Three Tries, the Charm, for Field Hunter Champion
John Wittenborn and Soccer, representing the Smithtown Hunt (NY), win 2018 Theodora Randolph Field Hunter Championship in Virginia.
John Wittenborn and his fourteen-year-old Clydesdale-Thoroughbred cross, Soccer, returned home to Long Island and the Smithtown Hunt with the Championship Trophy and ribbon from the Theodora Randolph 2018 Field Hunter Championship in Virginia. Three tries was the charm for Wittenborn and Soccer. Last year the pair made a good showing, placing third.
It was the first team from a northern hunt to have won the coveted prize in thirty-five years of competitions. And it was fitting; Mrs. Randolph was a northerner, though from Boston’s North Shore.
Foxhunting Art Show and Sale To Brighten Morven Park
Larry Wheeler, 16 x 20, oil on canvas, “Catch,” Deep Run Hunt Here’s a final reminder, latest information, and sneak-preview of the Art Show at Morven Park to be presented by the Museum of Hounds and Hunting over the Virginia Foxhound Show weekend. The Opening at 4 PM and the Reception at 5 PM on Saturday, May 26, 2018, the day before the hound show, will be for Museum members, their guests, and the artists. The show opens to the public on Sunday morning, the day of the hound show, and the works will remain on display until June 25th.
Fifty-six Juniors Vie for JNAFH Championships at Belle Meade
Fifty-six junior finalists line up for their commemorative photo at Foxboro, home of Belle Meade Master and host Epp Wilson. / Eric Bowles photo
Junior foxhunters, their horses, parents, and friends traveled from thirteen states to Thomson, Georgia, where the Belle Meade Hunt hosted the finals of the fifteenth annual Junior North American Field Hunter Championships on November 11-13, 2017.
Throughout the course of the informal season, hunts around the country held qualifying meets from which the young finalists were chosen by mounted judges. Of the 216 juniors who qualified to compete in the finals, fifty-six young riders from eighteen North American hunts—more than twenty-five percent of those qualified—traveled to Belle Mead to hunt, compete, see old friends, and make a pile of new friends. And did they have a wonderful time! It was truly a pleasure to see.
Persistence Pays Off for Midland Striker at Bryn Mawr
Bryn Mawr Grand Champion Midland Striker 2015 (Midland Rocket 2011 ex Staffordshire-Mooreland Stunning 2011) / Karen Kandra Wenzel photo
Midland Striker 2015 was judged Grand Champion Foxhound at the 2017 Bryn Mawr Hound Show on Saturday, June 3, 2017.
Bryn Mawr is the one that got away from Striker last year. In 2016, this graceful moving, handsome Crossbred dog hound had a big year in the ring. He was judged Grand Champion at the Virginia Foxhound Show and at the Southern Hound Show. But the hat trick at Bryn Mawr wasn’t to be his. Now, Striker can add the Bryn Mawr notch to his collar.
Grand Championship at Virginia Ends 15-Year Drought for Orange County
Orange County Kermit 2015, shown by huntsman Reg Spreadborough, is Grand Champion at Virginia Foxhound Show. / Liz Callar photo
The Grand Championship class for the coveted William W. Brainard, Jr. Perpetual Cup at the Virginia Foxhound Show finally got underway at around six p.m. It’s always an exciting class, despite the late hour on a day, May 28, 2017, that started at 9:00 a.m. for five hundred hounds and participants representing seventy hunts. Thunderstorms had struck towns all over Virginia from noontime on, but hardly a raindrop fell in Leesburg.
Four magnificent foxhounds walked out with their handlers: English, American, Crossbred, and Penn-Marydel Champions. Now they would vie for the Grand Championship of Show. Each of the four, after vanquishing all other hounds through the long day of winnowing, were obviously superb representatives of their respective breeds. In this observers view, absent any serious and previously undetected flaws in conformation, it would be a test of movement—that free-flowing, ground-covering, shock-absorbing, athletic, and energetic stride that tells the judge, “I can keep doing this day after day, year after year.”
Melvin Poe Speaks
The late Melvin Poe remains a legendary American huntsman, and undoubtedly will for all time. From his earliest days, Melvin absorbed the ways of the forest and the habits of every wild creature.
From a new book, Foxhunters Speak (The Derrydale Press, 2017), here is one of fifty interviews conducted by an accomplished author highly experienced in the art of the interview. Mary Kalergis has traveled the country to learn how foxhunters acquired their passion. For books inscribed by the author, purchase directly.
Mary Kalergis photo
I was born in 1920, five miles down the road from where I live now in Hume, Virginia. There were ten of us in the family—five girls and five boys. My dad worked for a dollar a day. He had hounds when I was a little boy, and as soon as I got big enough to hunt, that was all I wanted to do. I loved to hunt skunks and possum at night when I was a schoolboy. We had no coons in those days. No beavers either. Those skins would have been worth a lot more than skunk or possum.
Peter Walsh—Everything Changed; Nothing Changed
Peter Walsh (number 7) in the Swan Lakes Stakes, 1993 Virginia Gold Cup Races. Lonesome Glory (white blaze, Blythe Miller up) went on to win the race and capture his second Eclipse award that year. / Douglas Lees photo
In 2014, Peter Walsh, ex-steeplechase jock, served as Field Master and hunted with both the Piedmont Fox Hounds and the Orange County Hounds, neighboring packs in Virginia. He was hunting five days a week and working as Farm Manager for Milton Sender, a field member of both packs. In the off-season, he played golf avidly.
Today, Peter Walsh is still hunting with both packs, still managing the farm, and still playing golf avidly. It would almost seem as if nothing had changed…except that between then and now, Peter lost his right arm.
2017 Unveiled!
Here’s our 2017 Foxhunting Life Calendar, ready to ship on September 1 and featuring all new photos. We’ve been publishing our appointments calendar since 1998, and our annual collection of foxhunting images continues to represent the finest examples of the sporting photographer’s art. Douglas Lees shot the cover photograph of huntsman Reg Spreadborough flying a […]
Spencer Allen Is the New Huntsman at Live Oak
Huntsman Spencer Allen / Douglas Lees photo
Huntsman Spencer Allen has gone through a rocky time in the past couple of years. He’s been forced to consider other options for his future, but he knows in his heart what he loves the most—working with and hunting foxhounds. And this is why he’s so happy to be in Monticello, Florida at Marty and Daphne Wood’s unparalleled establishment as huntsman for the Live Oak Hounds.
After serving six years in the Marine Corps, including a tour in Iraq, Allen began as an amateur whipper-in at the Bull Run Hunt (VA). Two seasons later he turned professional and moved to the Piedmont Fox Hounds (VA), serving four seasons as first whipper-in to huntsman Richard Roberts. Allen found himself working with a talented and attractive whipper-in, Rachel Gray, who also happened to be the daughter of the previous huntsman, Butch Gray. Spencer and Rachel were married, and in 2010 Spencer was named huntsman at Piedmont. He hunted the Piedmont hounds for five seasons, showing excellent sport, but trouble followed.
Bill Backer (1926–2016): “The Real Thing”
Bill Backer, singing one of his foxhunting ditties while accompanying himself at the keyboard, at the National Sporting Library & Museum. / Douglas Lees photoWilliam M. Backer, a foxhunting man who put phrases and tunes on the lips of people in every corner of the globe, died in Warrenton, Virginia on Friday, May 13, 2016, after a short illness.
A member of the Advertising Hall of Fame, Bill Backer created iconic advertising campaigns such as the 1971 Coca Cola commercial featuring his jingle, “I’d like to Teach the World to Sing.” Click for a televised clip of Bill being interviewed for and playing what is arguably the most famous commercial of all time.
Bill added “Miller Time” to the language of those who needed a substitute for “cocktail hour” and created the long-running television argument for Miller Lite: “Tastes Great; Less Filling,” one of the best-liked campaigns in the history of advertising. For Campbell Soup, he persuaded customers that “Soup is good food.”
Bill was a longtime member of the Orange County Hunt (VA) and served on the Board of Stewards for fifty years, part of that time as President. At his Smitten Farm in The Plains, Virginia he bred and raised racehorses and was an active member of the Jockey Club and the Virginia Thoroughbred Association.