surrey union foxhounds
Matthew Cook Is New Farmington Huntsman
“My first knowledge of foxes began with hating them,” said Matthew Cook with a chuckle. "Working as a gamekeeper they were a pest.” / Cathy Summers photo“New” is hardly the word to use when writing about the sport of foxhunting in general, and even harder to use with a club as dedicated to tradition as central Virginia’s Farmington Hunt Club. Change is always a challenge! But our new huntsman Matthew Cook has been changing things all around since he arrived in Free Union three years ago—raising a new level of hunting sport with a growing list of firsts.
Cook entered Farmington hounds in the Virginia Hound Show in May, 2014 for the first time; he took a carefully picked few hounds to meet prospective foxhunting juniors at the local 4H club last spring, and he accompanied his daughter Pippa along with a group of Farmington juniors to compete for the first time ever at the finals of the Junior North American Field hunting championship in Lexington, Kentucky just last October. Most recently, he prepared Farmington hounds to compete in a foxhound performance trial at the Belle Meade Hunt in Thomson, Georgia in January 2017.
Social Media Brings Out New Foxhunters in England
Many hunts in England that have used FaceBook to recruit first-time foxhunters have reported a doubling of interest compared to last year, according to a report in The Guardian by Fiona Harvey. More than one hundred people showed up for opening meet with the Surrey Union Foxhounds, about seventy-five percent of whom were newcomers according to a spokeswoman for the hunt. “It’s been unbelievably successful,” she said. “We had notices locally, but mostly it was through social media.” Mark Ferguson of the Woodland Pytchley in Northamptonshire said, “Facebook has made a huge difference. It is so much easier, we can get to more and more people.” Youngsters seem to be making up a large portion of the new foxhunters. The Countryside Alliance estimates that at least 45,000 people will take to the field for opening meets this season, up about twenty-five percent from the numbers prior to enactment of the 2004 Hunting Act ban. While there has been talk about the possibility of relaxing some of the restrictions under the Hunting Act, no move has yet been made in Parliament by Prime Minister David Cameron to bring the suggested changes to a vote. Posted November 22, 2013
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