Lynn Lloyd
A Cowboy in County Clare
Kail Mantle from Montana: just like riding a bronc / Val Westover photo
Last year, while hunting with the Red Rock Hounds (NV), I met Renee and Kail Mantle from Big Sky Hounds in Three Forks, Montana. Kail gave us a bucking horse lesson one day before hunting. This Montana cowboy, who hunts in chaps and cowboy hat, had sat calmly to his horse bucking crazily above the sagebrush and had seriously impressed me.
When a group of these Western foxhunters invited me to accompany them to Ireland this year, I jumped at the chance. These were fun people---more than a little crazy, and I wondered if anyone had warned the Irish!
I also wondered if my companions knew what they were getting into. I had hunted the big Irish walls and hedges in 2000, and I came home with newfound respect for anyone who hunts regularly in Ireland. It is challenging country, and their version of foxhunting is an excuse to run and jump really big fences.
The Red Rock Hounds and Their Country
Wild horses in Nevada's high desert / Nancy Stevens-Brown photo
I want to tell you about Lynn Lloyd’s Red Rock Hounds and the country they hunt as a short introduction to our feature story, "How Old Hounds Pay Their Keep at Red Rock." In that story you’ll read how Lynn ingeniously transformed her elderly hounds from a burden to an asset! The old hounds pay their way by increasing membership and caps, and they throw off side benefits by helping to train young hounds and staff. And I have to believe that many hunts could do something similar to their own benefit.
The Red Rock foxhounds hunt the coyote over the high desert of Nevada, near Reno, where cowboys in dusty western hats, vests, and chaps lope after hounds in their Western saddles stirrup-to-stirrup with properly attired foxhunters posting to the trot in their English saddles.
How Old Hounds Pay Their Keep at Red Rock
What to do with the old hounds? / Nancy Stevens-Brown photo
Most hunts are beset by similar problems: what to do with old hounds, how to attract more members, how to pay the bills, how to train staff, how to train young hounds. Lynn Lloyd, MFH and huntsman of the Red Rock Hounds (NV), found that the solution to one problem provided the key to solving several others.
What to Do with Old Hounds
The average hunting life of a hound is perhaps six or seven years. That means it is retired from the pack at age seven or eight. Beyond that age, most hounds start falling behind the pack, lacking the foot and endurance to maintain the pace over a full hunting day.
But with several years of life still remaining for the retired hounds, most hunts are hard-put to expend their limited financial resources to keep and maintain them. And here’s where Lynn Lloyd found a way to turn a burden into an asset.
How Old Hounds Pay Their Keep at Red Rock
What to do with the old hounds? / Nancy Stevens-Brown photo
Most hunts are beset by similar problems: what to do with old hounds, how to attract more members, how to pay the bills, how to train staff, how to train young hounds. Lynn Lloyd, MFH and huntsman of the Red Rock Hounds (NV), found that the solution to one problem provided the key to solving several others.
What to Do with Old Hounds
The average hunting life of a hound is perhaps six or seven years. That means it is retired from the pack at age seven or eight. Beyond that age, most hounds start falling behind the pack, lacking the foot and endurance to maintain the pace over a full hunting day.
But with several years of life still remaining for the retired hounds, most hunts are hard-put to expend their limited financial resources to keep and maintain them. And here’s where Lynn Lloyd found a way to turn a burden into an asset.
Tally Slo! The Leisure Field Debuts at Red Rock
Joy Smith leads the Leisure Field on Kindred. By A.P. Indy, Kindred sold at Keeneland in 2006 for one million dollars, but has since found more satisfying employment. / Shawn Lloyd photoGreat ideas are sometimes borne of desperation.
I was desperate to get back on a horse after a lumbar fracture at the beginning of the hunting season. Having already sat out much of the season. I just couldn’t resist riding at the annual joint meet in Ridgecrest, California. Hounds and members of Red Rock Hounds (NV), Kingsbury Harriers, Santa Ynez Valley Hounds (CA), Grand Canyon Hounds (AZ), Paradise Valley Beagles (AZ), as well as members of several eastern hunts all come together for three days of hunting, eating, drinking, and mingling with great friends and fantastic animals.
Riding was definitely not on my list of “can do” activities, but give me a quiet horse and a promise to only walk then no harm can be done, right?
Red Rock Hounds to Parade at $25,000 Jumping Derby
The Red Rock Hounds are scheduled to parade at the 2011 Franktown Meadows USHJA International Hunter Derby in Carson City, Nevada on Labor Day, September 5. The “best horse and rider combinations in the country” are expected to compete over this beautiful course in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Hounds will parade around the course at noon with mounted staff, and the Derby will begin at 1:00 p.m. Red Rock Master Lynn Lloyd believes it’s an appropriate venue for both her hounds and the spectators. “The derby came because of field hunting,” she said, and we are “presenting its roots. I think [the spectators] begin to understand that this is where hunters in the show ring began, and that hunting in America is still available….I want people to understand the freedom [of hunting] and being in nature. I think it grounds people, and I want them to remember the fun of horses. Sometimes I think they forget that.” More information about the derby is available from the Phelps Media Group. Posted August 17, 2011
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