia’s Historic Radnor Hunt, Virginia Judson McNeil, The Derrydale Press, 2018, hardbound, color, 300 pages. Available from Radnor Hunt and Amazon, $46.00.Lively, sophisticated, sumptuous. Here’s a book of recipes and ideas for entertaining foxhunters in memorable fashion. The Fox’s Kitchen: Cherished Recipes from Philadelphia’s Historic Radnor Hunt is the first-ever cookbook made available to the public by the Radnor Hunt. With kennels in Malvern, Chester County, Pennsylvania, Radnor lies just twenty-five miles west of the venerable city of Philadelphia.
Published by the Derrydale Press, the three hundred-page, full color hardback features recipes from Radnor Hunt members and friends, color photos of mouth-watering dishes, and anecdotes of foxhunting history and etiquette. As the book explains, “It’s no secret that foxhunters love a good party, a good drink, and especially good food.
The Find: How to Watch and Listen
In this excerpt from “Foxhunting: How to Watch and Listen,” the author reveals what goes through the huntsman’s mind as hounds find their fox and push it into the open. In Robards' celebrated book, the entire chase is chronicled from beginning to end, first from the standpoint of the huntsman, then from the viewpoints of the whipper-in, the Field Master, the hounds, and the fox.
Hugh Robards and the hounds of the Middleburg Hunt / Middleburg Photo
Try to position yourself so you can hear what the huntsman is doing. You may hear a hound whimper. The huntsman has not only heard, but he has seen Wagtail trying to take a line to the edge of the covert where some thick briars cover the boundary ditch. The pack also heard the whimper and, knowing it is Wagtail, a hound on whose opinion they can rely, have come in close to her and the huntsman. Now you might see the huntsman quietly edge his hounds toward the ditch. As you strain to hear what is going on, everything in the covert falls silent.
A Level Pack or a Team of Specialists?
The sheer beauty of a level pack of foxhounds is indisputable. There is a uniformity of appearance and traits, and such a pack tends to run well together. But isn't there another option?
Why not a pack consisting of foxhounds of various types, welcoming the unique attributes of each hound type? Breeders know that no single type offers all the best attributes we want in a pack; hence the English-American Crossbred. But within those two categories there are still more individual types with more concentrated attributes that could allow each type to contribute at the appropriate stage of any hunt just when needed.
Three Tries, the Charm, for Field Hunter Champion
John Wittenborn and Soccer, representing the Smithtown Hunt (NY), win 2018 Theodora Randolph Field Hunter Championship in Virginia.
John Wittenborn and his fourteen-year-old Clydesdale-Thoroughbred cross, Soccer, returned home to Long Island and the Smithtown Hunt with the Championship Trophy and ribbon from the Theodora Randolph 2018 Field Hunter Championship in Virginia. Three tries was the charm for Wittenborn and Soccer. Last year the pair made a good showing, placing third.
It was the first team from a northern hunt to have won the coveted prize in thirty-five years of competitions. And it was fitting; Mrs. Randolph was a northerner, though from Boston’s North Shore.
Going in Front
One time when I was temporarily horseless, the huntsman offered me a mount. The horse, an ex-chaser with a lovely disposition and a big confident jump, was for sale because, according to the huntsman, “He won’t go in front.” After a vigorous day of hunting during which the horse in question certainly acted as though he wanted to go in front, I soaked my sore, stretched arms in liniment and remained curious about the huntsman’s assessment.
Not long after riding the ex-chaser, I had the privilege of hunting up front with huntsman Tony Gammell, where I got a lesson in the meaning of “going in front.”
Meynellian Science
Hugo Meynell (seated), in his later years, with his huntsman Jack Raven and a favorite hound Glider. / Engraving after a 1794 painting by Charles Loraine Smith
The father of English foxhunting was Hugo Meynell, founder of the Quorn, who began hunting hounds from his Leicestershire seat Quorn Hall in 1753. He developed the science of hunting the fox at speed in the open, made possible by the clearing of forests and the enclosure of land.
Horse Racing Terms: An Illustrated Guide (2)
Book Review by Norman Fine
Horse Racing Terms: An Illustrated Guide by Rosemary Coates, Merlin Unwin Books (UK), hardbound, illustrated in color, 140 pages, available online or directly from publisher, £8.99
Though this book is about the language of horse racing, much of the content is common to all horse people. And hunt racing and steeplechasing terms are included. And the little volume is the work of Rosemary Coates—a favorite illustrator of ours, whose work illuminates Deirdre Hanna’s humorous and continuing series about the two nineteen-year-old girls who left post-war England to work with horses in America.
Maiden, weaver, hands, claimer, the going, pony (the verb!), schooling, stayer—these and more than a hundred other examples of the arcane language of racing and horsemanship are tackled, many accompanied by Rosemary’s clever paintings. Also included is an alphabetic Glossary of Terms and a serious page on “How to read a Racecard.” Just the latter alone could turn the modest price of this book into a sound investment for the occasional race-goer’s next outing at the steeplechase course or racetrack.
Horse Racing Terms: An Illustrated Guide
Book Review by Norman Fine
Horse Racing Terms: An Illustrated Guide by Rosemary Coates, Merlin Unwin Books (UK), hardbound, illustrated in color, 140 pages, available online or directly from publisher, £8.99
Though this book is about the language of horse racing, much of the content is common to all horse people. And hunt racing and steeplechasing terms are included. And the little volume is the work of Rosemary Coates—a favorite illustrator of ours, whose work illuminates Deirdre Hanna’s humorous and continuing series about the two nineteen-year-old girls who left post-war England to work with horses in America.
Maiden, weaver, hands, claimer, the going, pony (the verb!), schooling, stayer—these and more than a hundred other examples of the arcane language of racing and horsemanship are tackled, many accompanied by Rosemary’s clever paintings. Also included is an alphabetic Glossary of Terms and a serious page on “How to read a Racecard.” Just the latter alone could turn the modest price of this book into a sound investment for the occasional race-goer’s next outing at the steeplechase course or racetrack.
Sporting Art Auction 2018 at Keeneland
Lot 49, Portrait of a Hound, Franklin Voss (1880–1953), American, oil on board, 12" x 16", signed, dated 1939, Probably commissioned by Anderson Fowler, MFH, Essex Fox Hounds (NJ): $5,000--7,000
November 18, 2018 will mark the sixth annual Sporting Art Auction at the Keeneland Sales Pavilion—a cooperative venture between the world’s largest Thoroughbred auction house and its Lexington, Kentucky neighbor, Cross Gate Gallery, a leading source of the world’s finest sporting art. Collectors will take home works of artistic merit at prices possibly as low as $2,000, many under $5,000, and others as high as six figures.
This year’s offerings, curated by Greg Ladd, feature 175 lots of painting and sculpture by masters long gone as well as by leading sporting artists of the day. Among the European artists represented are Cecil Alden, Samuel Alken, Lionel Edwards, John Emms, John Ferneley, Harry Hall, John Herring, Michael Lyne, Sir Alfred Munnings, and Belinda Sillars. American artists include Jean Bowman, Paul Brown, Herbert Haseltine, Julie Kirk, Booth Malone, Leroy Neiman, Richard Stone Reeves, Edward Troye, Larry Wheeler, and Franklin Voss. Also included are six works by America’s reigning ‘rock star’ of today’s sporting art world, Andre Pater.
