Data Penetration: Russia, China, Now Hunt Sabs
High tech has been of immense benefit to foxhunters. With increased road traffic in every hunting country, staff equipped with two-way radios have been a boon to hound safety. GPS collars accurately locate hounds and often rescue those hung up in fences or otherwise disabled. Computers create foxhound pedigrees in microseconds, once a laborious pen-and-paper […]
Margaret A. “Peggy” Poe (1932–2021)
Peggy Poe at Melvins 90th birthday celebration / Douglas Lees photo
Peggy Poe of Hume, Virginia, passed away peacefully on January 18, 2021. She was eighty-eight.
Peggy was best known for her unfailing hospitality, her devotion to her family, and her fifty-one year’s marriage and partnership with legendary huntsman Melvin M. Poe.
Radnor Huntsman John Dean Dies Fighting Covid
Huntsman John Dean and the foxhounds of the Radnor Hunt / Jim Graham photo
John Howard Dean, III, huntsman of the Radnor Hunt (PA), died in Paoli Hospital on January 16, 2021. He was hospitalized fighting Covid-19 along with other issues over a period of weeks. According to the Masters’ announcement made the day following his death, John appeared at one point to be on the mend but his condition reversed.
Orange County Donates Hunt Property to Conservation Easement
Orange County Hounds Masters (l-r) Neil Morris and John Coles. (Malcom Matheson, MFH not shown) / Douglas Lees photo
The Orange County Hounds—founded in 1900 by sportsmen and women in Orange County, New York, and hunting country in The Plains, Virginia, since 1905—has donated the hunt’s seventy-one-acre property to permanent conservation easement. By so doing, the hunt—many members having long been active proponents for open space conservation—relinquishes in perpetuity the right to subdivide its acreage.
In short, the hunt practices what it preaches.
Bronze Age Humans Domesticated Foxes, Scientists Say
Fox painting by Beth Carlson
The Iberian Peninsula comprises that territory at the southwest corner of Europe, consisting mostly of Spain and Portugal, a sliver of France, and at its southernmost tip, the British territory of Gibraltar. In the northeast of that huge peninsula, between the third and second millennium BC, a widespread funeral practice of burying animals with humans was discovered. At two excavation sites of Early to Middle Bronze Age tombs, four foxes and a large number of dogs were found together with their dead humans in large burial silos.
Virtual Hound Show Delayed by Success
In a press release dated July 10, 2020, the organizers of the international Virtual Hound Show (iVHS) announce that the start of the (iVHS) has been delayed until July 31, 2020 due to the “unprecedented support from the International Hunting community.” Entries have been received from more than 250 hunts from seven countries, and the uploading of images and entries—a vast amount of data—has been the cause of the two-week delay.
MFHA Cancels Spring Events
MFHA President Tony Leahy has prudently announced the cancellation of several popular spring events due to the world-wide Covid-19 pandemic.
Canceled are the Virginia Foxhound Show; the National Horn Blowing Championships; the Ian Milne Huntsman’s Award presentation; the Professional Development Program graduation ceremony for the class of 2019/2020; and the ceremony for those huntsmen selected to be inducted into the Huntsmen’s Room at the Museum of Hounds and Hunting this year—all previously scheduled over the Memorial Day weekend.
UK Huntsman Not Guilty; Antis Push to Stiffen the Law
Peter Mark Doggrell, huntsman of the Blackmore and Sparkford Vale (UK), was found not guilty of contravening the Hunting Act of 2004 by hunting a fox with hounds. The case was heard at Taunton Magistrates Court on Tuesday, January 21, 2020.
Video evidence by three different cameramen was played in the court by the prosecution, and appeared to show hounds in cry before entering the churchyard of Church of St Peter and St Paul in Charlton Horethorne, near Wincanton and Sherborne, on Saturday, February 23, 2019. The footage also appeared to show a fox running through the churchyard.
The Foxhunter Who Became Britain’s Leading Conservative Thinker
Sir Roger Scruton, conservative thinker, teacher, foxhunter, author, and advisor to the British government, died of cancer at age seventy-five on January 12, 2020. He wrote more than fifty books on aesthetics, morality, politics, and even on foxhunting.
In that well-received book On Hunting (1998), Scruton’s opening sentence goes like this:
“My life divides into three parts. In the first I was wretched; in the second ill at ease; in the third hunting.”
Atherstone Hunt Cancels Foxhunting Season
The two hundred-year-old Atherstone Hunt that hunts country in West Leicestershire and North Warwickshire (UK) has ceased hunting for the remainder of the season. Bordering the four hundred square mile Atherstone hunting country are the iconic Pytchley and Quorn hunts. According to the Daily Mail, a spokesman for the Atherstone said, “We are sad to […]