Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds
Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds 2024 Vixen Hunt
On International Women’s Day, Wagner’s “Flight of the Valkyries” played from a boombox at the meet as the hounds lead the hunt away to start the day. Jumping four-plank fences as they came, led Olympian Boyd Martin, the only man out that day, over 120 women enjoyed a great day in timber country putting three foxes to ground.
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Huntsmen on the Move in 2022
It’s that time of the off-season to check up on huntsmen who are moving or retiring and those hunts acquiring or seeking huntsmen. Here’s what we know.
Guy Allman at Blue Ridge with then whipper-in Neil Amatt and hounds / Betsy Burke Parker photo
Live Oak Hounds (FL)
British-born Guy Allman has returned to the States from England to hunt the well-bred pack of Modern English and Crossbred foxhounds at Live Oak in north Florida. Allman has been in hunt service for thirty-seven seasons, all but three years of that time in England.
Lassie, Come Home
Halo: two years getting home / Illustration by Rosemary Coates
From The Hound Intelligence Series, published by Hounds Magazine (UK), edited by Deirdre Hanna, illustrated by Rosemary Coates. Click to purchase the 333-page collection.
Red Rock Halo by Lynn Lloyd, MFH
Years ago, in the mid-1980s, the Red Rock Hounds (NV) hunted an area in Northern California called Spencerville. The drive from Reno takes about four hours and crosses a mountain pass exceeding fourteen thousand feet at the summit. Here in Reno, we are about 5,500 feet above sea level, so the climb is substantial, and the range is vast. It is the same Sierra-Nevada range and the same pass (now Interstate 80) where the doomed Donner Party met their fate over the winter of 1846/1847 when they became snowbound migrating westward.
Milestones for 2 Young Jump Jocks at Piedmont
Lady Rider Timber: Cocodimama (Chloe Hannum up) battles down the stretch to hold his slim lead over Bridge Builder (left) ridden by Erin Swope. Aggressive (center, rear) finishes third under Skylar McKenna. / Douglas Lees photo
The Piedmont Point-to-Point Races at the Salem course in Upperville, Virginia, was the venue for Chloe Hannum and Teddy Davies to notched their first career wins racing horses over fences. The date was March 20, 2021.
Hannum won two races this day—Lady Rider Timber and Maiden Flat. Davies won the Amateur and Novice Rider Timber for his milestone.
The Vixen’s Meet: A Fund Raiser for Our Times
Orange County Hounds Field Master John Coles, MFH, leads a field of 60 visiting foxhunting ladies on the Vixen's Meet . / Joanne Maisano photo
When the COVID pandemic and executive orders from the Governor of Virginia forced cancellation of Orange County Hounds’ primary annual fund raising event—the barn party held at Board President Jaqueline Mars’ legendary home—OCH Board leaders Jane Bishop and Emily Hannum put their heads together and scheduled instead a Vixen’s Meet. Given the strong showing October 15, 2020 at Stonehedge in The Plains, Virginia, the ladies like it.
Ladies from a dozen hunts turned out in support of Orange County: Belle Meade Hunt (GA), Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds (PA), Cloudline Hounds (TX), and De La Brooke Foxhounds (MD). From Virginia were ladies of the Blue Ridge Hunt, Casanova Hunt, Loudoun Fairfax Hunt, Middleburg Hunt, Piedmont Fox Hounds, Rappahannock Hunt, and Snickersville Hounds.
Cheshire Huntsman Is a Good Neighbor
Huntsman Ivan Dowling is an asset to his community. Public goodwill, we believe, is the key to the future of foxhunting.
Cheshire huntsman Ivan Dowling, hounds, and field on their way to the next draw / Jim Graham photo
Foxhunting Life has argued in past articles that the future of foxhunting depends simply on telling the truth about our sport and being good neighbors in our communities. Take Irish-born Ivan Dowling for example.
A Thanksgiving Day Hunt with the Brandywine
Stuart Rose: foxhunter, race rider, publisher, author
This tale of a Thanksgiving hunt in Pennsylvania around the middle of the twentieth century is from Stuart Rose’s excellent book, There’s a Fox in the Spinney: Memories of Fox-hunting, Racing and Publishing (Doubleday, 1967).
Rose’s father intended to send his son to Harvard, but upon completing secondary school the young man joined the U.S. Calvary instead, by lying about his age. He wanted to ride horses.
Louis “Paddy” Neilson, MFH
Paddy Neilson, MFH, whipping-in at Cheshire / Jim Graham photoLegendary horseman Louis “Paddy” Neilson III, MFH, died Thursday, September 5, 2019 at the age of seventy-seven. He was the husband of Toinette Phillips Neilson, with whom he shared thirty-one years of marriage.
Paddy served as Master, alongside his daughter, Sanna, of Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds (PA) and was a winning race rider and trainer. He hunted with Cheshire since childhood and served as full-time honorary whipper-in for the last thirteen years of his life, jumping his last fence in the line of duty just a couple of weeks before his death.
A Brush With a Fox
Illustration by Doug Pifer
The late Matthew Mackay-Smith—internationally renowned veterinarian, editor of EQUUS magazine, foxhunter, and elite endurance rider—began foxhunting at the age of eight behind his late father, Alexander Mackay-Smith (ex-MFH, author, and longtime editor of The Chronicle of the Horse). Matthew left a treasure trove of hunt reports and countryside observations which, thanks to the permission of Matthew’s wife, Winkie, FHL will publish from time to time.
In my veterinary rounds in the country of Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds (PA), I often took a shortcut by using West Road, a primitive gravel lane with grass between the tire tracks. There, on a blustery March afternoon, I spied a feminine fox upwind of me, nonchalantly toting half a rabbit. In the gloaming, she was heading toward her den with the family supper. I stopped. She stopped, too, but oblivious of me. She was maybe fifty feet away.
On Opening (and Keeping) Foxhunting Country
The season has started and so far so good. Young hounds are entering well and have been given the space and time to work things out. But every season brings headaches the Masters can well do without.
Most field members are blissfully unaware of the amount of year-round planning that goes into every day’s hunting. During the spring and summer Masters need to go and visit their landowners and make sure they are welcome for the following season. Secondly, they need to look further afield to increase their hunting country. Why? Because there are too many ways good country can be lost. Here’s one that I experienced.