Steve Price on his first foxhuntSome time ago in Norm Fine’s Blog we asked the question, How to did you come to go foxhunting? Fine told his story and received some good Comments in response. Here’s Steve Price’s story. Use the Comments field to send us yours!
It happened nearly forty years ago. I was half of a two-person equestrian journalist junket to Ireland. Over lunch in his home at Scarteen, Master Thady Ryan invited us to join him the following day. My companion happily agreed, but I demurred. My jumping skills were limited to beginner courses—egg-rolls and twice-arounds—and I had seen the formidable banks and ditches separating the County Limerick fields.
“Aw, I’ll give you my best hunting horse,” Thady assured me, “you’ll be safe as houses.”
In for a penny… I shrugged, and went along.
A cattle truck-cum-horse van was waiting at the meet. Out came almost a dozen fully tacked horses. I waited while other people claimed their mounts until Thady indicated mine, a substantial Irish draft crossbred mare.
“What’s her name?” I inquired. Thady thought for a while, and with a charming twinkle of his eyes replied, “Whatever you choose to call her.”
I found a place in the back of the field of some fifty riders. Nelly (as in “Whoa Nellie!”) proved to be an agreeable mode of transportation. When nothing much happened during the first two hours, I started to feel cocky. This Irish hunting isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
A few minutes later I was biting my tongue and praying to whatever deity that looks after drunks, old folks, and Americans who were in way over their heads. Hounds had found, and I was doing everything I had been told never to do. You’re not supposed to gallop down steep hills; we were galloping down a steep hill. You’re not supposed to gallop on pavement; we were clattering along and skidding on a paved road. Then it was into a field and off to the races.
Everything thereafter happened very quickly. Galloping at speed was the easy part. Scrambling up onto banks and then being launched into space over ditches where, with any luck, there was more Ireland waiting, not so much.
At one point what had to be the largest bank in the world loomed ahead. My life stopped flashing before my eyes long enough to spot another rider veering off. I’ll follow that man to hell and beyond, I decided. So had, apparently, several other riders, and we headed off to parts unknown. As my good fortune would have it, our leader became lost, which allowed Nelly to slow down and me to breathe again.
We finally rejoined the rest of the field, to the relief of my traveling journalist-companion. “We were worried about you,” she said. “I had visions of your being lost forever in the bottom of one of the ditches.”
“Thank you for your concern,” I replied.
“Concern, my foot,” was the reply, “you have the car keys.”
Posted December 6, 2014