Horse & Hound
Ron Black: A Foxhunting Purist
Author/historian Ron Black, a fourth-generation foot hunter who strove to preserve the foxhunting history of his beloved Cumbria.I never met Ron Black in person, but I knew him so well. We’d been carrying on an email friendship for years. Ron died of cancer on September 5, 2017.
Over the years our correspondence covered all sorts of subjects—foxhunting, politics, world affairs. (He was for Hillary, all the way.) He scoffed at us mounted foxhunters for our preoccupation with horses and fancy clothing, and he would start most notes with, “How are things in the Colonies?” His sense of history was a huge part of who he was. And it was to preserve the history of foxhunting in his beloved Cumbria, after the despised Hunting Act became law, that possessed him to start a website and begin collecting that history.
That’s how John Harrison became friends with Ron Black. Harrison is currently hunting the Deep Run Hunt (VA) foxhounds, but twenty years ago Harrison was huntsman for one of the storied foot packs in the Lake District, the Ullswater Foxhounds. Ron was writing a book about the Ullswater. It was the hunt of Harrison’s boyhood, and he had returned to England from Toronto and North York (ON) to take up the horn there. It is a hard and dangerous place: climbing borrans (stone piles), crags (cliffs), and crossing the scree beds (fallen stone from the crags). It’s country that would ruin a horse the first time out. Harrison hunted the Ullswater hounds on foot there for eighteen seasons before returning to North America three years ago.
Entering Puppies at Belle Meade
The Belle Meade Hunt Masters believe that the more field members understand what huntsman and hounds are up to, the more they will enjoy each foxhunting day. To that end, Epp Wilson sends the occasional email to the membership reviewing the day’s hound work. With virtually every foxhunt in North America entering puppies right about now, here’s a timely one for all.
Epp Wilson and hounds / Lauren Giannini photo
Those of you who came out yesterday morning know how well the hounds worked. You also know that we jumped a coyote by the Foxboro Mare Barn and ran him into a culvert on an old logging road in Wilson Woods. Not only was this good training for the puppies, it was even better than one might first think.
Earlier we had drawn mostly blank except for two incidents of puppies starting what we believe were deer lines. And we were able to get them to leave those lines by hollering at them. Why do we feel confident that they were deer lines? There were numerous clues:
Bridlespur Hunt Celebrates 90th Anniversary
Huntsman Eleanor Hartwell and the foxhounds of the Bridlespur Hunt
This year, 2017, marks the ninetieth season for the Bridlespur Hunt Club (MO). The Club has survived two World Wars, loss of land, uprooting of hounds and clubhouse, and hopefully will endure for another ninety years at least. Over the years, the Hunt has been honored by the patronship and Mastership of wonderfully dedicated individuals.
Bridlespur was founded in 1927 with the support and assistance of the late Mr. August A. Busch, Sr., president of Anheuser-Busch and brewer of what is still the most popular beer in the U.S. Mr. Busch obtained his original draft of hounds from the well-known Joseph B. Thomas1-Percy Rockefeller pack at Overhills, North Carolina. The pack consisted entirely of American hounds or, as better known, Virginia Hounds. By careful breeding and observation the two guiding spirits of the hunt, Mr. August A. Busch, Jr.2 and Mr. Adelbert von Gontard, Sr., developed a pack with most excellent nose and voice. Today, the pack consists mainly of Crossbred hounds.
Seventy-Five-Year-Old Hound Manuscript Published
In Search of the Kerry Beagle by Stanislaus Lynch with a Foreword by Chris Ryan, MFH, The Scarteen HoundsA manuscript on the Kerry Beagle that languished for nearly seventy-five years has been rescued, edited, and published twenty-seven years after the author's death by Irish author and photojournalist Noel Mullins, from whom the book may now be purchased.
In Search of the Kerry Beagle by Stanislaus Lynch attempts to trace the roots of this unique breed of Irish hound, most widely known as that bred for more than four hundred years at Scarteen in County Limerick, the Black and Tans. The ancient hound is believed to have descended from hounds that swam ashore from shipwrecked Spanish boats sunk off the southwest coast of Ireland.
Huntsmen On the Move: II
As the new season gets underway, Foxhunting Life updates its March 31 report on the recent moves of huntsmen across North America.
Huntsman Ashley Hubbard leads the Green Spring Valley hounds on summer exercise. / Tammie Monaco photo
Round I
Ashley Hubbard is the new huntsman for the Green Spring Valley Hounds (MD). Hubbard has served as kennel huntsman for the Fox River Valley Hunt (IL) for nearly ten years, assisting Tony Leahy, MFH, and carrying the horn when necessary.
“Tony didn’t want to lose him,” explained Duck Martin, MFH at Green Spring Valley, “but he thought this would be a good opportunity for Ashley.”
Since the end of World War II, Green Spring Valley has had just four huntsmen: Leslie Grimes, Andrew Barclay, John Tabachka, and Sam Clifton. Both Grimes and Barclay have been enshrined in the Huntsmen’s Room at the Museum of Hounds and Hunting.
William Faulkner and the Farmington Hunt
(l-r) William Faulkner and Farmington huntsman Grover Vandevender share a flask. / George Barkley photo
William Faulkner, two-time National Book Award, Nobel Prize, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, came to Charlottesville, Virginia from Oxford, Mississippi in the last decade of his life. He arrived two years after his daughter Jill moved to Charlottesville with her husband Paul Summers, who graduated from law school at the University of Virginia and was working as city attorney. Soon, Faulkner, Jill, and Paul were hunting with the Farmington Hunt. Jill would become Master in 1968 and serve in that capacity for forty years.
Faulkner had a reputation among hunt members for being game and fearless to his fences, despite having taken up serious foxhunting only since his arrival. He’d ridden since childhood, foxhunted in Tennessee, and loved it. However, he experienced a couple of serious riding accidents, and died in 1962 at the age of sixty-four from complications arising from a fall.
Foxhunter, Hall of Fame Horseman Bucky Reynolds Dies
(Front) "Bucky" Reynolds and Kimbrough Nash, MFH, out with the Warrenton foxhounds / Douglas Lees photo
Famed horseman J. Arthur “Bucky” Reynolds died Monday, July 24, 2017, after a long illness. He was seventy-eight.
Bucky grew up in Tryon, North Carolina. His father J. Arthur Reynolds, Sr., a native of Orange, Virginia, was huntsman of the Tryon Hounds at the time. Both Bucky and his sister Betty Reynolds Oare grew up foxhunting and showing. Reynolds, Sr., a professional horseman, ran his own boarding and training facility. Bucky and his sister learned to ride under their father’s instruction, and both siblings helped break and train the sale horses as children. Each of the three—father, son, and daughter—have been inducted into the National Show Hunter Hall of Fame.
How Charles Montgomery Shaped the Foxhound Performance Trial
Trial huntsman Charles Montgomery and competing hounds at the 2016 Belle Meade Hunt hound trials / Bella Vita Fotografie photo
The Brits must be getting used to this. Teach the Yanks something worthwhile, like foxhunting, and they go ahead and change it. They did it first with the foxhound. A braggart named Harry Worcester Smith came along at the beginning of the twentieth century with his long-eared, mouthy, hare-footed hounds, and claimed they were better than ours! He put together a Great Hound Match and tried to prove it. We spent two hundred years developing the perfect model of what a foxhound should look like, and then along came another American named Ikey Bell who started another revolution. And just twenty years ago—yesterday in the proper scheme of things—a couple of rebels named Ben Hardaway and Mason Lampton started painting numbers on foxhounds. Whatever for?
Why The Eastern Coyote Merits Separate Species Status
The eastern Coyote or coywolf is larger and has a thicker body, shorter muzzle, and shorter ears than the western coyote.
Jonathan Way, a research scientist at Clark University in Massachusetts, makes a case for renaming the eastern coyote that populates the northeastern U.S. He sees it as a separate species of canid.
Way argues that the so-called eastern coyote looks unlike the western variety, exhibiting characteristics of coyotes, wolves, and dogs. There is a current debate among scientists as to what to call this creature.
Un-Entered Hillsboro Stafford Is Grand Champion at Carolinas
Grand Champion Hillsboro Stafford is one member of an exceptional un-entered litter by Midland Striker '15. / Geri DeSousa photo
Hillsboro Hounds (TN) huntsman Johnnie Gray sidestepped his usual protocol and made a breeding decision that turned out quite well. Two years ago in the show rings his own hounds came up against Midland Striker a few times, and Johnnie liked the yet un-entered Midland dog hound. Before sending a bi*ch* out to be bred, however, Johnnie’s practice is first to see the potential sire in the hunting field so he knows that it hunts well. At that point, no one had yet seen Striker in the hunting field.
“I didn’t want to take a chance and wait another year—who knows what might happen?—and I knew Striker’s sire and dam were good hunting hounds. The bi*ch I wanted to breed was Warwickshire Daylight 2012. There was no question about her hunting ability, so I went ahead and sent her to Striker at Midland.”
