Foxhound in the House
At home with Cathy and friendCathy Eising has a twenty-month-old foxhound out of her mother’s rescue foxhound, and she works at his training diligently. She writes:
“I am seeking advice on how to raise the foxhound as a family dog, especially off-leash training. Will he ever stop chasing wild things and pay attention to me outdoors? I have done a lot of obedience with him, and all areas are coming well except off leash outdoors. He needs to run and I can’t walk fast enough or long enough for him to get properly exercised, so I need to trust that he will come when called under all circumstances (including around deer). I’m very dedicated and work with him every day.”
A Holiday Hunt: Kudos to the Fox
The author, leading the field / Nancy Kleck photoMasters, staff, and field of the Blue Ridge Hunt are thankful for the recent Martin Luther King holiday. We always advance the meet from our usual Tuesday to any Monday holiday to give the juniors a chance to hunt. With the Virginia hunting country enveloped in sub-freezing arctic air on Tuesday, Monday’s “storybook” hunt—fifty-five minutes on one fox—was a special gift.
The meet was at Catherine Berger’s Rolling Hills Farm. Hounds found their fox in the first covert where it was viewed across the open fields by a car follower. Before horses were even warmed up, we found ourselves racing to the first fence—a brand-new, raw, double-wide coop standing high on its timbers.
Coyotes and Lasagne: The Noble Art in America
Coyote takes refuge after nine-and-a-half miles across country / Pam Gamble photo
The Longreen Foxhounds met at Eastover Plantation in Clarksdale, Mississippi on Saturday, January 5, 2012 under a light rain and gentle wind in thirty-eight degree temperatures. While most riders opted for raincoats, whipper-In Chip Carruthers boldly rode out in his scarlet.
Hounds moved off at 10:00 am just as the rain was stopping. Blue skies opened over the first covert—the Cigar Woods. Hounds trotted the mile across the turn row from trailers to woods, with the field branching off to the west. Staff was already in position. Hounds have been known to erupt in full cry on coyote once inside woods and always in full cry by the southern end of this covert.
Not so this day. Cigar Woods, blank. Swamp Woods, blank. Hounds were picked up and hacked down Reinhart Rd to the Twin Woods. Blank. Now overcast with temperature rising slowly.
The Daughter of Bugle Ann: An Excerpt
This foxhound classic by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, reprinted in 2003 by The Derrydale Press, is cloth bound, 153 pages, $18.95, in the Foxhunting Life Shop.Our dogs rustled out a fox, south and east beyond all hearing, running like they were tied to him. It was eleven o’clock at night, middling damp and black-dark, for the young moon had already gone to hide.
We squatted on the west slope of the Divide above Heaven Creek—the usual four of us, armed with boiled eggs and onion sandwiches, and we carried along a water jug, and my father had a half-a-pint of whiskey. Our trucks were under the oaks, just far enough back for firelight to pretend that radiator caps were precious gems. The spooky places among big trees were full of betty-millers and numerous other moths, and beetles were a-buzzing.
But it seemed as if the timberland considered itself incomplete, without voices of hounds splitting themselves upon the shagbarks; and so all life was waiting and summoning—acorn and peeking coon and noxious flytrap weeds beside the creek—urging that the pack return and make dutiful music in the background.
Benjy Davis pulled his thin brown face away from the fire: the blaze was good to watch but hard to sit by. He said to all and sundry, “She’s just about coming in.”
Phantasmagorial New Zealand (Part 2)
Central Otago Hunt, South Island, New Zealand
Second and final installment by national award-winning journalist and author Karin Winegar
At midweek Glynne Smith, MFH of the Central Otago Hounds (COH) and I drove up to a meet above the Ida Valley. Mountains stretched away below us in silver, slate, lichen and plum. Glynne greeted farmers driving a pickup truck carrying a wrinkle-nosed ram uphill in spatters of cold rain, shepherds crooks rising from their truck bed.
Chill wind buffeted the phantasmagorical rocks at the top of the ridge where we unloaded the horses. Lord of the Rings Riders of Rohan scenes were filmed in this forlorn country. And Ted Ottry, a COH whipper-in who had been an extra in the film, rides a white Thoroughbred he purchased from the Lord of the Rings herd.
A few minutes after moving off, we faced an uphill six-strand bare wire fence. Etta easily sailed it, and Glynne zoomed past me grinning under his white mustache: “Ha! Now you are one of us.”
Cheshire Centennial Meet at Brooklawn
Cheshire Honorary Whipper-In Paddy Neilson, Huntsman Ivan Dowling, and professional whipper-in Stephanie Boyer at Brooklawn / Noel Mullins photo
Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds (PA), founded in 1912, are celebrating their Centennial this season. W. Plunkett Stewart, a Philadelphia banker, set out to find the perfect hunting country and settled on the rolling hills, rich pastureland and extensive woods around Unionville. As what in modern terms could be classed as a committed environmentalist, he purchased thousands of acres of land and, before reselling, amended deeds to restrict development and nurture conservancy, clean water, and natural habitat. As a result of his efforts and the culture of conservation he passed on, the Cheshire hunting country today boasts thirty square miles and twenty-six thousand acres free from ribbon residential and commercial development that has allowed foxhunting and National Hunt racing to thrive.
Cubhunting in Maryland: Foxes and Cornfields
Five-Year-Old Anabelle Small holds huntsman Dulany Noble’s horse, Smitten, after the meet. / Elizabeth Martin photoWednesday, October 17 was a perfect day for cub hunting in Central Maryland. The morning was clear, crisp, and chilly, the dew covered the ground, and the fall foliage is coming into full color. This Carrollton Hounds fixture—Ships Quarter Farm—is one of my favorites, not only for the quality of hunting but also for selfish reasons as it is where I board Joe, Jr. It means a more leisurely morning as there is no hitching up the trailer and driving to the meet.
This day would see small fields and me leading the Second Field as our regular Field Master was indisposed with work. After hounds were off loaded, announcements made, and guests welcomed, MFH and huntsman Dulany Noble rode off for the first draw, the bottom of Cranberry Creek below Ships Quarters. This covert is always productive as Sir Charles makes it a home. This summer we had two cubs that would come out to play in the driveway and pastures.
Fox Pen Debate Continues in Virginia
The Virginia General Assembly brought opponents and proponents of fox penning together last February in an attempt to review the practice and work out a mutually acceptable set of rules. David Whitehurst of the Department of Game and Fisheries says that no compromise acceptable to each constituency was reached. The issue is expected to be […]
Paint Not the Porch
Karen L. Myers photo
Paint not the porch while “walking” hound puppies.
Worry not how bad the porch looks.
Look to the future, a future without hound puppies, before painting the porch.
Paint not even the porch ceiling when hound puppies are on the premises.
Even if your husband has three new partners and he wants to welcome them
And, besides, his old friend Harry Poling is retiring;
Even if he has scheduled the caterers,
And his office has sent out two hundred and fifty invitations
To a garden party at your house,
Panic not!
Paint not the porch.
Arturo Bandini and the Pasadena Hunt
Arturo Bandini“Mr. Arturo Bandini, of the Pasadena Hunt, owns the finest pack in the vicinity…. The meet is generally upon Orange Grove Avenue, or some spot contiguous to the Arroyo. And before the dew is off the grass, and while the scent is fresh, the musical notes of Mr. Bandini’s horn may be heard, followed by the fitful baying of the hounds; and then horsemen and women come from all directions—parties from the Raymond and other hotels, and from Los Angeles and San Gabriel, swelling the hunt….”
So writes Charles Frederick Holder, in his 1889 book, All About Pasadena and its Vicinity; It’s Climate, Missions, Trails and Canyons, Fruits, Flowers and Game. Holder tells us that the sport holding the most fascination to visitors is hunting the wild-cat with hounds—the cats in this area sometimes weighing in at fifty pounds. One can’t help but wonder if Mr. Bandini and his hounds were even known to those east-coast founding fathers that were pioneering our own sport of organized mounted foxhunting in the late 1800s.