New Conservative Government May Bring Vote on Hunting Act
UK Environment Secretary Andrea Leadsom has consistently pledged to bring a free vote in Commons to overturn the hunting ban. It was part of her election plank as she sought to become Prime Minister in last summer’s election. Although she lost her election bid to current Prime Minister Theresa May, because Leadsom is head of […]
Limestone Creek Holds Annual Parade
Limestone Creek Hunt (NY) celebrated the start of their official season with an annual Parade of Hounds. Professional huntsman Lori Gronau and staff took hounds and field from the village green, through the town, to the site of the meet. This year, the hunt invited the Beaver Meadow Foxhounds (ON) and the Green Mountain Hounds […]
Beth Blackwell Is New Huntsman at Tryon
Tryon Hounds recently announced the hiring of Beth Blackwell as their new professional huntsman. Blackwell moves to North Carolina over these first few days of September to take over the management and hunting of Tryon’s pack of American foxhounds. She will also hunt a foot pack of Basset hounds. Blackwell has been a professional staff […]
California’s Island Fox Rebounds From Near Extinction
The diminutive Island fox is found only on the Channel Islands off the California coast. / National Park Service photo The island fox, a small cousin to the gray fox, is found on the Channel Islands off the coast of Southern California, and nowhere else. They weigh in at three to five pounds and are […]
Jim Meads, 86, Honored at Peterborough
Jim Meads, eighty-six, was honored upon his seventy years of photographing the Peterborough Royal Foxhound Show (UK). It is surely a stunning achievement, considering that Jim first photographed the show in 1946, the year it was resumed after the end of World War II. Jim was presented with a bronze fox in the Peterborough ring […]
Virginia Reports Second Case of EEE
For horses kept in the Tidewater area of Virginia, veterinarians recommend vaccination against mosquito-borne disease every six months. Anyone keeping horses in mosquito-infested areas of North America should heed this recommendation. The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS) today announced the second case of Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE) in a Virginia horse this […]
Fox Photo Tops Annual National Geographic Contest
Wherever you go, I will follow you! / Photo and caption by Hiroki Inoue A pair of courting foxes—two understated splashes of color in an otherwise pale wintry Japanese landscape—was the subject of the winning Nature photograph in the 2016 National Geographic Travel Photographer of the Year Contest. Winning photographer Hiroki Inoue wrote, “It was […]
A Foxhunter Is Knighted
On Hunting, Roger Scruton, Yellow Jersey Press, 1998, 161 pages, pocket size, available at Amazon and bookstores.To define Roger Scruton merely as a foxhunter is like defining Winston Churchill as a cigar smoker. True enough, but hardly a comprehensive description. Last month, Roger Scruton was created a Knight Bachelor by Queen Elizabeth II in the Birthday Honours list published on the Queen’s ninetieth birthday.
Scruton is one of Britain’s leading philosophers, a spokesman for conservatism, and foxhunting is one of his passions. His excellent and highly readable book, On Hunting (1998), brings the author’s philosophical best to his love for the sport and all it entails from terror to ecstasy. As expressed by one reviewer, “He begins with hunting but he ends with a moving romance with nature itself. In this regard, hunting is but a window into his soul and the limits of human nature. I have read all of his books and this one ranks among the best.”
Dark Horse: An Earnest and Sweet Documentary
Janet Vokes, a barmaid in Wales, had bred pigeons and whippets. She figured, why not breed a horse? She wheedled friends and neighbors—twenty-three in all—to join her in a collective by chipping in ten pounds a week for expenses. They bought a mare that had never won a race and had a habit of throwing […]
Watch Now for Fox Cubs On the Move
Watch for a glimpses of red fox cubs hunting with their parents at about this time of year, suggests KRCU.org, a PBS-affiliate in Missouri. As in much of this country, there are two species of foxes in Missouri—the red and the gray fox. Red foxes prefer the borders of forested areas and adjacent open lands […]