Thoroughbreds: Kings of the Hunting Field
Nina Siepel on Steppenwolfer, out with the Cheshire hounds this year
Consider the happy life of Steppenwolfer (by Aptitude out of Wolfer): lots of treats; a big field with clover and buddies; and, from September to March, running around the countryside with a lot of other horses chasing a pack of hounds. A far distance from running third to Barbaro (by Dynaformer out of La Ville Rouge) in the Kentucky Derby and second in the Arkansas Derby in 2006.
Gelded and purchased by Gail and Dixon Thayer as a steeplechase prospect, his short steeplechase career wasn’t as stellar as hoped for. But he’s one happy puppy now. And Nina Siepel, who hunts him with Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds (PA), always wears a big grin, as if she still can’t really believe her good fortune. I’m not sure who is the luckier of the two.
Gone-Away-With-the-Wind Hunt Week
Belle Meade Hunt Week attracted a happy throng of visitors. / Bella Vita Fotografie photo
Masters and members of the Belle Meade Hunt in Thomson, Georgia celebrated their Hunt Week with an event-packed schedule for friends and guests from Monday, January 14 through Saturday, January 20, 2013. The week featured three days with the Belle Meade hounds and a day each with the Aiken Hounds and the Why Worry Hounds. Stirrup cups, hunt breakfasts, and optional trail rides were featured, and the week finished up in style with the annual Hunt Ball.
Here’s Robbie Gilmore’s report on the sport shown by the Belle Meade hounds during their first two days in the field:
Hunting Ban Could Be Repealed, But for Scots, Says Countryside Alliance
The Countryside Alliance believes that there would be sufficient votes in Commons to overturn the hunting ban, but for the votes of the Scottish Labour MPs. The government is being urged to reform the system which gives Scottish MPs veto rights on legislation that has no impact in Scotland. Tim Bonner of the Countryside Alliance […]
Vannah Husband, MFH (1956–2013)
Vannah Grisham Husband, MFH of the Mells Foxhounds, passed away on Friday, January 4, 2013 at the Huntsville Hospital in Alabama. Vannah grew up riding horses and had a life-long love of animals. She started her foxhunting career with the Mooreland Hunt (AL) at age eight and received her colors in 1972. Through the early […]
Drawing for a Fox, the Huntsman Catches a Wife
The newly engaged couple, Francesca Harding and Blue Ridge huntsman Guy Allman, return to the meet at the end of a surprising day. / Nancy Kleck photoBlue Ridge huntsman Guy Allman transformed last Saturday’s well-attended Junior Meet from just another great day in the field to far loftier levels. He chose a moment during his first draw to propose marriage to Francesca Harding. The lady said, “Yes,” and Allman presented her with a ring.
This was no spur-of-the-moment proposal I was to learn. The day’s affair was a premeditated, meticulously planned campaign of romance on the huntsman’s part that warmed even the hearts of the grizzled and jaundiced old-timers in the field.
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.
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.
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.”
A Christmas Eve Hunt
Joe Bills / Monica Powell photoThis excellent hunting morning started early, as I arose at 5:00 am to check the forecast and discuss it with Carrollton Hounds MFH and huntsman Dulany Noble. Being “the weather guy” in the hunt, I checked radar and several different weather services as sleet had been predicted the night before. The precipitation had been shoved back so we decide to give it a go.
I drove out to the barn to prepare Joe, Jr. for the day’s hunt. Luckily my barn is within hacking distance from the fixture, so I got him ready and tacked up. We went up the driveway, down into the bottom, back up through the neighbor’s and up to Begg Road. We saw a family out walking with a small child and stopped to wish them a Merry Christmas. We paused to give the child her first encounter with a horse. Then on we went up the road. I enjoyed the view from the ridge, looking over the farms of Maryland’s Carroll County and seeing the houses decorated for the season. The skies grew steel grey as the morning progressed, portending the coming precipitation. The air was heavy and winds slight.
California Governor Signs Hound Bill
California Governor Jerry Brown has signed into law a bill that bans the use of dogs in hunting bear and bobcat. The moment represents a long-sought for success for animal rights activists, who have been bringing this or similar bills to the California legislature for many years now. Pro-hunting groups with the help of the […]