hunt week
The Coyote: Thriving Through Persecution
Dr. Stanley Gehrt and an anesthesized coyote in metropolitan ChicagoThe Belle Meade Hounds in Thomson, Georgia will once again stage their annual Hunt Week—Gone Away with the Wind—this season from January 18 to 24. As before, the week will be fun-filled with hunting, parties, a hunt ball, and the camaraderie of the field.
As a bonus, this year’s affair will feature a fascinating presentation by special guest Dr. Stanley Ghert, Associate Professor of Wildlife Ecology and a Wildlife Extension Specialist at Ohio State University.
Dr. Ghert, who has enthralled foxhunters at MFHA meetings over the years, will talk to Belle Meade Hunt Week attendees on Thursday morning, January 22, about his special subject of research—the coyote. This much-aligned animal has survived and even flourished over the past hundred years despite the best efforts of the federal government to eradicate it.
Early in the twentieth century, at the behest of western ranching and agricultural interests that were losing stock to predators, the U.S. Government instituted program after program designed to erase the wolf, grizzly bear, mountain lion, and coyote from the landscape. The programs were mostly successful in their purpose. The wolf, grizzly, and mountain lion were driven nearly to extinction. The coyote, however, was the one predator that not only survived the pressure, but increased its population and its range, slowly expanding eastward and covering now the entire country. How it did that is one of the mysteries of the animal world.
Whiskey Road Hunt Week, Aiken, SC
Installment Five
Whiskey Road MFH David Smith (left) greets Toronto and North York MFH Wolf von Teichman.Betsy and friends escape frozen Virginia for a week of hunting in warmer climes. We bring you Installment Five of her daily blog, exclusive to Foxhunting Life.
Monday was an open day. Gene and Barbara Hough joined me, Tom, Jackie, and Don for a hack in the Hitchcock Woods. We grabbed lunch at Rio Pablo, an excellent Cuban place downtown. There was a benefit for the Hitchcock Woods Foundation that night at the Wilcox Hotel, one of the town's oldest and most grand buildings.
Tuesday dawned cold and frosty but with that promise of spring in the air. There was a pretty good breeze, though, and I was uncertain of scenting conditions as we headed east towards Bill Scott's Fairview fixture near Lexington.
The Scotts own thousands of acres of managed timberland—pine forests cut for pulpwood and lumber—providing excellent habitat for game of all sizes. Gene Hough told me about hunting at Fairview a few years ago when the hounds held a four hundred-pound boar at bay until the huntsman dispatched it (then famously burned it at a pig roast later!).
Whiskey Road Hunt Week, Aiken, SC
Second Installment
Betsy and friends escape frozen Virginia for a week of hunting in warmer climes. We bring you Installment Two of her daily blog, exclusive to Foxhunting Life.
(l-r) Whiskey Road Field Master Geri Rapp, Fairfax Hunt members Ray Moffett, and PetraProbably seventy-five riders in the field this morning from the Batesburg fixture. Whiskey Road hosted a stirrup cup and snack before the meet after which huntsman Joseph Hardiman moved off with the mixed English and Penn-Marydel pack, east towards the cow field adjacent to the fixture.
Hounds struck immediately, coyote, probably, a brace or possibly a leash, and split into two or three groups. Hardiman went with one group, Master/whipper-in Lynn Smith with another, and (seemed like) Master David Smith and the main field with still another.
