Hunting with Dogs in New York City
An unregistered pack of dogs is hunting in New York City according to Fox News. The Ryders Alley Trencher-fed Society has been meeting weekly at promising fixtures throughout the city for about ten years. Recently they met near City Hall on a couple of nights to draw the nearby alleys with two Border Terriers, a […]
Blue Ridge Runs Postponed Point-to-Point
Whodoyoucallit (Woods Winants) wins Novice Timber. / Liz Callar photoThe Blue Ridge Hunt Point-to-Point Races, originally scheduled for Saturday, March 9 but postponed due to a snowstorm, were finally held on a sunny but cool Sunday, April 21, 2013—six weeks later. A good crowd of spectators enjoyed a brilliant day out-of-doors, but entries were down with the sanctioned Middleburg Spring Races having been run the day before.
Eva Smithwick—2012 leading trainer in Virginia—saddled two winners for Indian Run Farm, both ridden by Woods Winants. Fogcutter, with two previous hurdle wins at Thornton Hill and Old Dominion, won the Amateur/Novice Rider Hurdle, and Whodoyoucallit, with a win earlier in the season at Thornton Hill, won the Novice Timber. Neither horse was seriously challenged.
Virginia Mourns Loss of Mary South Hutchison
Douglas Lees photoMary South Hutchison, a powerful presence in the world of Virginia foxhunting, died suddenly on Thursday, April 4, 2013. Mary South—as she was known to visitors and members of the Orange County Hounds, exhibitors at the Virginia Foxhound Show, and members of the Virginia Foxhound Club—served the Orange County Hounds as Honorary Secretary […]
Unmanned Drones to Spy on Foxhunters in England
The League Against Cruel Sports (LAS) has announced its intention to use unmanned drones with video cameras to bolster their prosecutions in court against illegal hunting in England. A spokesman said they would provide the evidence to police. The LAS claims that the airspace above private property is free and open to their surveillance. They […]
Dedicated Website Lists Field Hunters for Sale
Looking for a Field Hunter? Try FoxhuntingHorse.com, a website dedicated to our discipline. Certainly, horse marketing websites have been used successfully for years, but if you were looking for an experienced foxhunter, you had to wade through a lot of horses in a lot of other disciplines.
Many of those ads, after telling you that the horse is a great mover, snaps its knees, has four flashy white socks, and is schooling successfully over two feet, finish with the line, “Would make a great field hunter.” Well, maybe, but not just yet.
FoxhuntingHorse.com was created by Lisha Marshall, an experienced horsewoman and foxhunter. The website segregates field hunters into categories: First Flight, Second Flight, Hilltopper, Child’s Hunter, Staff Horses. Each horse’s experience is described in terms that are meaningful to the foxhunter.
Readers’ Contest: Most Literate Foxhunter!
George Whyte-Melville (1821 – 1878)I’ve already confessed to you that George Whyte-Melville and William Henry Ogilvie are my favorite sporting poets. In their works are stitched the insistent rhythms of the galloping horse crossing open country. What follows is an ode to Whyte-Melville written by Ogilvie himself.
In this tribute appear numerous lines, phrases and references cleverly taken from many of Whyte-Melville’s poems. Whoever can extract the greatest number of Whyte-Melville lines and phrases in this poem and identify the Whyte-Melville poems from which they are taken will be named Foxhunting Life’s Most Literate Foxhunter of 2012! To submit your entry, click here.
Whyte-Melville by William Henry Ogilvie
With lightest of hands on the bridle, with lightest of hearts in the dance,
To the gods of Adventure and Laughter he quaffed the red wine of Romance,
Then wistfully turning the goblet he spilled the last drops at our feet,
And left us his tales to remember and left us his songs to repeat.
Gaining Confidence Outside the Comfort Zone with Chris Ryan
Chris Ryan sets exercises to benefit horses and riders of all levels. / Alys Emson photo
For the second consecutive year, Chris Ryan, MFH of the Scarteen Black and Tans in Ireland crossed the Atlantic to impart some of his knowledge and experience to participants in the Woodford Hounds Hunt Clinic held over the Labor Day weekend at the kennels in Harrodsburg, Kentucky. Chris has been Master of the Scarteen since 1987, and the hounds have been in the trusted care of the Ryan family for over 350 years.
The clinic was held for three days with divisions for the open horse and rider as well as for green horses and for hilltoppers over the three-day period. Overwhelmingly, the results were positive. Chris’s teaching style leaves one a more positive, confident rider. He pushes and pushes and gets results. He even had some of the participants jumping wire, after explaining that we must be prepared to jump what is encountered in the hunting field.
Piedmont Horse and Rider Win Field Hunter Championship of America
Judge Barbara Batterton presents the championship trophy to Elizabeth Green, riding Gold for Glory. / Liz Callar photo
Elizabeth Green, representing the Piedmont Fox Hounds (VA), rode Shelby Bonnie’s Gold for Glory to victory in the Theodora Randolph Field Hunter Championships of America. The trials, founded in 1989, are named for the late Master of the Piedmont, so it is particularly fitting when a Piedmont horse and rider win the championship.
The week-long event attracts foxhunters from across North America. Entries ride with up to four different area hunts over a five-day period, and horse and rider pairs are selected to compete in the final tests and mock hunt by a team of mounted judges. The finals were held on October 7, 2012 at the Glenwood Park Race Course in Middleburg as part of the Virginia Fall Races weekend program.
Commander Bill King: A Life Lived to the Fullest Measure
William Donald Aelian “Bill” King died recently at the magnificent age of 102 at his home, Oranmore Castle, in County Galway, Ireland. He was a highly decorated submarine commander, a world renowned sailor, boxer, athlete, organic farmer, writer, and family man.
Also, he was a lifelong follower of both the Galway Blazers and Lady Molly Cusack Smith’s Bermingham & North Galway Foxhounds, with his late wife, the author Anita Leslie, whom he met in Lebanon during the war in 1940. Anita was a daughter of Sir John Randolph Leslie and Marjorie Ide, a daughter of General Henry Clay Ide, a former American Ambassador to Spain and Governor of the Philippines. Anita had been previously married to the well known Russian cavalry officer Colonel Paul Rodzianko who was appointed chief instructor of the Irish Army Equitation School in 1928. She wrote seventeen books, including Lady Randolph Churchill, The story of Jenny Jerome, the life of Sir Winston Churchill’s mother, and Sir Francis Chichester, the biography of the famous round the world yachtsman.
Bill held the distinction of being the only submarine commander to command a British submarine on the first and last days of World War II, such were the perils of such a dangerous command. He was also the last surviving submarine commander of the British Navy from the last war.
Gentlemen, Start Your Engines
The era of male economic supremacy is over, says Hanna Rosin, an editor at The Atlantic, in her new book, The End of Men: And the Rise of Women. Although executives running Fortune 500 Companies are still overwhelmingly male, women in their twenties now outearn men in their twenties. Are men becoming irrelevant? Consider this incident I witnessed in our hunting field just last Saturday.
One of our hunt members (call her Christy) loaded her horse onto the trailer at the conclusion of our Saturday meet and proceeded to drive out of the field. Unfortunately, she chose a low, wet spot to traverse, and just before reaching the firm driveway her progress ended. The right rear wheel of her truck buried itself to the axle in mud. The right front wasn’t a whole lot better.