Ruler’s Message
A thick mist descended upon Red ScreesAs reported by The Westmorland Gazette, April 14, 1900
On Monday the meeting of the Coniston Foxhounds was at Grove farm. Hounds got upon a drag close to the farm and carried it up Martindale Pasture, by Hind Cove, to Troutbeck Hundreds. Here a fox was unkennelled, which went across Woundale Bottoms, crossed the Kirkstone Road, and climbed up Brow End Allotment. Climbing along the top to Woundale Head, he made a sharp turn to the left, and came down behind Kirkstone House. He now crossed the road at the Ullswater side of the Pass, near the Kirk Stones, and scrambled up the sides of Red Screes.
Boxing Day Brings Britain No Closer to Repeal of the Ban
Boxing Day, traditionally the best-attended day of the hunting season in England, will bring large fields and throngs of hunt supporters to the meets, but no solace in their dreams of repealing the despised Hunting Act of 2005. Prime Minister David Cameron’s campaign pledge to bring the matter to a vote in Parliament notwithstanding, such […]
Huntsman in Training
Blue Ridge huntsman Guy Allman’s daughter Olivia on her first field hunter with mom Fran Harding keeping her in the middle. In case you don’t recognize the horn call, Olivia is blowing “Happy New Year!” to all!
Heythrop Pleads Guilty to Unlawful Foxhunting; Judge Rounds on Plaintiff
The Heythrop Hunt, former huntsman Julian Barnfield, and ex-Master Richard Sumner all pleaded guilty to charges of unlawful hunting in Oxford Magistrates’ Court. The charges were brought by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA). The guilty pleas were made after the court was shown film taken by anti-hunt monitors during […]
Hunt Attire: No Single Truth
The author in informal cubhunting attire / Nancy Kleck photoTraditional foxhunting attire is important to me, but I’m not a fanatic.
Why is it important? Respect…for three hundred years of sport, art, literature, and the men and women who had the passion, energy, and intellect to formulate and leave us one of the most exhilarating activities known to man. For these reasons it pains me to see the concepts of appropriate attire ignored in many hunting fields today.
There is good reason to dress modestly and uniformly. Foxhunting is about the hounds and the quarry; it’s not a stage for man or horse. Its dress code can be described as stratified uniformity—stratified between staff, Master, and field so we can quickly identify who’s who in the heat of battle, and uniformity so that we all maintain our modest place in the overall scheme of the sport.
Why, on the other hand, am I not fanatical about correct hunting attire? Because there is no single truth.
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.”
To Carry the Horn: The Hounds of Annwn
To Carry the Horn: The Hounds of Annwyn by Karen Myers, Perkunas Press, Paperback, 404 pp, $17.99It’s too easy to sum up To Carry the Horn: The Hounds of Annwn as “Harry Potter goes foxhunting,” but for adults who grew up on the Harry Potter series—or who used to sneak to read their children’s books—author Karen Myers has created a grown-up fantasy for you.
Myers takes readers on a fascinating ride into a parallel world where she weaves figures from Welsh mythology into a well-written tale that involves stag hunting, a huntsman’s murder, and a large case of greed and envy. Huntsman George Talbot Traherne, a whipper-in with the Rowanton Hunt in Virginia, is catapulted into the Otherworld when he takes a tumble during a foxhunt on a mysterious estate. When he remounts, George finds himself in the midst of a stag hunt where the huntsman, Iolo, has just been murdered.
Hunting with King Louis XV
Rendez-Vous…in the Forest of Compiegne: preliminary painting for the tapestry by Jean-Baptiste Oudry at Fountainebleu
As a John H. Daniels Fellow at the National Sporting Library in Middleburg, Virginia, last fall, I did research concerning a series of nine large tapestries woven for Louis XV between 1736 and 1753 at the Gobelin manufacture. Called The Royal Hunts or The History of Louis XV, these tapestries decorated Louis XV’s favorite hunting chateau at Compiègne, just north of Paris. The artist who designed the tapestries, Jean-Baptiste Oudry* (1686-1755), was the official painter of the royal hunts who followed the hunt as part of the king’s entourage. He also painted numerous portraits of the royal hunting dogs.
Louis XV was known for his love of the hunt, and the series was meant to document the ritual of the hunt, the well-managed royal hunting grounds, and, of course, to glorify Louis XV. In the tapestries, as well as in the preliminary paintings for the tapestries now at the chateau of Fontainebleau, there are recognizable portraits of Louis XV, his hunt officers, his favorite horses and dogs, and specific sites in the royal forests of Fontainebleau and Compiègne. I was endeavoring to learn exactly what was transpiring in the images by consulting the eighteenth-century hunt treatises and manuals in the collection of the National Sporting Library.
Equine Herpes Interrupts Hunting in Devon
Three hunts—Devon and Somerset Staghounds, Exmoor Foxhounds, and Dulverton West Foxhounds—recently cancelled meets due to an outbreak of equine herpes virus (EHV-1) at a North Devon racing yard. EHV-1 is a serious and sometimes fatal disease that is transmitted through the air or close contact. Hunt representatives said that the cancellations are precautionary and temporary. […]
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.