hare hunting
The Hare that Must Be Fox
A third condensed installment from We Go Foxhunting Abroad: A First Venture with the Irish Banks and English Downs, Charles D. Lanier’s 1924 account of a father-daughter sporting trip to Ireland and England.
Irish hare
We decided that our new sensation would be a trial of Irish harehunting, so to Watergrass Hill we flivvered, to the meet of Mr. Robert Hall’s private pack of harriers. The Master was a slender, wiry, grey-haired man of seventy years, aquiline of countenance, with a singularly winning eye and smile under his velvet cap. He and his whipper-in were, of course, in green, and a dozen or so of the field of thirty or forty also wore the correct harrier colors.
Mr. Hall had the pride of an Irishman and a sportsman in his fifteen couple of huge Kerry “beagles,” and I think it would have been a hard blow to him if luck had been denied us that day. But it turned out to be a red letter day; I think we enjoyed having it so even more for the intense satisfaction it gave our enthusiastic host than for the sport intrinsically, which was of the very best and a revelation to us, who had not before followed a strong South Irish hare.
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.”
Phantasmagorial New Zealand
Central Otago Hunt, South Island, New Zealand
First of two installments by national award-winning journalist and author Karin Winegar.
Yes, they jump wire.
Wire and mostly wire fences, three to four feet high, five or six taut strands with a top strand, often barbed, is what contains New Zealand’s thirty million sheep, defines its vast stations, and renders rides thrilling for outsiders.
No one—at least not the Kiwis—thinks anything of it.
Kiwi horses, harrier hounds, and riders just barrel cheerfully along in a landscape that resembles (depending on the hunt country and the season) Provence, Africa, Montana, Ireland, California, or Norway. And given the size of New Zealand’s population—only 4.4 million—there are lots of horses, hounds, and riders.
