A Cowboy in County Clare
Kail Mantle from Montana: just like riding a bronc / Val Westover photo
Last year, while hunting with the Red Rock Hounds (NV), I met Renee and Kail Mantle from Big Sky Hounds in Three Forks, Montana. Kail gave us a bucking horse lesson one day before hunting. This Montana cowboy, who hunts in chaps and cowboy hat, had sat calmly to his horse bucking crazily above the sagebrush and had seriously impressed me.
When a group of these Western foxhunters invited me to accompany them to Ireland this year, I jumped at the chance. These were fun people—more than a little crazy, and I wondered if anyone had warned the Irish!
I also wondered if my companions knew what they were getting into. I had hunted the big Irish walls and hedges in 2000, and I came home with newfound respect for anyone who hunts regularly in Ireland. It is challenging country, and their version of foxhunting is an excuse to run and jump really big fences.
Suspension
Snow on the ground or falling from the sky, no matter. The Golden’s Bridge Hounds (NY) and huntsman Codie Hayes are determined to keep coyotes on the move until the very last day in March. This coyote, writes photographer Jim Duggan, “kept circling as usual at this time of year with the mate and pups […]
Mark McManus: Huntsman and Mentor
Mark McManus is the new huntsman at the Chagrin Valley Hunt (OH).
When a huntsman retires after a long and successful career hunting hounds for a respected hunting establishment, that vacuum creates a ripple effect throughout the hunting community. So it was when Larry Pitts retired after thirty-five seasons hunting hounds at the Potomac Hunt (MD). Pitts’s vacancy was filled by huntsman Brian Kiely from the Myopia Hunt (MA); the void at Myopia was filled by huntsman Philip Headdon from the Chagrin Valley Hunt (OH); and the Chagrin Valley opening will be filled this season by huntsman Mark McManus from the Ottawa Valley Hunt (ON).
During his time at Ottawa Valley, McManus definitely left his mark (pun intended). OVH Master Anne McKibbin lets sixteen-year-old whipper-in Carmen Powell-Sadik tell us how.
Mark is an enjoyable person to be around, with many a good story to tell depicting various scenes of humor and horror taken from an exciting and sometimes perilous life of foxhunting in his native Ireland. He remembers times of his childhood riding with his baby brother “sat in me lap” as he (much to his father’s chagrin) jumped the hedges!
Captain Tom Morgan, MFH, Dies in Ireland at 94
Captain Tom Morgan (in wheelchair) presents the Isaac Bell Perpetual Challenge Cup at the 2015 National Irish Masters of Foxhounds Show. / Noel Mullins photo
Captain Thomas Morgan, MFH, died peacefully at his home, Hunters Lodge, Bishopstown , Lismore, Ireland on Sunday, March 15, 2015 at age ninety-four.
Captain Morgan worked closely with Ikey Bell, father of the Modern English Foxhound, and with Ben Hardaway, MFH of the Midland Foxhounds (GA), to create the Hardaway Crossbred. The Captain was Joint-Master, with his wife Elsie, of the West Waterford Foxhounds (IRE) from 1953 to 1989. For more on this iconic triumvirate of hound breeders, read “The Hardaway-Morgan-Bell Connection.” Here is Noel Mullins’ tribute to this outstanding soldier/sportsman:
Captain Tom Morgan, MFH, was a gentleman, wise, widely read, passionate about horses and hounds, and a diplomat who had a wonderful relationship with neighbours and landowners across the hunting country. He welcomed visitors to his very traditional home with his lovely, gentle Welsh accent, and they seldom left without the customary cup of tea and talk of hunting and horse breeding.
Radnor Huntsman John Dean Breaks Leg
Radnor huntsman Johnny Dean / Daria Killinger photoTuesday, March 17, 2015, Radnor huntsman John “Johnny” Dean III slipped at the mounting block just prior to moving off with hounds from the kennel, and suffered a broken leg. Stevie Hayes, former huntsman of the Bellwood Hunt and occasional whipper-in at Radnor, saved the day’s hunting by […]
Mrs. Thaddeus (Anne) Ryan, 89, Dies in New Zealand
Scarteen Hunt Dance, 1949, where Anne Peter from New Zealand first met Thady Ryan, MFH. Anne is second from the right in front. Thady is second from the left behind.Anne Ryan (neé Peter), eighty-nine, widow of the late Thady Ryan, MFH, Scarteen (IRE), died in her home in Nelson, New Zealand on Wednesday, March 11, 2015. She will be remembered with affection by sportsmen around the world who had the good fortune to meet her while hunting with the Scarteen behind Master and huntsman Thady Ryan, and especially by those who had the greater good fortune to stay or dine at Scarteen over their hunting holidays.
Anne, a native of New Zealand, was visiting cousins in Ireland in 1949 when she met Thady. She caught his eye the first time he spied her hacking in from a meet with the Tipps. A few days later, she appeared at the Scarteen Hunt Dance in the company of a young man. Thady had not forgotten his first sight of Anne, and he wooed her with determination. There were obstacles, she having been brought up in the Anglican faith and he a devout Catholic. Further, the cousins with whom Anne was staying had promised to return her to her family in New Zealand “whole and single.”
Hunt-to-Huntsman Relations: A Matter of Concern?
Sidney Bailey retired in 2005 after serving as professional huntsman for the Vale of the White Horse (UK) for forty-three seasons.Foxhunting Life readers demonstrate enormous interest in our articles covering the migration of huntsmen each year at about this time. (See “Huntsmen on the Move,” published last month.) Nancy Mitchell, who has hunted hounds at the Bijou Springs Hunt (CO) over a period of sixteen years, wants to know the why of it.
“I’m curious to know what motivates this ‘spring dance of the huntsmen,’” Nancy wrote. “What circumstances create this phenomenon? Money? Prestige? Politics? Age?”
We thought it was an interesting subject for our Panel of Experts, so we asked Jerry Miller, MFH, C. Martin Scott, ex-MFH, and Hugh Robards, ex-MFH, to weigh in on Nancy’s question.
Codie Hayes and Her Hounds: A Love Story
At age 12, Codie Hayes showed Rose Tree Needy to the Grand Championship at the 2004 Virginia Foxhound Show, the first time ever for a Penn-Marydel. / Lauren Giannini photoFrom the moment Codie Jane Hayes became aware of the world around her, she took to hounds. She progressed from crawling to toddling among the pack of Penn-Marydel foxhounds bred and hunted by her grandfather Jody Murtagh, Jr., ex-MFH. She was a wunderkind, totally at home with hounds and crazy about them. From the way hounds take to her, she was born with a gift—that coveted invisible thread connecting her to hounds wherever she goes.
In August 2014, Codie, twenty-two, became the professional huntsman for the Golden’s Bridge Hounds in North Salem, New York. This position at any hunt entails huge responsibilities, but after a glimpse into how she spent her childhood and teen years, there’s no doubt that she has been training to be huntsman since she came into the world.
Hunting Horn Ringtones on your iPhone!
Huntsman John TabachkaWe finally worked it out: how to download our horn call ringtones to an iPhone! So many people have asked, and here’s how. But first, a story.
I tried to phone Steve Price, a member of Foxhunting Life’s Panel of Experts, but he was out. I left a message asking him to return the call on my cell phone. When his call came, I happened to be in the stall with my retired hunter, Guitar. Upon hearing the ringtone, “Gone Away,” old Guitar pricked his ears and took a couple of lively turns around the stall! I laughed and explained the scene to Steve.
“You should have given the phone to Guitar and told him, ‘It’s for you,’” said Steve.
FHL‘s ringtones are the brilliant horn work of John Tabachka, huntsman, Sewickley Hunt (PA), a two-time winner of the National Horn Blowing Contest at the Pennsylvania National Horse Show in Harrisburg. (Click to view FHL‘s popular video, Calls on the Horn, in which John explains the meaning and usage of the principal horn calls heard in the course of a day’s hunting.)
What follows is the ringtone download procedure for iPhone users only, and uses M4R files required by the iPhone; most other cell phone users should use the mp3 files that we have made available for some time now. (Note: This “read more” link is open to all viewers.)
Virginia Foxhound Club Celebrates Sixty-Five Years
But no one came to the party.
Virginia Foxhound Show, Oatlands, 1986: Huntsman Shelly O’Higgins receives trophy from Joan Jones (now President, Virginia Foxhound Club). Judges are (l-r) Captain R.E. Wallace, MFH, Exmoor Foxhounds (UK); Bun Sharp, MB, Nantucket-Treweryn Beagles; Sherman Haight, MFH, Mr. Haight’s Litchfield County Hounds.
There’s an elephant in the room, sucking away so much attention from what we would normally be thinking about at this particular time of year. The Virginia Foxhound Club, for one.
The venerable Virginia Foxhound Club—the team that brings you the Virginia Foxhound Show each year…except this one—is celebrating its sixty-fifth anniversary. It seems timely to look back, evaluate the importance of hound shows in the overall scheme of foxhunting, and convince those with a passion for the sport that their membership in the Virginia Foxhound Club, no matter where in North America they hunt the fox or the coyote, is an investment that will benefit all fox hunters and their hunts.
The Virginia Foxhound Show, the largest hound show in the world, brings foxhounds of all types and all strains to the flags for viewing, comparing, and judging. Whether a Master or huntsman is seeking certain bloodlines, or an outcross to introduce hybrid vigor to the gene pool within his kennels, he sees such hounds at Virginia. And he will again have the opportunity to socialize and chat, in a magnificent setting, about the merits and traits of the canine objects of his desire. With your support, the best matings may continue to be made in Heaven, but they’ll be arranged in Virginia!