Horse & Hound
Preparation’s a Pain; Hunting’s a Hoot
Lori and OzzyIt took forty minutes in the pea soup fog early this morning to bring the horses in. Something about the early morning darkness convinces them they are feral. Although with Ozzy’s skin he would last about two minutes in the wild. Not to mention his feet....
Horses are apparently unable to connect the sight of human figures in the dark with the same people they see at least twice a day 365 days a year. This mental dilemma triggered an extended episode of BAF.*
Last night, also in the dark, found me in the backyard manning the grill. I was making dry-rubbed drumsticks for the tailgate, following Roger Mooking’s recipe, whoever he is.** My original plan was to grill them in the morning, and then I came to my senses. Also baked some S'mores cupcakes. I did not have a cupcake tin so I just filled the paper cups and crammed them tightly into a baking pan. My hope was that maybe squeezing them together would give them more support and shape. They exited the oven shaped like amoebas but luckily they tasted better than they looked. Hubby liked them but was suspicious and wanted to know “what is the brown stuff on the bottom?” That would be Graham Crackers, Rick. As a Boy Scout, Rick went home with a headache before his first overnight. Obviously before the campfire was even lit. The chicken looked just like the photo in the magazine.
100 Horses in History
Book Review by Norman Fine
100 Horses in History: True Stories of Horses Who Shaped Our World, Gayle Stewart, Blood Horse, LLC (2015), large format, flexible cover, illustrated, color, 168 pages, available from the author and Amazon.How insipid would be the history of man were it not for the horse. By magnifying our feeble efforts with its speed, strength, and endurance, horses have injected color and romance into our very lives and amplified man’s physical impact on the history of the world.
Pegasus Award-winning writer Gayle Stewart tells the stories of one hundred special horses, which she has organized into eight categories: Trailblazers; Movies, Music, and Timeless Tales; War; Racing; Celebrities; Heros and Heroines; Show Stars; and Legend and Lore.
Do you know about Old Billy, most likely a Cleveland Bay cross? He went to work on the river bank at the age of two or three, and worked for fifty-six years to provide the power for the hoist that loaded and unloaded heavy goods from river barges. He lived another three years in retirement before dying at the age of sixty-two.
Robert Brooke: America’s First MFH
This essay is adapted from J. Blan van Urk’s The Story of American Foxhunting as published in The Derrydale Press Treasury of Foxhunting edited by Norman Fine. At the time of van Urk's writing (1940), the Brooke family had maintained the breeding of their hounds for nearly three hundred years. Today, while it may be doubtful that a purebred Brooke hound could still be found, the genes live on in various old American foxhound strains.
Walker foxhound. Foundation bloodlines were contributed by the Brooke hound.
Robert Brooke, Esq., came to Maryland from England in 1650 with a pack of hounds. He’d been appointed a member of the Privy Council of State for the Province of Maryland by Lord Baltimore, who wished to increase Maryland’s population.
Arriving with Mr. Brooke and his hounds aboard his private ship were a wife, ten children, (eight of whom were boys), twenty-one man-servants, and seven maid-servants—forty persons in all and a meaningful contribution to the fulfillment of Lord Baltimore’s wishes. Brooke’s hounds more than satisfied another of Lord Baltimore’s foremost requirements—that each colonizing family bring at least one dog.
A Huntsman’s Life on the Ol’ Plantation
Martyn Blackmore was destined to work with foxhounds. Born in Somerset in the southwest of England, both his grandfather and his great-grandfather worked as harbourers* with the Devon and Somerset staghounds. These are true countrymen who help maintain a robust wild deer population by selecting the stag to be separated from the herd by the tufters** for the pack to hunt.
The harbourers don’t have to ride. Nor was Martyn eager to be a horseman. “They bite at one end, kick at the other, and they’re uncomfortable in the middle,” was his impression. Eventually, however, he met a girl who changed his mind...even about horses.
Out of the Stick Pile
Click image for larger version. / Joanne Maisano photo
Following the foxhounds of the Blue Ridge Hunt from their meeting at the Reid Family’s Stonebridge fixture the other day, photographer Joanne Maisano got herself in the right place at the right time. Camera in hand, watching hounds mark the stickpile, Joanne shot an action sequence that wildlife photographers dream about. Be sure to click the image for a larger version. You don’t want to miss the expressions on the faces of every living creature captured in that single moment. Not a word of text is necessary!
(Front to rear) fox, hounds, and huntsman Graham Buston
We’ve selected a series of photos from Joanne’s action-sequence to present a slide show of what transpired, and one version of what might have been running through the fox’s mind during its escape. Click on the readmore link (below, open to everyone), then click on the first image (below) in the sequence.
The Galway Blazers at Cawley’s Bar in Craughwell
John Denis became the first huntsman of the County Galway Hunt (the Blazers) when it was organised in 1839 / Courtesy of Noel Mullins
The Castleboy Hunt Club, established in 1803, hunted the Galway foxes until 1839. At that time a new hunt committee founded the County Galway Hunt, better known today as the Galway Blazers. John Denis, a direct ancestor of the only lady huntsman of the Blazers, Molly O’Rourke, was appointed the first huntsman.
In years past, top Hollywood stars were often seen in Galway visiting the late film director and actor John Huston, a Joint-Master of the Blazers at the time. I have great personal memories of hunting with the Blazers over the years, starting as a child over sixty years ago. In later years I had the pleasure also of serving on the Blazers hunt committee. Few had transport in those early days, so we hacked to meets sometime five and often up to twenty miles from our hometown Loughrea, especially if the meet was Athenry or Turloughmore.
Matthew Cook Is New Farmington Huntsman
“My first knowledge of foxes began with hating them,” said Matthew Cook with a chuckle. "Working as a gamekeeper they were a pest.” / Cathy Summers photo“New” is hardly the word to use when writing about the sport of foxhunting in general, and even harder to use with a club as dedicated to tradition as central Virginia’s Farmington Hunt Club. Change is always a challenge! But our new huntsman Matthew Cook has been changing things all around since he arrived in Free Union three years ago—raising a new level of hunting sport with a growing list of firsts.
Cook entered Farmington hounds in the Virginia Hound Show in May, 2014 for the first time; he took a carefully picked few hounds to meet prospective foxhunting juniors at the local 4H club last spring, and he accompanied his daughter Pippa along with a group of Farmington juniors to compete for the first time ever at the finals of the Junior North American Field hunting championship in Lexington, Kentucky just last October. Most recently, he prepared Farmington hounds to compete in a foxhound performance trial at the Belle Meade Hunt in Thomson, Georgia in January 2017.
Late for Dinner
No, not a diving contest, though a pretty one. The winning photograph in the Comedy Wildlife Photography Contest is Angela Bohlke’s photo of a red fox hunting for a vole in Yellowstone National Park. Bohlke won a seven-night safari in Kenya as well as a camera prize package from Nikon. Next year’s competition opens on June 1, 2017. Posted January 10, 2017
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A Christmas Hunt in the Cumbrian Fells
The path wound its way up the fell side, twisting and turning as it sought the line of least resistance in its quest for the ridge and finally the trig point that marked the actual summit. Several hundred feet below the track and above the valley where the track began, a buzzard circled on a thermal originating from the big crag.
The path like the crag had over the centuries seen many things, Stone Age man had used the track to get to the veins of slate on an adjoining fell. Viking and Roman feet had followed the track to and from the nearby coast. Long pony trains carried produce over the track to the coast and its sea port. Finally, endless hordes of garishly dressed tourists added to the general erosion of the track. It began in the valley bottom, passed through an area of bog, soon left it behind, and that is where the erosion started. The higher up the fell, the thinner the soil, the greater the erosion. At the time all these thoughts passed me by, but looking back I can ascend the track from start to finish in my mind’s eye. I remember it so well because on one Christmas holiday morning, I saw a hunt which will long remain in my memory.
Honk, Honk; Gone Away!
Every sport has its downside. Consider some of the older, retired NFL players—hobbling about in a fog of multiple concussions. What about foxhunters? Most of us have had our share of concussions and fractures, too. Now comes this hunt report from a retired Master of Foxhounds. Is this what we have to look forward to? He claims his story is tongue-in-cheek. Whatever. But I wouldn’t believe a word of it. -ED
The pack / Alastair Strachan photo
This season’s armadillo hunting has started with a bang. There’s plenty of quarry as the local pack of coyotes has moved away. Lots of rabbits on the golf course is another sign that the coyotes have taken a hike. However, in the wee hours of the night a week ago, I did hear a strange howl out there on the fourth fairway of the golf course.
The local radio has been reporting that Florida panthers (no, not the sports team) have moved north of the Caloosahatchee River for the first time. Perhaps it is a coincidence, but a black Labrador and a house cat have been reported missing—another good reason to walk out our pack of Jack Russells in daylight hours.
