Orange County Hounds Point-to-Point
Open Hurdle winner Old Timer and Chris Read (right) lead Robert Walsh on Better Than Ever.The Orange County Hounds Point-to-Point Races were held at Locust Hill Farm in Middleburg, Virginia on Sunday, April 1, 2012. Trainer Neil Morris made the most of his home turf by saddling both the win and place horses in the Open Hurdle Race. Kinross Farm’s Old Timer ridden by Chris Read jumped to the lead at the last fence and beat second-place finisher Humdinger to the wire by two lengths.
Huntsman Richard Roberts Weds Colleen Hayduk in Hawaii
Huntsman Richard Roberts and trainer Colleen Hayduk were married on April 14 in Hawaii. The pair will honeymoon there before Richard takes up his position as the new huntsman at the Deep Run Hunt near Richmond, Virginia. Richard is former huntsman of the Piedmont Fox Hounds where he showed brilliant sport during his six-year tenure […]
Farmington Hunt and J.B. Birdsall Honored for Conservation Success
J.B. Birdsall (holding trophy) is flanked by the Farmington Masters (l-r) Carol Easter, Pat Butterfield, and Joy Crompton. Cheryl Microutsicos photo
The Farmington Hunt and J.B. Birdsall received the 2011 Hunting Habitat Conservation Award at the MFHA Annual Meeting in New York City on Friday January 28.
Each year with each recipient of this award we witness yet another testament to the role of foxhunting in the preservation of open space. Arguably no other sporting culture has done as much to preserve land and natural habitat.
But, it often takes a leader, an individual driving force, to establish a culture of conservation within an organization. J.B. Birdsall—longtime foxhunter, landowner, and hunt member—provided that passion, commitment, and leadership for the Farmington Hunt to become a force for open space conservation in their hunting country.
Sportsman/Publisher Arthur “Nick” Arundel Dies
Arthur “Nck” Arundel at the Gold Cup Races, Great Meadow, 2007 Douglas Lees photo
Foxhunter, visionary, and publisher Arthur “Nick” Arundel died in his sleep at home on Tuesday, February 8, one day shy of being named Outstanding Virginian of 2011 by the Virginia General Assembly. He was eighty-three.
Mr. Arundel was publisher of the Times Community Newspapers covering four counties in Northern Virginia, including Loudoun and Fauquier.
His father was a foxhunter and once served as head of the National Steeplechase and Hunt Association. His mother was an ardent conservationist. Mr. Arundel merged the influence of both parents into his life.
Juniors Meet in Pennsylvania for 2010 Junior North American Field Hunter Championships
Lauren Giannini photo
For their first seven years, the Junior North American Field Hunter Championships took place in Virginia, mostly at Old Whitewood, part of Orange County’s country in The Plains. However, after Alex Matz won the First Flight (12-and-Under) championship in 2009, the notion of staging the next finals in Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire country came to fruition. Blue Ridge Hunt’s David Pawlak partnered with the indubitable Paris to ace the individual test in the First Flight and claim their second consecutive 13-18 championship. Makayla Benjamin (Loudoun West) and Butterfly Painting went home with the reserve tri-color.
Juniors Meet in Pennsylvania for 2010 Junior North American Field Hunter Championships
Lauren Giannini photo
For their first seven years, the Junior North American Field Hunter Championships took place in Virginia, mostly at Old Whitewood, part of Orange County’s country in The Plains. However, after Alex Matz won the First Flight (12-and-Under) championship in 2009, the notion of staging the next finals in Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire country came to fruition. Blue Ridge Hunt’s David Pawlak partnered with the indubitable Paris to ace the individual test in the First Flight and claim their second consecutive 13-18 championship. Makayla Benjamin (Loudoun West) and Butterfly Painting went home with the reserve tri-color.
Melvin at Ninety
Douglas Lees photo
Hounds were screaming, and the huntsman was cooking. A cattle guard loomed ahead—a coop to the left and a gate to the right. The huntsman veered left.
“Melvin,” someone yelled, “the gate’s on the right!”
“Melvin just kept kicking on, right over the coop,” recalled Joe Conner, shaking his head and grinning in wonder.
Conner, who has whipped-in to Melvin for years at Bath County (VA), didn’t resurrect that story out of a distant past. It had happened only weeks before Melvin Poe’s ninetieth birthday celebration.
A month or so earlier, I had recognized the same notes of awe and wonder as I stood chatting with Brian Smith, my farrier, about Melvin’s upcoming ninetieth birthday.
Leica: Horse of a Lifetime
Leica was a remarkable horse whose career took her from incorrigible youngster with a vicious buck to an impressive third-place finish at age twenty-four in the grueling MFHA Centennial Field Hunter Championship. She was still hunting and showing at age twenty-seven, when she had to be humanely euthanized as the result of a pasture injury.
With her bloodlines and dazzling good looks, Leica was primed to be an outstanding dressage horse. An imported bay with touches of white, she was registered Hanoverian (by Lindberg, out of St. Pr. Kari) who was also entered in the main stud book of the RPSI (Rheinland Pfalz Saar International) and Holsteiner registries.
But after abuse from trainers who pushed her too far too fast, Leica had other ideas, says owner Julie Whitlock McKee of Grantville, Georgia. McKee acquired the hard-headed mare at age four after the trainers gave up on her. The pair did not get off to an auspicious start, with Leica rearing the first time McKee threw a leg over her. Rearing and bucking would become a regular occurrence.
New Zealand Huntsman Is Worthy Successor to David Wendler at West Hills
California’s West Hills foxhounds—organized sixty-three years ago by song-and-dance man Dan Dailey and boasting the late President Ronald Reagan as a founding member—were compelled to learn a new vocabulary disguised in a down under accent last season.
For the prior fifty-five years David Wendler, one of the most experienced huntsman ever to carry the horn, had led the West Hills Hounds over difficult and dry terrain, hunting a pack of independent-minded American hounds primarily of the July strain (with some Orange County red ring neck blood). When it came time for Wendler to retire, West Hills was in a quandary. How to keep up the high level of sport in what some believe to be the most demanding hunt country in North America?
Who Are those Red Ring-Necks?
Anytime I see Melvin Poe, I always make a point to speak to him and show him his Florida strain of the Orange County red ring-neck foxhounds. He’s always so approachable and friendly and, of course, always interested in the red rings. In fact, last year at the Virginia Foxhound Show, I nearly missed one of our classes because I was talking to him just outside the ring. Luckily, Mac came running over and told me to get in there!
Our association with Orange County began in 1996, during our first season, when Kerry Glass, former Master and huntsman of the Norfolk Hunt (MA), contacted Melvin and arranged for us the draft of Orange County Boots, Bundles, and Britches. After our very first breeding to Boots, we instantly shifted our previously tri-color pack to red. Whenever we come to Virginia, we visit the Orange County kennels. It’s a ritual.