The Education of a Wheel Whip
Tyler Johnson, Laura Fuller, and a “somewhat-official” hound truck
My daughter, Savannah, started riding with Belle Meade Hunt (GA) eight years ago at the age of twelve. I am not a rider. Yes, I have ridden (slowly, on a trail). Riding is her passion, not mine.
However, I am not a mom that wanted to just drop her kid off with a hug and a kiss and a “Have fun and be careful!” So, I started hitching rides with the kennelman in the old hound truck, or in the back of Unit One (another old pickup truck with not very comfortable tally-ho benches in the truck bed), or with pretty much anyone that would take pity and let me ride along.
Friendships Through Foxhunting
Huntsman Johnny and whipper-in Lelani Gray with the Hillsboro Hounds / Kevin Keesee photo
Two weeks, 3,700 miles, eight hunting days, six different hunts, too many friends to count, one hellova good time….
What do you do when you are stuck in the cold winter weather of Northern Illinois and have not been hunting for two months? A road trip! Lucky for me, and all of us, foxhunting is a small but welcoming world. While there are a variety of ways to hunt, we all welcome fellow fox hunters to join us, and, as Jorrocks said, “Tell me a man’s a fox-hunter, and I loves him at once.”
Gus Schickedanz, Foxhunter, Horse Breeder, Dies at Ninety
Gus hunting Kronprinz, a Trakehner / Brendan Matthias photo
Gustav Schickedanz, ex-MFH, Eglinton and Caledon Hunt (ON), 2009 inductee into the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame, emigré from war-ravaged Europe, died peacefully at his Schönberg Farm in Ontario on Monday, June 17, 2019. A horseman from his earliest days, Gus was a loveable, courtly, and fascinating man who had personally witnessed the best and the worst of life’s offerings during his ninety years on this planet.
Gus’s life trajectory included the pleasures of a childhood with horses on the three hundred acre family farm in East Prussia, the terror of his family’s flight from the Russians across Germany in World War II, the struggles of gaining entrance to Canada and a new life, achieving wealth through building a successful construction and development company from scratch, the breeding of stakes winners, and the satisfactions derived from devotion to family, horses, and foxhunting.
Belle Mead Foxhounds Establish New Hunt Record at Tally Ho Lake
Epp Wilson leads foxhounds, staff, and field. / Reflected Glory photo
The radio crackled.“Tally-Ho coyote at the Catfish Pond headed west.”
It was the first day of our annual Joint Meet weekend with the Shakerag Hounds (GA), and we had just unkenneled 22-1/2 couple of hounds. Whipper-in John Bell had already left—standard operating procedure—to get into position for the draw and viewed the coyote away even before we put hounds in. Tally Ho Lake is in the southeast corner of our hunting territory, where only two herds of cattle remain in our entire country.
Dr. Eric Myer Is Still Foxhunting at 82
Eric Myer wears the colors of the Genesee Valley Hunt (NY) early in the season. / Karen Kandra Wenzel photo
Eric Myer, DVM, is currently in his sixty-sixth season of foxhunting. And not just with one hunt. No, no. If that were the case, the hunting season would be far too short to suit him.
At eighty-two, Eric begins his season in mid-July up north near Rochester, New York with the Genesee Valley Hunt. His wife Martha has roots in Geneseo, and the couple has a summer farm there. Then, in mid-October, when the Piedmont Fox Hounds are well into their cubhunting season down south in Virginia, Eric and Martha return to their Boyce farm in the Shenandoah Valley.
Performance Trial Championships a Huge Success at Midland
Trial Huntsman Ashley Hubbard / Kgp PhotographyTwo days of hard hunting on November 6 and 7, 2018 behind a pack of fifty-four foxhounds—each of which qualified for this championship event by placing among the top ten of one or more of the performance trials over the past year—concluded the MFHA Hark Forward! Performance Trial Season. The season of performance trials, field hunter trials, and joint meets which began last year were conceived by MFHA president Tony Leahy and Master Epp Wilson, Belle Meade Hunt (GA), to reprise, during Leahy’s tenure as president, the spirit of the MFHA Centennial celebrations ten years earlier.
The Performance Trial Championship event was matured, expanded, organized, and staged to perfection by the Masters of the Midland Fox Hounds (GA) in their Fitzpatrick, Alabama hunting country. More than two hundred people representing more than forty hunts participated. Foxhounds from twenty-four hunts competed. Ashley Hubbard, professional huntsman at the Green Spring Valley Hounds (MD), served as trial huntsman for this all-star pack.
Foxhunts Exploit New Technology
A typical county tax map overlayed on Google Maps. Street names and route numbers are shown and parcel numbers may also be displayed for owner identification.
Late in the Twentieth Century, advances in radio communications infiltrated the traditional sport of foxhunting, whether welcomed by all foxhunters or not. Today, hand-held radios and cell phones are as much a part of most hunt staffs’ kit as the horn and the whip.
More recently, online Tax maps and Google Maps, two Twenty-First Century high tech developments, are being used to assist Masters and staff in better organizing their hunting country. Epp Wilson, MFH and huntsman of the Belle Meade Hunt (GA) and his members take advantage of the technology to assist in landowner relations and improving the sport. First, let’s consider what the technology offers, then how Wilson uses it.
Performance Trial a Home Run at Mission Valley
“Don’t like hobbles and I can’t stand fences; Don’t fence me in!” A song that could have been written in the tallgrass prairie of Kansas. / Julie Honsinger photo
The MFHA Hark Forward Performance Trial Series took participants to the prairies of middle America, a unique experience. I love the traditional hunt countries on the East Coast with large forests and big open fields, and I also love the totally different experiences of hunting in land where it is so wide open you can literally see for miles in every direction. Here, in the wide open expanse of the Kansas prairie, field members get to see most all of the hound work.
Mission Valley Hunt (KS) hosted this Foxhound Performance Trial over the weekend of March 2–4, 2018. Five hunts from the Midwest competed. In addition to Mission Valley, hounds were entered from Bridlespur Hunt (MO), Fort Leavenworth Hunt (KS), Mill Creek Hunt (IL), and North Hills Hunt (NE). Guest huntsman was Angela Murray, MFH, Red Rock Hounds (NV).
Hark Forward Travelogue: Belle Meade Hosts Tennessee Valley
Creek diggers at the freshly repaired Natalie’s Crossing. L-R: Back row: Eric Doebbler, Epp Wilson, Lee Ann Carson, Winser Exum, Mike Coke, Terry Cooper, Kelly Holliman, Ed Maxwell. Front row : Anthony Coleman, Andy Blair. / Gretchen Pelham photo
What a day! I arrived at 11:30 last night—six and a-half hours instead of four hours. Siri always thinks I can drive from Tennessee to Judith and Epp Wilson’s in Georgia in just four hours, but I know better. There is a little place called downtown Atlanta that Siri ignores. I always add an hour for the twenty miles it takes to go through downtown. Well, last night Fate gave me a clear run at fifty miles an hour though downtown on a Friday night, hauling my trailer. Holy crap! On a Friday night! I actually saw pavement between cars!
But Fate screwed me on everything else: construction delays, insane fuel stops, so I arrived very late. But today made it all worthwhile. After sleeping in (heaven), Judith and I took their three-month old Crossbred puppies for a long walk this morning, a horseless trail ride. It was the two of us, the foxhound puppies, her Gracie and Marty house dogs, and my Holly. Who was in heaven. And worn out. She’s going to sleep for a week.
Then we went foxhunting this afternoon. Belle Meade and Tennessee Valley have always had great joint meets at Belle Meade. Somehow, our Penn-Marydels and their Crossbred hounds hunt amazingly together.
Fifty-six Juniors Vie for JNAFH Championships at Belle Meade
Fifty-six junior finalists line up for their commemorative photo at Foxboro, home of Belle Meade Master and host Epp Wilson. / Eric Bowles photo
Junior foxhunters, their horses, parents, and friends traveled from thirteen states to Thomson, Georgia, where the Belle Meade Hunt hosted the finals of the fifteenth annual Junior North American Field Hunter Championships on November 11-13, 2017.
Throughout the course of the informal season, hunts around the country held qualifying meets from which the young finalists were chosen by mounted judges. Of the 216 juniors who qualified to compete in the finals, fifty-six young riders from eighteen North American hunts—more than twenty-five percent of those qualified—traveled to Belle Mead to hunt, compete, see old friends, and make a pile of new friends. And did they have a wonderful time! It was truly a pleasure to see.