Horse & Hound
Wentworth Hunt Enjoys Good Hunting on Opening Day
Stacy Howe provides bagpipe music during Wentworth Hunt's Opening Meet ceremonies. / James Mertz, Suddenly Still Photography
The Wentworth Hunt opened its formal foxhunting season on Saturday, September 30, 2017 at Yorkfield Farm in Kensington, New Hampshire. The Blessing of the Hounds was led by Wentworth Hunt member and Pastor David Maguire. Bagpipe music was provided by Stacy Howe. The light drizzle and forty-seven degree temperatures deterred neither the twenty-six riders, horses, hounds, spectators, and supporters nor our “fox,” Michelle Myrdek, who laid the drag.
Huntsman Rachel Duffy hacked down and across the road and sent hounds into a fully mature cornfield, while the field skirted northeast around the perimeter. Our strike hound, De La Brooke Vernon ’13, found early then lost. Hounds worked quickly through the tall, wet corn, and we soon heard Vernon open again, honored by Moore County Zombie ’13 and soon others. Hounds burst out of the corn, hunted through a thin covert, and into a large hayfield where the field was treated to a spectacular view of the pack working in the tall grass. The hounds soon accounted for their “fox” near an old cemetery and were praised.
Potomac Hunt Helps Chevy Chase Club Celebrate 125th Anniversary
An historical thread runs back in time from the Potomac Hunt (MD) to the Washington Riding and Hunt Club (est. 1913) to the Chevy Chase Club (est. 1892) to the Dumblane Club (est. 1885) to the Washington Hunt (est. 1828). Only the Potomac Hunt and the Chevy Chase Club survive. The latter is celebrating its 125th Anniversary, and the Potomac Hunt was there with horses and hounds on October 1, 2017 to mark the occasion. What follows is taken from the remarks of Knight Kiplinger, who explained the club’s foxhunting roots to its current members.
Clarence Moore was MFH of the Chevy Chase Club from 1899 to his death in the waters of the Atlantic in 1912. "A man of staggerying wealth," Moore was bringing foxhounds back from England when the Titanic struck an iceberg and sunk. He perished after remaining aboard to help women and children into lifeboats. / Image courtesy of the Chevy Chase ClubGood morning. I’m Knight Kiplinger, and it is my privilege to be a member of both the Chevy Chase Club and the Potomac Hunt, which are collaborating today in presenting this exhibition of foxhunting here on our Club grounds. The reason that our celebration with horses and hounds is so appropriate is because the Chevy Chase Club was first founded as a foxhunting club.
Not as a golf club, like Washington Golf in Arlington, which is two years younger than we are but was founded for golf. Not as a tennis club, although tennis came to Chevy Chase in 1895, just three years after our founding. Our club was founded by gentlemen members of the Metropolitan Club downtown, who rode horses for pleasure and for sport. For the first three or four years after the Club’s founding in 1892, its sole activity was riding to hounds across the vast expanses of rural northwest D.C. and Montgomery County, Maryland.
New Casanova MFH Kathleen O’Keefe: Riding Since Age 6 Months
Kathleen O'Keefe is a multi-time winner of both the North American and the Virginia Field Trial Championships / Liz Callar photoKathleen O’Keefe has been named Joint-Master of the Casanova Hunt. Many feel her appointment to be a natural progression for this accomplished horsewoman. O’Keefe takes the reins of one of Virginia’s oldest foxhunting clubs, expanding a lifelong love affair with horse and field sports.
O’Keefe, fifty-four and a native of Stephens City, Virginia, started riding when she was six months old in a wicker basket saddle, she says. A fourth-generation foxhunter, her late father, grandparents and great-grandfather were riders, and she grew up foxhunting with her grandmother at the Blue Ridge Hunt in Clarke County, Virginia. “I am especially proud of my father, Peter Drinkwater,” O’Keefe says, noting he won the Virginia Field Hunter Championship twice, a feat O’Keefe repeated in 2000 with her Thoroughbred field hunter Lord Hugh.
Eglington and Caledon: First Stop on the Friendship Tour
Alastair Strachan, MFH, hunting hounds this day, invites Epp Wilson to accompany him. / Barbara Smith photo
Who do you call twelve hours in advance for overnight accommodations for ten horses and five people when original plans fall through? In this case we were blessed to land on the doorstep of Christine Gracey, MFH of the Eglinton and Caledon Hounds (ON). Completely nonplused at the last-minute plans, Christy and Master Alastair Strachan made arrangements for our caravan of horses and people. We pulled into Sleepy Fox Farm, the lovely hunter barn of Al Borrett and daughter Jennifer at midnight, after a fifteen-hour drive from Illinois.
In the Huntsman’s Pocket at Golden’s Bridge
Huntsman Codie Hayes and hounds in the Golden's Bridge country. / Barbara Smith photo
After two brutally hot days of foxhound performance trials at Millbrook, the weather finally broke. The next stop on our Hark Forward Friendship Tour was a day’s foxhunting with the Golden’s Bridge Hounds (NY), about twenty miles southeast of Millbrook as the crow flies. Thankfully, the temperature had dropped by fifteen degrees. Hounds met at 7:30 am, scenting had definitely improved, and so had the game activity.
Trying something new, I took my digital recorder to record the important snippets of the action and my impressions of the day. This is the same recorder we use to score the hounds in the hound trials. Since it’s hard to remember everything that happens during a foxhunt, I wanted to make the all the action and impressions of the day come alive. Here goes:
Foxhounds from Five Hunts Compete at Beautiful Millbrook
Nancy Stahl, MFH, and her Joint Masters Parker Gentry and Lelee Brandt welcomed visitors to the gorgeous Millbrook country and made certain everyone was happy to be there. / Karen Kandra Wenzel photo
Foxhounds from five hunts faced off for the second Performance Trial of the Hark Forward season. The trials were hosted by the Millbrook Hunt in their scenic and mountainous country in the Hudson River valley of New York State, just ten miles west of the Connecticut border, ninety miles north of New York City.
Hounds met on Monday and Tuesday, September 25 and 26, 2017 under conditions reminiscent of mid-summer rather than the early days of autumn. Temperatures rose well into the eighties on both days as riders sweltered and hounds struggled to find quarry in the usually productive coverts. Yet hounds worked as a veteran pack and displayed outstanding work during their brief moments of action.
Each competing hunt had selected the seven-and-a-half couples of hounds from their kennels to best represent them. The thirty-seven-and-a-half couples of proven hounds melded quickly into a single pack (more about that later), reflecting positively on every huntsman: Bart Poole from the Essex Fox Hounds (NJ); Marion Thorne, Genesee Valley Hunt (NY); Codie Hayes, Golden’s Bridge Hounds (NY); Don Philhower, Millbrook Hunt; and Sean Cully, Rose Tree-Blue Mountain Hounds (PA).
A Foxhunt to Remember at Genesee Valley
The Genesee Valley foxhounds meet on Opening Day of the formal season at The Homestead, home of W. Austin Wadsworth, MFH. Marion Thorne, MFH and huntsman (center) stands with hounds. / Barbara Smith photo
Genesee Valley, a stop along the MFHA's Hark Forward Friendship Tour, was awesome! Six foxes put to ground in three-and-a-half hours! Epp Wilson, MFH, Belle Meade Hunt (GA), called it the best red fox hunt he had ever experienced.
Epp is Chairman of the Hark Forward Foxhound Performance Trials this season and is leading the tour across the North American foxhunting countries. Friendship Meets along the way have been scheduled. Join Epp and his fellow travelers for one or more (or any) of the exciting trials and/or hunt meets.
The Genesee Vally Hunt is renowned as one of the premier foxhunting clubs in North America. We were privileged to join Marion Thorne, MFH and huntsman, for their exciting Opening Day Meet on Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. Marion’s pack more than lived up to its reputation!
Team Leahy Hosts Performance Trial; Kicks Off Hark Forward!
MFHA President Tony Leahy and the Massbach Hounds kick off this season's Foxhound Performance Trial tour.MFHA President Tony Leahy and the Fox River Valley/Massbach Hounds hosted the kick-off Performance Trial on the Hark Forward Tour in their western Illinois hunting country on September 16 and 17, 2017.
By the time it was over, everyone took home a renewed appreciation for the hard work and knowhow it takes to make and maintain a good hunting pack of foxhounds. Certainly the fact that littermates brought up by different hunts and trained by different staffs, rose like cream to the top of the scoring is convincing proof that breeding matters! Next stop on the tour is Millbrook, New York.
Whipping-In Is a Rush
Whipping-in on Fearnought, the author's favorite.Cold and wet from rain on my thirty-six-inch pony Toy Mouse, with my fearless two-legged leader...mom Caroline...at the other end of the lead-line: that’s how I became addicted to a sport known as foxhunting. When we got in from hunting, my wool hunt coat weighed more than I did.
Since then, every autumn, from age four until now (not going to disclose that, but I’ve finished college!), there is a sense of anticipation and adrenaline that rushes through my veins. Foxhunters know how the goose bumps rise on your skin the moment those hunting hounds open up on a fresh scent of a fox or coyote, and away they go! This adrenaline rush only multiples, if you can believe it, when a person is allowed to have the honor of being a whipper-in.
KT Atkins Is New MFH at Warrenton
Douglas Lees photo
In the announcement of Katharine T. (“KT”) Atkins’s election to the Mastership at the Warrenton Hunt (VA), Kim Nash, MFH wrote, “Her extraordinary wealth of foxhunting knowledge and equestrian skills bring remarkable depth to our team of Masters.”
KT whipped-in to her late husband, Jim Atkins, for nearly thirty years in Virginia, all through his service as professional huntsman to the Old Dominion Hounds, Piedmont Fox Hounds, Dr. Gable’s Foxhounds, and the Warrenton Hunt. Jim was inducted into the Huntsmen’s Room at the Museum of Hounds and Hunting last May, and, as his whipper-in through all those years, KT has seen some outstanding hound work. And she knows what it takes to produce it.
