The Bath County Hounds are a private pack, founded in 1992, after Melvin Poe’s retirement as huntsman of Orange County, by George L. Ohrstrom to hunt his 3000-acre Fassifern Farm at Warm Springs, Bath County, Virginia.

The rolling countryside of the foothills of the Blue Ridge near Poe’s home in Fauquier County, where the Bath County Hounds hunt in the intervals between trips to Warm Springs, was hunted in the decades before WWII by the Cobbler Hunt, whose master in the early 1930s was (then) Major George S. Patton, Jr.
——————————
Who wouldn’t want to look like that and ride like that at 89?

A potential world record 41 lb, 7 1/4 oz. (19.1 k.), 43.75” (1.11 meter) Brown Trout (currently Salmo trutta, formerly Salmo fario) was caught on Wednesday in Michigan’s Manistee River.

Thomas Healy of Rockford, Michigan was fishing a crankbait (a plug with a lip causing it to dive when retrieved, “cranked,” i.e reeled in) using a spincasting rod and reel.

The previous record Brown Trout weighed 40 lb. 4 oz (18.26 k.) and was caught in 1992 on the Little Red River in Arkansas by Howard Collins.

Healy was being guided by Tim Roller of Ultimate Outfiteers.

The fish was weighed and measured by two Michigan state biologists.

Ludington Daily News

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

Mr. Healy holding the gigantic trout
—————————————————————-

Thanks to commenter Amy of Riverside Charters for correcting the top photo ID.

I was away from the keyboard yesterday, driving nearly 200 miles each way to pick up a seven-week-old puppy.

Last month, the renowned Saluki authority Gail Goodman sent me an email telling me that a retired Russian zoologist (living very near me—only about 200 miles away!) had just bred a litter of the rare Kazakh Tazys, which the serious connoisseurs of aboriginal coursing dogs, people like Gail herself and Steve Bodio, particularly admire for their hunting instinct and drive.

The fact that I have no experience in coursing and live in the East where we lack the kind of open spaces suitable for sighthounds easily found in New Mexico did not deter my friends from getting behind the idea that I needed to own one of these.

Tazy (or Tazi) is just another Asian term for the breed originally referred to in the West as the Persian Greyhound, but these days known as the Saluki (or Saluqi).

Naturally, I had only to look at puppy photos in order to succumb and place a deposit on one of these.

Yesterday, the fatal day arrived. Karen insisted that we go and pick up our Tazy immediately upon the breeder announcing that he was ready to leave his mother.

We wound up taking the same fawn-colored male with the black mask (with a little white on the nose) that originally made an impression on us in the puppy photos. A brother with a darker color struck me as a possible candidate, too, but the darker puppy struggled and was unhappy when picked up. Our original choice was quite content to be handled, and actually never even whined or cried all the way back.

Our Basset Bleu de Gascogne arrived already named Cadet, so we decided to stick with the military theme. Since Tazys are slender and fast running dogs of Asian origin, we decided his name ought to describe him as a type of light cavalry of Asian origin, so we are going to name the puppy Uhlan.

Tired from a long drive

PSPCA cites Basset breeder for lack of vet care, sanitation

A Philadelphia woman, whose illegal kennel was the subject of a raid last month, has been charged with failing to provide vet care and for poor sanitation.

Wendy Willard, owner of Murder Hollow Bassets in Roxborough, was issued 22 citations during a follow up inspection on Friday, according to the Pennsylvania SPCA.

Willard, who competed her hounds at prestigious sporting dog events around Philadelphia and in Virginia’s fox hunting region, surrendered 11 dogs to humane officers on July 27. The officers found filthy kennel conditions and dogs covered in feces and infested with parasites, the PSPCA said. The agency removed the animals because there were 23 dogs on the property, 11 more than are allowed under the city’s animal ordinance.

Willard was given two weeks to make improvements and get vet care for the remaining animals, but the PSPCA said in press release that when the officers returned last week “overall living conditions remained poor.”

Willard was issued 11 citations for unsanitary conditions, 11 citations for lack of veterinary care and two tickets for barking. Graphic photos of the dogs detailing their condition and their housing have been turned over to the district attorney’s office. Efforts to reach Willard were unsuccessful.

Agents first went to the property on July 21 in response to neighbor complaints about noise and order. When they found no one at home they left a card telling the owner to contact them. When Willard failed to contact them, they returned on July 27 to inspect the property. Willard refused and threw stones at the officers’ vehicles as they left, said George Bengal, the PSPCA director of law enforcement. They returned later that day with a warrant to search the property.

The dogs were turned over to Basset hound rescue groups, the PSPCA said.

It is perfectly obvious that they lied previously in promising that hounds surrendered to them could be reclaimed.

They have lied repeatedly about the bassets being moved from their holding center and delivered to a basset rescue organization.

They have misused their authority to threaten, harass, and opportunistically level charges against Ms. Willard. Either those kennels were unsanitary and the hounds lacking veterinary care, or they were not. When the PSPCA is applying the law in Philadelphia, every animal owner is in the position of the cafe owner being shaken down by the crooked cop. The cop looks around and spies a speck of dust, bam! he writes a health code violation. The cop throws a plate on the floor and smashes it, bam! he writes a safety violation.

It is also obvious that if Mrs. Parks had never phoned PSPCA, if people on the Internet had never reported what happened on July 27th, and Ms. Willard surrendered 11 dogs to be sold for $200 apiece and neutered most of the rest (in compliance with international Animal Rights philosophy, which desires to eliminate pet reproduction as a step toward eliminating pet ownership) and kept silent, none of those 22 violations would ever have existed. Nor would Ms. Willard’s remaining bassets have been ticketed for barking at PSPCA intruders.

The PSPCA arrives in a massive raid expecting to find what?... an illegal puppy mill? A ring of illegal immigrant bassets importing cocaine in their collars? a group of fanatical Islamist basset hounds plotting terrorist acts?

Whatever it was, they don’t find it. But the PSPCA is never wrong. They do find a grievous breach of public order actively underway.

A middle-aged, retired school teacher residing at a home located on a 340-acre nature center, the largest privately-owned tract of land within the city limits of Philadelphia, is found to be housing 11 basset hounds possibly in excess of the residential dwelling limit prescribed in the Philadelphia Code Animal section § 10-103(8).

Whether, in fact, a kennel attached to a barn on the property is “a residential dwelling unit” is open to question and interpretation.

There is also some question about whether the City of Philadelphia by accepting fees and licensing Ms. Willard’s basset hounds for all those years, since 1986 when the 12 animal limit was imposed, and in which same year Ms. Willard founded the Murder Hill Bassets, without demurral over the number of licenses it was issuing, had not implicitly authorized her possession of those hounds.

But, let’s leave all that aside. Suppose Ms. Willard was guilty, caught red-handed in possession of eleven more basset hounds than the Phildelphia Code permits? What does the Law say?

It says § 10-105(8a):

The penalty for the first violation of any provision of this Section shall be a minimum fine of $100.

As I read over the law, I see nothing about confiscation. I see nothing in this provision specifying forfeiture of animals as a penalty for this kind of violation.

As the new PSPCA release demonstrates quite vividly, Wendy Willard is not in trouble for the basically trivial offense of (perhaps) violating a number of hounds limit. She is in trouble for failing to adequately and unconditionally surrender and grovel before the authority of the thugs and bozos of the PSPCA.

The scope of the tyranny we’re looking at here can be seen in reference to the reality of the situation. Wendy Willard actually did surrender completely. She signed the papers they intimidated her into signing (giving away 11 hounds). She agreed to neuter all but 4 of her carefully-bred, twenty-year-old pack. She kept silence.

What got Wendy into more trouble, and what is causing her bassets to be kept locked in tiny cages, is PSPCA retaliation for that anonymous person posting the original story of the raid on the Internet, and other people, Betsy Parks, me, all the people discussing this on bulletin boards, email lists, and blogs. We questioned PSPCA behavior and authority. We asked about those basset hounds, and here is the result.

PSPCA news release, August 10, 2009, Murder Hollow Basset Hound Update:

On Friday, August 7, 2009, Humane Law Enforcement officers from the Pennsylvania SPCA conducted a pre-arranged follow-up inspection of Murder Hollow, the location of an illegal basset hound kennel in the Roxborough section of Philadelphia, PA. The owner had previously surrendered 11 dogs during the officers’ visit on Monday, July 27, 2009, due to unsanitary conditions, lack of veterinary care and more dogs than allowed by law.

Despite the time allotted to the owner to make improvements, overall living conditions remained poor at the second inspection, resulting in 11 citations for unsanitary conditions, 11 citations for lack of veterinary care and two tickets for barking. Graphic photos of the dogs detailing their condition and their housing have been turned over to the district attorney’s office.

We appreciate the continued outpouring of support for these dogs from the Bassett community.

What is the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals?

Like you, yesterday I assumed that the PSPCA was a private humanitarian organization. I kept wondering why its representatives kept talking like they were law enforcement officers. How does a private humanitarian society, funded by donations from foundations and animal lovers, get to invade homes, seize pets, and ignore requests for explanations and information from the public?

Well, it’s like this… the PSPCA is not only funded by dollars provided by private cat-and-dog lovers. It is also a business. The PSPCA is really in essence an animal prison and execution facility, which manages to help write laws in its own favor, while successfully posing as a charity.

PSPCA contracts its services, consisting of locking pets in cages (or chaining them to cages when the cages are full, as is not infrequently the case) in loud, smelly rooms, then euthanizing many of them, to the city of Philadelphia.

Philly.com:

Pennsylvania requires shelters to hold stray dogs for 48 hours before euthanasia, to allow time for owners to find them. ACCT (the Animal Care and Control Team division of PSPCA - jdz) recently extended the “hold” time from 48 to 72 hours. On the surface, this sounds like a good thing. But it has bad consequences. It means animals cannot be adopted out or released to rescue groups for an extra day, which ties up cage space. Insiders told of dogs tethered to the outside of cages, and cats stacked up in carriers.

If all cage space is filled with stray “holds” and an owner surrenders an animal, that animal will be put to death immediately because there is no mandatory “hold” on surrendered pets. (The Murder Hollow Bassets were surrendered just that way. Are they really still alive? Who knows? -jdz) Health got complaints that that was happening to these adoptable pets – just as in 2004, when I first wrote about tragic PACCA practices. Who turned the clock back to a dark past?

PSPCA competed successfully earlier this year against a rival similar organization for the city animal control contract, but then experienced a lot of internal turmoil.

ACCT, a division of PSPCA, took over the city animal-control contract Jan. 1. Chaos ensued a mere six weeks later, when PSPCA CEO Howard Nelson, who had sought the contract, quit in a huff. Board member Beth Ann White, a former banking executive with no kennel experience, was thrust into the breach, with almost predictable results.

I’m glad that the Health Department, which oversees the contract, responded quickly to complaints. I’m less glad that Melhem says that he is again satisfied by reassurances. What did Ronald Reagan say – trust, but verify?

With almost 3 million taxpayer dollars funding the contract, the public has a right to expect better – not worse – performance from PSPCA than it got from the Philadelphia Animal Care and Control Association, from which it wrested the contract.

Stu Bykovsky:

Cosby is the third PSPCA CEO in four months, following Howard Nelson, who fled under fire in February, and interim CEO Beth Anne White, who spent three months in the free-fire zone battling accusations of fudged “save” rates and botched medical protocols that resulted in vast numbers of sick dogs and cats.

—————————————————————————
Is PSPCA an honorable steward of animals? Can its allegations about unsanitary kennels be relied upon?

Or does PSPCA have a proven record of lying and a shamefully deficient animal care record of its own?

The same way the PSPCA would not answer questions about the fate or whereabouts of the Murder Hollow Bassets yesterday, the PSPCA has used a closed database to conceal the numbers and percentages of animals euthanized.

Philadelphia Weekly reported in May:

The PSCPA runs two shelters within a couple of miles of one another. The larger shelter, called ACCT (Animal Care and Control Team) on Hunting Park Ave. in North Philadelphia, is where roughly 31,000 homeless animals funnel into after being saved from the streets or given up by their owners. The animals are processed at Hunting Park, then either pulled by rescue partners, euthanized or sent to the second shelter, on Erie Ave., where PSCPA’s statistics had categorized such animals as “adopted.”

The ACCT database is “open” to the Health Department, which oversees the contract, while Erie’s database remains closed. As PW recently reported [The (Scary) Truth about Cats and Dogs, April 21], critics were concerned that not all of the animals shipped from Hunting Park to Erie were actually being adopted. In fact, they worried that some animals were being euthanized at Erie and not being properly accounted for in the PSCPA’s official save rates.

They were right.

PSPCA board members say they are now working to calculate “more accurate” numbers and will adjust January and February’s statistics accordingly. Between January and February, 786 animals were shipped to Erie and counted as “adopted” and save rates—72.4 percent for January and 80.9 percent for February—were admirable, especially for an organization just transitioning into the municipal animal-control role. PSPCA was also besieged by problems such as CEO Howard Nelson’s abrupt resignation six weeks into the six-month animal-control contract—a contract the organization had feverishly pursued.

March’s statistics, published after PW’s story ran, were presented online with a new section called “Outcomes of PSPCA Transfers,” which itemizes what the PSCPA board says is the true outcome of those animals, though they do not admit that prior stats had been favorably skewed intentionally.

“The numbers were not broken out in that way [in January and February] because that’s not what the city had first requested,” said Beth Ann White in a recent interview at Hunting Park Ave. “Then we all decided to go to the new format to make it more transparent.”

The newly presented numbers assert that, counting euthanasia at Erie, March’s save rate is 62.3 percent and April’s—just published—is 59.6%.

White says there is a team currently working to “redress” January and February’s save rate statistics, and that the new numbers will be published online “soon.”

If January and February’s “Outcomes of PSPCA Transfers” follows March’s pattern, about 118—roughly 15 percent—of the 786 animals previously identified as “adopted” would have been euthanized at the Erie facility.

Yet with Erie’s database still closed, it’s unclear where these new numbers are coming from.

But not only cats and dogs being deliberately euthanized are dying at PSPCA shelters:

It’s been a bad year for the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals—but not as bad as for Philadelphia’s homeless animals.

After fighting tooth and nail for Philadelphia’s animal control contract, the PSPCA won a six-month contract that began January 1. Then, as controversy haunted the organization all over Pennsylvania, CEO Howard Nelson suddenly resigned and vanished into the ether, leaving the job in the hands of the part-time volunteer board. Then animals reportedly got so sick rescue partners began to refuse to accept more cats or dogs from the shelter.

PW reported on rescue organizations’ allegations of sick and dying animals, ongoing vaccination delays—and questioned the real outcome for cats and dogs shipped from the shelter on Hunting Park Avenue in North Philadelphia to one a couple miles away on Erie Avenue: Were all of those animals actually adopted? Or were some euthanized, then not calculated into the final save rate?

Barry Watson, a Philadelphia animal rescuer with experience dealing with PSPCA, also commented on the death rate last May.

The PSPCA has failed me miserably since January 1. Virtually every program that allowed me to pull high volumes of cats from Hunting Park is gone. Baby kittens have been dying by the dozens and virtually all adult pulls have come down with the calici virus or other serious upper URIs.

Going back over six years, to the day I pulled my first cat from Hunting Park, I have never experienced more widespread illness, infecting almost every cat pulled, than I’ve experienced in just the first four months of 2009. Had I experienced mortality rates like this in 2003, I would not have returned in 2004. It is important to point out that the ACCT Lifesaving Staff is fully aware of these problems and has made every effort to implement effective changes, but kittens continue to die and adults get terribly sick.

Tara Murtha reports:

(I)nsiders say, shelter conditions have gotten so bad that animals need to be saved from the very place they go for protection.

Since the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (PSPCA) reassumed Philadelphia’s animal control contract in January, reports of intake backlog, overcrowding, fuzzy numbers and infectious disease outbreaks have oozed out of the shelter in a steady stream.

Insiders allege that shelter conditions and protocol are crumbling. Rescue workers (who regularly pull animals out of the shelter and place them in homes) and volunteers say they’ve never seen so many sick animals come out of the Hunting Park shelter. One foster parent with more than 20 years experience says that in the last few months, all 18 of the kittens she rescued from ACCT have died.

“They might seem fine the day you pull them, but within two weeks, they’re gone,” she says. “My backyard is like a graveyard.”

So, tell me, Mr. Bengal, how clean are your kennels?

Unlike the Inquirer, the Daily News actually talked to Wendy Willard and quoted NYM.

(H)unting rabbits, in special dress, following a pack of howling basset hounds, isn’t exactly a pastime of the masses.

It has, however, stirred controversy on the Web after a recent raid on the quarters of Murder Hill Bassets in Roxborough, home to nearly two dozen bassets used in foot pursuit of cottontail rabbits on privately owned land.

The Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said on its Web site yesterday that late last month its agents visited the property on Hagys Mill Road where Wendy Willard lived with 23 bassets.

A PSPCA agent said they went in response to noise and odor complaints, and obtained warrants when they couldn’t get in.

Willard surrendered 11 of the dogs after the July 27 raid, said George Bengal, chief investigator of animal cruelty complaints for the PSPCA.

A long-standing Philadelphia statute forbids keeping more than 12 animals per household.

Although the PSPCA contended complainants drew them to the Hagys Mill property, critics charged that the animals were taken because many in the animal-rescue field frown on hunting.

Many basset clubs hunt rabbits, not to kill them but to test the dogs’ skills.

Willard didn’t want to talk about her troubles yesterday, but she did say that three of the animals surrendered actually belonged to a New York woman who has been unsuccessful in learning where the PSPCA placed them.

“They are my family,” a distraught Willard said of her dogs.

Stung by criticism on the Internet of their July 27th raid on the kennels of Wendy Willard’s Murder Hollow Basset pack, the confiscation of eleven basset hounds, and PSPCA’s refusal for ten days to provide information on the hounds’ whereabouts or fate to concerned friends, the Animal Care and Control organization began yesterday to defend itself, first (yesterday afternoon, by some coincidence, not very long after my phone conversation with PR officer Gail Luciani) releasing a seemingly conciliatory statement suggesting that PSPCA was “working with the hounds’ owner” and even thanking (!) the Basset community.

Murder Hollow Basset Hound Update

In response to complaints, Pennsylvania SPCA officers visited the location of Murder Hollow Kennels and left requests to be contacted. There was no response to these requests.

On a follow-up visit by a Pennsylvania SPCA officer and representatives from the Pennsylvania Department of Dog Law six days later, the owner was present but refused entry. Both Dog Law representatives and Pennsylvania SPCA officers returned later that evening with warrants to enter the property.

The dogs were found to be in unsanitary conditions, and the number of dogs present exceeded the City of Philadelphia limit of 12 animals allowed on a property.

In lieu of charges, Pennsylvania SPCA agents worked with the owner to reduce the number of dogs on the premises and allowed her time to clean and make improvements to the area in which the dogs were housed.

The owner surrendered some of the dogs and is working to clean and improve the kennels prior to a follow-up inspection. The Pennsylvania SPCA is encouraged by her efforts in providing and maintaining a more sanitary setting as well as veterinary care for the dogs that remain.

The dogs are safe in foster care with an independent, partner organization.

We appreciate the outpouring of support for these dogs from the Bassett community.

Murder Hollow hounds last year. They’ve never looked covered with feces, or riddled with parasites, any time I saw them.

Most of us did not know then that, slightly earlier, PSPCA had planted a much more colorful story with a sympathetic reporter at the Inquirer, which appeared yesterday morning.

Philadelphia resident Wendy Willard ran in tony rabbit and fox hunting circles. Her pack, formed in 1986, was listed among a select handful from Virginia hunt country and elsewhere in the prestigious Chronicle of the Horse, the bible of the horse and hound crowd. The kennel’s Bassets won awards at the Bryn Mawr Hound Show.

Last week the Pennsylvania SPCA raided her farmhouse in the Schuylkill Valley Nature Preserve and found 23 dogs covered in feces and riddled with parasites, said George Bengal, the PSPCA’s director of law enforcement.

“The kennel was a mess,” he said.

Humane agents first went to the house on July 21 in response to neighbor complaints about noise and odor, said Bengal. Finding no one home, they left cards asking the property owner to contact them. When no one responded, an agent and two state dog wardens returned on July 27. Willard refused them entry and as they left the property she threw stones at the officers’ vehicles, said Bengal.

They returned later that day with a search warrant and found dogs living in what Bengal described as unsanitary conditions and in need of veterinary care. Willard voluntarily surrendered 11 dogs and agreed to comply with certain conditions for keeping the rest, including inspections, he said.

“We could have charged her, but we didn’t yet,” said Bengal. “We could have seized the dogs, but she agreed to get medical care for the remaining dogs and spay or neuter eight of the 12 dogs” – the limit allowed under the city’s decades old animal ordinance.

Since there were fewer than 26 dogs on the property (the number required for a state kennel license) there were no citations issued by the state, said Chris Ryder, spokesman for the Department of Agriculture.

The dogs that were removed were placed with Basset hound rescue groups, the PSPCA said.

The PSPCA’s executive director Sue Cosby said they did not initially release any information about the incident because they thought they could resolve the issue amicably with the owner.

“The officer heading the case really went out of her way to work with the owner in an effort to have the kennels cleaned up and the dogs cared for rather than file charges and take all of the dogs,’” said Cosby in an email.

So if you believe the PSPCA, this is one of those cases of a disturbed and arrogant society woman who belligerently defies law enforcement officers and throws rocks at them, while keeping a kennel full of neglected, filthy, and disease-ridden basset hounds, which hounds nevertheless, despite their pitiable condition, qualify for inclusion as a listed pack under the strict standards of the National Beagle Club, compete successfully at pack trials, and win prizes at the prestigious and highly competitive Bryn Mawr Hound Show.

Those of us familiar with basset packs have a couple of basic problems with the eccentric-woman-neglected-animals story line.

Although Wendy Willard as Master, is sole owner and supreme authority over the Murder Hollow Bassets, no basset pack operates single-handedly and in isolation. There is a staff, in this case of no less than ten Whippers-in: First Whipper-in: Lidie Peace. Hon. Whippers-in: Ginny Hofmann, Judy Hohmann, Pat West, Mary Bentley, Roy Feldman, Becky Forry, Philip Hofmann Sr., Trey Norris, Pat Renner.

The Murder Hollow pack has, listed publicly, all together, eleven active hunt staff members, all obviously drawn from the same “tony rabbit and fox hunting circles,” referred to ironically by the Inquirer.

Now while it is not difficult to believe that one single aging woman alone might possibly, because of circumstances of health, emotional stability, or even poverty, come to neglect so grievously a kennel full of dogs, in this case, we are expected to believe that 11 residents of the most exclusive neighborhoods in Philadelphia, all active and enthusiastic members of the horse and hound community, have all participated in a systematic pattern of animal neglect, failing to clean kennels, to deal with parasites, to monitor hounds’ health or to provide veterinary care.

These would be the same people who, as photos like this one show, don green woolen jackets and wear ironed white stock ties to run through the tick-infested woods at Aldie on warm days. Yet the lazy scoundrels cannot be bothered to clean their kennels. They will spend money on travel to pack trials in other states or on hunt uniforms, but won’t pay for vets. Sure.

Allegations about unsanitary kennels are pretty easy to come up with. Hounds do defecate. Nobody polices every pile of dog poop from the kennel floor the minute it arrives 24/7.

Riddled with parasites? What does that mean, I wonder. Did they see one hound scratching, and infer fleas?

Crediting the PSPCA’s good faith on allegations of this kind requires knowing a bit more about the role, character, and standard operations of that organization. I was confused myself yesterday about how it was that what I thought to be only a private humanitarian organization kept talking about violations, as if it were a branch of the government. I did not understand. They are.

I’m going to take a look at the PSPCA, who they are, what they do, and how they do business in another post. Soon.
——————————————————————-

PBBurns, of Terrierman’s Daily Dose, took one look at NYM’s righthand column (Michelle Malkin, Charlton Heston, Islamaphobia, oh my!) and, naturally, decided I’m insane.

His observation that in blog coverage of stories one typically wants to compare a variety of news accounts is perfectly correct. However, in this case, I have a modest level of personal acquaintance with Wendy Willard and the Murder Hollow Bassets, as I’m member of the same “tony rabbit and fox hunting circles” myself. The incident came to my attention via reports circulated on hunting email lists, and repeated on the Border Collie board. The Inquirer story only appeared yesterday morning, and was not being found by Google the same day. I’ve done lots of Google searches. I’ve talked to people from basset circles who have tried to reclaim, visit, or obtain information about the confiscated hounds, and who are familiar with the detailed circumstances of the case. I also talked to the PSPCA people myself. Thank you for your advice, PB.

If I was not acquainted personally with basseting, or if I had first read that Inquirer story, I might not have thought very seriously about any of this myself, and simply shrugged and assumed that the PSPCA was telling the truth and acting properly myself.

Let me give you a tip on blogging, PB. One news story obviously supplied by one side to a pet reporter is not really a whole lot better than an informal account found in emails or bulletin boards. Evaluating either is likely require more than the testimony of a single source.
——————————————————————-

Original story

A friend from the sporting literature community got in touch with me to inform me that a retired Russian zoologist who is a keen aficionado of aboriginal dogs had bred his first litter of Kazakh Tazis.

Tazis are hounds used for coursing, the pursuit of game using swift hounds which hunt by sight rather than by scent.

He will look like his mother as an adult

Tazi is really just one regional term for the saluki, probably the oldest type of domesticated dog.

Kazakhstan is renowned in coursing circles as the last refuge of native-bred saluki of first-rate hunting ability, unmixed with Western or show dog strains. A few enthusiasts have actually traveled to Central Asia in recent years in search of the canine equivalent of the Holy Grail.

Looking at photos of those puppies had the inevitable result, I succumbed and mailed in a deposit. The opportunity to own so rare and exotic a hunting dog is very unusual. Of course, house-breaking and trying to bring up a fierce aboriginal hunter from the steppes of Central Asia in a house full of cats and antiques is probably going to be a lot like trying to establish peace and order in the neighborhood of the Khyber Pass.

Kazakhstan looks upon tazis as an important cultural treasure

Maine Antique Digest thoughtfully informs us that, too bad! we’ve already missed major Massachusetts events devoted to the work of the renowned Cape Cod decoy carver A. Elmer Crowell (1862-1951) whose carvings have repeatedly set new records for auction prices.

Running curlew, sold at Copley in 2007 for $186,500, setting a decorative bird record

The Massachusetts Audubon Visual Arts Center in Canton had a symposium, Elmer Crowell & Beyond: A Gathering of Collectors & Enthusiasts, alas! on May 2nd, associated with a tremendous (now concluded) Crowell exhibition titled A. Elmer Crowell: Master of Decoys & More.

The good news is that an exhibition catalogue is in the works which will be available from Mass Audubon in the Fall sometime. The title will be A. Elmer Crowell: Master of Decoys. Contact Amy Montague at Mass Audubon.

Meanwhile, another Crowell exhibition A Bird in the Hand: The Carvings of Elmer and Cleon Crowell at the Heritage Museum & Gardens in Sandwich, Massachusetts began in April and will be running through the end of October. MAD thinks it is likely to prove very popular and run longer.

Cleon Crowell and his father A(nthony). Elmer Crowell

11 Year old Jessica Wanstall of Sittingbourne, Kent, on vacation with her father in Spain, set a new world record for a freshwater fish caught by an angler aged 16 and under, by landing a nearly 9’ (2.74 m), 13 stone 8lb (193lb – 87.7 k) Wels catfish (Silurus glanis) from the Ebro River. The catfish was considerably larger than the young angler, but was defeated in 20 minutes.

Daily Mail

Telegraph

Foxhounds are large (65-70 lbs. – 29-32 kilos.) and powerful animals. They are astonishingly muscular, and a hound pack is fully capable of running for many miles, pulling down, tearing to pieces and devouring its quarry rapidly and on the spot.

Yet, those familiar with hounds often describe the hound temperament as “sweet.” Hounds will eagerly jump up on strangers to lick their faces and be petted, and it is a routine practice as exhibitions to release a pack to be petted and roll around with small children.

Hounds traditionally hunted deer before they hunted foxes. Consequently, the return of the white-tail deer to much of its original range in the Eastern United States in the 1950s and 1960s had a tremendous impact on hunting and hound breeding.

Ben Hardaway, the renowned and colorful Master of Georgia’s Midland Foxhounds, often recounts how, when deer arrived in his territory, he found he could not stop his beloved July-strain American foxhounds from chasing deer, and successfully running them down and eating them.

Hardaway found himself obliged to travel to Britain and Ireland in search of deer-proof strains of foxhounds, and he proceeded to blend appropriate British foxhound strains with American, adding a soupçon of Penn Marydel, to produce what became recognized as a new, very widely used category of foxhound, the Crossbred.

Hardaway’s impact on hound breeding has been so great that he was recently honored by the North American Museum of Hounds and Hunting by admission to its Hall of Fame Huntsman’s Room, an honor rarely conferred on a living sportsman.

It is, therefore, interesting to find that the 30 couple (60) of foxhounds of the Chiddingfield, Leconfield and Cowdray Hunt, whose territory is in Surrey and Sussex, recently adopted a ten-week old fallow deer (Dama dama) fawn, allowing him to accompany the pack on its off-season walks.

Huntsman Adrian Thompson, however, expressed a disinclination to allow the fawn to hunt with his hounds next Autumn. He does not think the young deer would have the stamina to keep up with hounds. (Maybe someone will offer him a ride, and BamBam will be able to car follow.)

Daily Mail

Telegraph

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

There won’t be any blogging Sunday morning as we will be leaving very early to attend the Virginia Foxhound Show, an all day event.

The Nazis were pretty bad, but they weren’t all bad. They invented the Volkswagen and the Superhighway. Leni Reifenstahl made terrific films, and Adolph Hitler was a superb designer of military uniforms. Hermann Goering, in his capacity as Reichsforst- und Jägermeister (Reich Master of the Forest and Hunt), was a keen conservationist eager not only to protect endangered species of big game, but ambitious enough to promote attempts at breeding backward in order to restore especially desirable extinct species, including most notably the aurochs (Bos primigenius).

Reuters reports that one British aficionado has brought a herd of the Heck cattle resulting from Hermann Goering’s breeding project to Britain. According to Wikipedia, there are roughly 2000 Heck cattle in Europe these days. The last known aurochs, a female, died in 1627 in the Jaktorów Forest in Masovia (Poland).

A conservationist has re-introduced to Britain a modern relative of the ancient ancestor to domesticated cattle.

The shaggy, russet-colored “Heck” cattle imported into Britain from The Netherlands by Derek Gow are the product of a Nazi-sponsored breeding program intended to bring back the aurochs,” an ancient beast mentioned by Julius Caesar, British newspapers reported on Wednesday.

The ancient species were immortalized tens of thousands of years ago in ochre and charcoal cave paintings in the Great Hall of the Bulls at Lascaux in southwest France.

The modern-day British herd brought to Devon, England is the product of Nazi breeding, an attempt to bring back the extinct aurochs, the last of which died of old age a Polish forest nearly four centuries ago. ...

The herd has Herman Goering, the head of Hitler’s Luftwaffe, to thank for its existence. Goering hoped to recreate a primeval Aryan wilderness in the conquered territories of Eastern Europe. Two zoologist brothers, Lutz and Heinz Heck, took on the task of scouring Europe for the most primitive breeds of cattle they could find in the belief that by “back breeding” they could resurrect the extinct species.

Heinz Heck, based at Munich Zoo, cross-bred shaggy Highland cattle with animals from Corsica and Hungary, while his brother in Berlin was crossing Spanish and French fighting bulls. The success of the Hecks’ breeding program is as disputed as the techniques they used.

Hat tip to the News Junkie.

We had so many hunts during the past season that Karen is still catching up on photo essays from months ago.

She just finished this collection of photos from the Blue Ridge Hunt’s December 30th meet at the Monastery at Cool Spring (site of the July 17-18, 1864 battle between Jubal Early’s Army of the Valley District and Horatio Wright’s Union 6th Corps). Two of my own amusing photos of eager hounds peering out of the hound trailer made her cut.

Over the weekend, Karen was photographing all three days of the Spring Beagle Trials held at the Institute Farm in Aldie. She already has posted her photo essay for Day 1 on her brand new commercial web-site.

This handsome fox was glimpsed (and photographed by Karen) cantering away well in advance of hounds. He somehow foiled his line very quickly, because hounds lost his scent almost immediately after they opened on him.

Well, now he can go back to work breeding up next autumn’s fox cubs.

Email reports are coming in saying that the Fairfax Hunt’s kennels at Red Hill Farm, on Stone School Lane, outside Leesburg, here in Loudoun County, have been destroyed today by a sudden and disastrous fire of unknown origin.

Three staff horses and the hound puppies are said to have perished, but apparently many hounds were rescued through a hole cut in the fence.

The Fairfax Hunt meets at fixtures in eastern and western Loudoun County, Virginia, and its pack last year consisted of 31 couple of Crossbred Foxhounds.

What a horrible thing!
—————————————————————-

Update 3/11, 2:13 PM EDT:

Professional Huntsman Kevin Palmer is reported to have saved 90% of the pack. Some puppies were apparently among the hounds rescued.

—————————————————————-

Update 3/11, 5:13 PM EDT:

Loudoun Times-Mirror

The fire started around 7:15 AM. Three horses, ten hounds, and six or seven puppies were killed.

photo:Jason Jacks

—————————————————————-

3/12:
Fox News attributes the source of the fire to an old refrigerator and has videos.

Trevor Morse, a 48 year old gardener from Alderminster and foot follower of the Warwickshire Hunt, was killed yesterday during the Hunt’s final meet of the season by the blades of a gyrocopter piloted by two individuals associated with the Animal Rights extremist group Protect Our Wild Animals (POWA).

The gyrocopter had been harassing the Heythrop and Warwickshire Hunts for three weeks, expressing disapproval of their activities by swooping threateningly down on them in an aggressive manner. Complaints about the gyrocopter’s illegally low flying had been made to the British Civil Aviation Authority ten days ago.

The gyrocopter’s crew were arrested by police on suspicion of murder.

London Times

BBC

Telegraph

Arutz Sheva reports that a research team from University of Haifa, the Arava Institute, the Geological Institute in Jerusalem, the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, and Bar-Ilan University, working with National Geographic, has concluded that so-called “desert kites,” kite-shaped lines discovered by British pilots during the WI era, marking the surface of the Negev and Arava Deserts represent the remains of man-made Neolithic period hunting traps used to direct driven animals into pits, the same way Plains Indians used to drive buffalo herds toward unexpected cliffs.

Lt. Gen. H.G. Martin, in his memoir of soldiering and sport in pre-War British India, Sunset From the Main (1951), recalls an unpleasant encounter on angling expedition to the Simla Hills in search of mahseer.

The steep path dropped down to the bed of the gorge past brakes of thorn and matted evergreen and across unexpected lawns where the encircling cactus reared its knotted candleabras, rigid and grotesque as submarine coral-beds. In these occasional clearings troops of brown monkeys basked, scratching in the sunshine: plebeian monkeys, vulgar, thieving, shameless, who lowered and gibbered as we passed. I do not love the brown monkey. Who has ever seen him look pleasant? A typical, politically minded proletarian, he has the Communist’s capacity for hating all creation.

Tip from Steve Bodio.

Sotheby’s December 2nd Old Master Sculpture and Works of Art sale in London featured a remarkable relic of the Middle Ages, an Oliphant, a great (47cm., 18½”) 12th century hunting horn, fashioned from the tusk of an elephant and once embellished with silver. Despite the recession, it sold for $194,950 / 139,250 GBP, considerably above the estimated price of 50,000—80,000 GBP.

Catalogue description:

The word ‘oliphant’ is a loanword from old French meaning ‘elephant’, which is first documented in the English translation of the Song of Roland in the 12th century. It described the ivory sounding horn with which the hero Roland summoned aid during the batter of Roncesvalles, shortly before his death at the hands of the Arabian enemy in 778. Carved from a whole elephant tusk and originally banded with silver and hung with cord, these horns would have produced a low but loud call. They were prized symbols of wealth and power, passed down through the centuries in Europe’s treasure houses.

Few oliphants from the eleventh and twelfth centuries survive. They are a fascinating witness to a unique period of cultural exchange between East and West on the Mediterranean island of Sicily. Oliphants were carved from African ivory and were probably prevalent in Fatimid Egypt, although no example has survived. Until 1071 Sicily was part of the Fatimid empire. However, quarrels within the Muslim regime gave the Christian rulers of southern Italy an opportunity to send in Norman mercenaries as a conquering force. Roger I, who became Norman Count of Sicily and the first in the line of Norman rulers of Sicily, led the invasion. The Norman genius was not only in capturing this Islamic stronghold but in maintaining it successfully, by keeping Muslims and Byzantine Greeks in positions of influence. Using the heterogeneous nature of their society, the Normans in Sicily capitalised on their geographic location as a nexus of culture and trade. In the twelfth century, when the island became a kingdom, it was one of the wealthiest states in Europe, wealthier even than England.

The decoration of oliphants, most often with animals and scrollwork, sits within the tradition of Islamic imagery, without over-reliance on the human form. Oliphants carved by Muslim and Byzantine craftsmen for their new Catholic rulers continued in this style. The present Oliphant is very simply decorated and can be most closely compared to another in the collection of the Louvre Museum, Paris (OA 4069). The foliate designs on the two bands close to where the mouthpiece was originally secured, are carved to the same pattern and the body of the Oliphant is shaped in simple flat planes along its length. The Louvre oliphant is dated to the end of the 11th century. The twisted rope work design along the upper length of the present oliphant can be compared to a similar design on a twelfth century oliphant in the collection of the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore.

There were 28 categories of Big Game animals taken by archery in the Pope and Young record book before the Tule Elk (Cervus canadensis—or elaphus—nannodes), a subspecies of Roosevelt Elk (Cervus canadensis roosevelti) was recently added.

The New York Times (of all sources) describes one hunter’s attempt to complete the new North American Archery Big Game Grand Slam.

Some day Britain’s contemptible Labour Government will fall and the petty tyranny of its Hunting Ban, passed via the overthrow of the British Constitution and the usurpation of the authority of both houses of Parliament by a temporary majority in the House of the Commons, will end.

In the meantime, persecution of rural traditions and sport has backfired on the Left, awakening a new political consciousness and determination on the part of their victims. Hunting is stronger than ever in Britain.

Daily Mail:

Record numbers turned out for the Boxing Day hunts yesterday – adding fresh fuel to criticisms of the ‘ban’ introduced under Labour.

More than 300,000 people converged on the countryside to take part in or cheer on the annual events across England, Wales and Scotland.

Pro-hunt groups used the turnout to renew calls to repeal the controversial 2004 Hunting Act, backed by a petition with thousands of signatures and Conservative plans to end the ban. ...

More than 300 hunts, including 194 fox hunts with packs of hounds, were held yesterday, according to the Countryside Alliance. More than 6,000 turned out for one in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire.

The majority used ‘trails’ in which a scent of the quarry is laid down artificially. A dead fox is often used as a reward for hounds at the hunt’s end.

But many took advantage of exemptions, including around 50 which used the ‘bird of prey’ exemption.

This involves a fox being flushed out by hounds into the path of a bird of prey. Many hunts now have their own eagle owl or golden eagle.

Other hunts use an exemption in which two dogs flush out quarry from woodland for shooting. ...

A petition launched last week to repeal the ‘confusing, unnecessary and divisive’ Act has already gathered 7,700 signatures, the Countryside Alliance said.

Spokesman Tim Bonner added: ‘We believe that the evidence of the last four years is that the Hunting Act has just failed in every possible term.

‘It does no good at all for animals’ welfare, is a huge cost of police time, and puts innocent people at risk of prison.’

Mr Bonner claimed a low turnout of protesters yesterday was due to them being ‘drowned out’ by supporters in recent years.

The Hunting Act was controversially passed using the Parliament Act, which meant the approval of the House of Lords – which wanted to regulate hunting with dogs – was not needed. ...

It came into effect in England and Wales in February 2005 and followed a ban in Scotland introduced two years earlier.

The Act was brought in to outlaw the hunting of foxes, as well as deer, hares and mink with dogs, as well as organised hare coursing.

But opponents have argued against it on grounds including there was no evidence of cruelty and it provided a means of controlling animals numbers.

Tory leader David Cameron has said he will offer a free vote on the matter if he becomes prime minister.

Read the whole thing.

Back in the 1950s and the 1960s, the annual two-inch thick telephone directory-sized Herter’s catalogue, arriving from far off, exotic Waseca, Minnesota was, for sportsmen, and for small boy aspiring sportsmen, not just a standard source of fishing tackle, camping, handloading, fly tying, trapping, and taxidermy supplies, the Herter’s catalogue was a long term reading treasure providing fodder for countless hours of theoretical expedition planning and equipment acquisition and maintenance.

Paul Collins, in a recent New York Times Book Review, pays tribute to the long-extinct Herter’s catalogue and its colorful and eccentric author. George Leonard Herter’s infamous “Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices” providing the recipes for the Virgin Mary’s favorite creamed spinach, Joan of Arc’s pate de fois gras, and Stonewall Jackson’s barbecued ribs (among many others) is his personal favorite example of Herteriana.

Starting in 1937 from atop his father’s dry-goods shop in Waseca, Minn., Herter over the next four decades built a mail-order sporting goods juggernaut. The arrival of the Herter’s catalog was like Christmas with bullets. Need a bird’s-eye maple gunstock? Check. How about a Herter’s Famous Raccoon Death Cry Call? Just two dollars. Fiberglass canoes? Got you covered. The catalog, which the former Waseca printer Wayne Brown recalls started as three-ring binder supplements, grew so popular — about 400,000 or 500,000 copies per run, he estimates — that Brown Printing became one of the country’s largest commercial printers.

“Herter wrote all the copy for the catalogs,” Brown said in an e-mail message, and each item was described in loving, haranguing, Barnum-esque detail. No Herter item was merely good: it was World Famous, Patented, Special, “made with infinite care by our most expert old craftsmen,” or — my favorite — “actually made far better than is necessary.” The corollary was that his competitor’s products were worthless — or, as he put it, “like they were made by indifferent schoolgirls.”

But as good as much of his gear was, talk about Herter always comes around to one thing: his books. His enchantingly bombastic catalogs included listings for more than a dozen of his self-published works, bound in metallic silver and gold covers, and bearing titles like “How to Get Out of the Rat Race and Live on $10 a Month.”

My understanding is that Herter was put out of business in the 1970s over Jungle Cock. The eyed neck feathers of the Grey Jungle Fowl, Gallus Sonneratti, have long been an essential ingredient in the construction of artificial flies for fishing. The eyed feathers serve as eyes on streamer fly imitations of minnows, and as crucial decorative elements in the visually elaborate salmon fly attractor patterns originated in the Victorian era.

Federal enforcement of a ban on the trade in feathers of endangered species took no cognizance of material stockpiles dating to periods long before the ban, and George Leonard Herter was a classic American individualist and a hard core sportsman who simply could not bow to irrational regulation. The reports I heard were that federal lawsuits and seizures, based on one small particular type of feather entirely legally owned and acquired in the first place, ruined the famous company and broke its proprietor’s heart. He never even tried to revive his business.

Had it survived, just imagine how enormous a business Herter’s would be today! Herter’s would be today’s Cabela’s and more.
————————————
Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Forbes describes how Tom Morgan has managed to overcome MS to continue to produce state-of-the-art custom fly rods.

In his case, the “thought rod” metaphor takes on another meaning. Considered by many to be the world’s finest living fly-rod-maker—a craft that relies almost solely on feel—the 67-year-old Morgan has not been able to cast, or even hold, one of his creations for more than a decade.

Morgan has multiple sclerosis, a still mystifying degenerative disease that occurs when a mix-up in nerve signal transmissions causes the immune system to attack the insulating sheaths around the nerves. Morgan has a particularly debilitating form of MS and has extremely limited movement below his neck. He is confined to his bed and to a high-tech wheelchair with a headrest, a reclining contraption that resembles a dental examination chair. Morgan’s thought rods are a pure extension of his mind.

Read the whole thing.

Tom Morgan Rodsmiths

The Telegraph reports that turnout at this year’s opening meets and sales at hunt-oriented businesses are booming, despite the Labour Party’s Hunt Ban.

Part of the hunting boom is attributable to sportsmen’s success in devising ways of working around the Ban, such as a more realistic kind of drag hunting termed “trail hunting,” but resistance to the Ban is also a factor.

As the season gallops into action on Saturday, William Little finds that the post-ban hunting world is booming.

According to the Countryside Alliance, there has been a 10 per cent increase in people who pay full subscription – ie go out every week or more.

This represents an increase of 5,000 people on the number that hunted before the fox ban. On Boxing Day, popular with fair-weather riders, an estimated 30,000 more people take part than before the ban.

There is also anecdotal evidence to suggest a considerable increase in the number of people who follow hunts in cars and on foot. ...

Instead of the law causing the demise of hunting and its supporting trades, such as farriers and liveries, the upsurge in newcomers has brought a rural economic boom.

USA Today, on October 27th, gleefully added Dan Cooper, founder and president of Cooper Firearms of Montana, manufacturers of high end hunting rifles to the roll of defectors to the Obamaswami.

Dan Cooper, a proud member of the National Rifle Association, has backed Republicans for most of his life. He’s the chief executive of Cooper Arms, a small Montana company that makes hunting rifles.

Cooper said he voted for George W. Bush in 2000, having voted in past elections for every Republican presidential nominee back to Richard Nixon. In October 1992, he presented a specially made rifle to the first President. Bush during a Billings campaign event.

This year, Cooper has given $3,300 to the campaign of Democrat Barack Obama. That’s on top of the $1,000 check he wrote to Obama’s U.S. Senate campaign in 2004, after he was dazzled by Obama’s speech at that year’s Democratic National Convention.

Cooper changed sides, he said, “probably because of the war. And also because the Republican Party has moved so far right in recent years.”

He also likes Obama’s message about “the retooling of America, which involves the building of middle-class jobs and helping American small business be competitive with those overseas.”

Mr. Cooper is entitled to his own political opinions, of course. But believing that Barack Obama is anything other that a firm enemy of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and a reliable ally of opponents of the field sports both in the form of environmental extremists and lunatic fringe advocates of Animal Rights is pathetically naive. And lending his name to this particular politician’s campaign was bound to be less than well received by Mr. Cooper’s fellow shooters and sportsmen.

So USA Today, three days later, was obliged to report

Montana gunsmith Dan Cooper has been ousted as chief executive of the rifle company that bears his name after pressure from gun owners who are angry that he is supporting Democrat Barack Obama. ...

The USA TODAY article sparked outrage from some gun owners and bloggers, including an open letter on a blog called Firearms and Freedom, urging people to boycott the company’s products. Many gun enthusiasts believe Obama will try to restrict their right to bear arms, although he has said he respects the Second Amendment.

In a portion of the interview that was not included in Tuesday’s story, Cooper said, “I don’t believe that what’s being said about Obama and his policies about guns are accurate. I have had a conversation with the senator … he is a stanch supporter of the right to hunt and the right to bear arms.”

The company posted a statement Wednesday night on its website that said:

“The employees, shareholders and board of directors of Cooper Firearms of Montana do not share the personal political views of Dan Cooper. Although we all believe everyone has a right to vote and donate as they see fit, it has become apparent that the fallout may affect more than just Mr. Cooper. It may also affect the employees and the shareholders of Cooper Firearms. The board of directors has asked Mr. Cooper to resign as President.”

This is sad and unfortunate, but I think the employees, stockholders, and the board of Cooper Firearms were right. Gun ownership and the right to hunt are seriously threatened by the democrat party and its radical supporters. Sportsmen and shooters are a minority attacked and under siege. If we do not stand together to defend our rights, if we do not vigorously oppose leftwing candidates like Barack Obama, we will find ourselves in the position of citizens of Great Britain very shortly.
——————————————
Hat tip to Xavier.

This web-site explains how to hunt white-tailed deer using a Civil War-era Model 1841 12 Pound Mountain Howitzer.

This method of hunting seems likely to provoke criticism, but, after all, the hunter is restricted to a single shot before having to undertake an elaborate and time-consuming process of reloading. There can be no second shot at the same target. And just look at all the effort required to transport, maneuver, and aim the weapon! Besides, the unreasoning prejudice of today’s authorities toward any kind of seriously innovative approach to reducing game to possession makes the project still more sporting by introducing a distinct note of hazard for the sportsman.

If the idea makes you squeamish, or you start getting all liberal and statist, just repeat after me: Rats with hoofs! Rats with hoofs!

I do kind of think myself that a real artillerist could get his buck with an exploding shell, and someone really good could do it with solid shot. If those darned Civil War cannon were just a little cheaper…

Run for your lives!

This month’s Garden & Gun has a feature on the turkey call collection assembled over 15 years by Bill Jones III, including more than 7000 examples of box calls, yelpers, and scratchers.

Here is a recent acquisition: a boar spear blade made by
Bodraj of Aurangabad, one of the preferred models of blade used for Pig-Sticking, the finest sport in Asia, by British officers and colonial administrators in the pre-WWII days of the Empire.

(Click on the above picture for more. The link goes to another web-site I use for image and file distribution. I plan to post more photo collections of antique weapons from my personal collection from time to time.)

Sir Robert Baden-Powell describes it, thusly:

The Bodraj head is a flat oval blade tapering to a point. It is 4 inches long, three-quarters to 1 inch broad at the widest part, with a neck and socket of 4 inches long ; a projecting rib runs from point to socket along the centre of each side of the blade, standing about one-sixth of an inch, and sharpened along its back. This head is particularly adapted for use in Pig-sticking Cup Competitions.

“Snaffles,” The Finest View in Asia, 1928

The Blue Ridge Hunt out cubbing very early this morning riding through the post-dawn mist of the Shenandoah Valley.

(Click on pictures for larger images.)

Urbanista Amanda Platell takes to the moors for one of those journalistic visiting the rustic primitives who shoot think pieces, and finds the shooting sports and the pursuit of the red grouse nothing like what she expected.

Like many townies, my prejudices about the Glorious Twelfth were well and truly fully formed. The official start of the shooting season was nothing more than an ancient ritual to massacre thousands of defenceless birds.

The killers were a bunch of men with Prince Charles cut-crystal accents looking down their long aristocratic noses at ordinary folk like me, city folk, you know, the kind who have to buy their own furniture. Their dogs would have better pedigrees than me.

So it was with some cynicism and not a little trepidation that I agreed to take part in the Glorious Twelfth last Tuesday, the traditional start of the shooting season, on a moor on the Durham/ Northumberland border. ...

Odd, isn’t it, that we city dwellers feel squeamish at the thought of an animal being bred and ultimately shot in the wild, yet feel no pangs over the battery chickens or pigs raised in appalling conditions for our table.

But I wanted to put my prejudices to the test and, more importantly, to try better to understand the problems facing our beleaguered countryside, bled dry by a government that neither knows nor cares about voters outside of their urban heartlands.

The Daily Mail does a fine job of demonstrating just how clueless it is, illustrating a red grouse (Lagopus lagopus) shooting article with a nice picture of a capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus), and identifying a picture of a shooter aiming a great big over-and-under shotgun as the “traditional image” simply because the man in the picture is wearing tweeds. Amanda’s side-by-side double is, of course, far more traditional. Nobody cares about waxed cotton versus tweed.

.

0:57 video

One of the people on the Fox Hunting email list this morning posted a link to this project Gutenberg edition of the Caldecott Picture Book illustrating the old comic song.

But it’s no fun without the music, so here’s Peter Bellamy singing it, too. 2:37 video

The Fox Jumps Over the Parson’s Gate is one of many examples of popular humor exploiting the irresistibility to man or beast, without respect to age, dignity, or sex, of the impulse to follow hounds after the fox.

There’ve been so many complaints about the weather recently that you can tell they’ve been doing a lousy job of administering the oceans and the atmosphere, and that Marine Fisheries Service has never once delivered fish and chips to my house. But it is clear those federal bureaucrats in charge of the waters and the air and lords of the fish that swim in the sea have other ways of occupying their time.

They’re now proposing to license sport fishing in the ocean. They don’t even really want the money. The states get to keep it in return for selling the licenses. But that way, they can keep better track of us, you see.

The Boston Globe has the story.

The only thing anyone’s ever needed to sportfish off New England’s coast is a rod, reel, and good luck.

Now, the more than 2.5 million people who fish for fun here will probably need a license.

The federal agency that manages fishing announced yesterday that it intends to require most saltwater anglers to register before fishing begins in 2009 and plans to start charging for the privilege by 2011.

Fishery officials have grown increasingly concerned about how many fish the nation’s recreational fishermen reel in from the ocean each year.

“This will lead to better stock assessments and more effective regulations to rebuild and manage these valuable fish,” said Jim Balsiger, acting assistant administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service.

The rule will mean most fishermen – whether fishing from a dock, beach, or a boat – will have to have a permit. State waters within 3 miles of shore aren’t normally covered by federal rules. But the new regulation would apply to fishermen who might catch any species that travels between fresh and saltwater, such as striped bass, one of the most popular New England sportfish.

Progressive states, like California, have already thought of this.

Michael Farrin, huntsman for the Quorn from 1968 to 1998, has died after a long illness at the age of 66.

Hunting author Michael Clayton said of him:

He was the most stylish horseman across a natural country you would ever see. ...

Michael hunted hounds four times a week during long gruelling seasons and maintained a remarkably high standard at a time when the countryside was eroding and hunting was enduring growing political pressures.

Through it all, Michael remained a cool, calm figure riding Thoroughbreds, some off the racecourse, with extraordinary skill in front of hard-riding mounted fields.

Telegraph obituary.

9:07 video

Hat tip to Bird Dog.

One highlight of the day on Sunday occurred late in the proceedings while I was sitting watching the English classes unfold. A Foxhound Club official approached me diffidently, and asked very politely, if I would be kind enough to oblige the Committee by making the award of the Cobbler Hunt Cup.

Of course, I realized some kind of mistake in identity was underway. So I laughed, and advised him that he was undoubtedly confusing me with someone else, as I was not actually a Master of Foxhounds, or anyone prominent in the foxhound breeding community at all.

Clearly, though, it had to have been my all around air of distinction, and my recognizable habit of command (what John Taintor Foote referred to as “the look of eagles”), along with my obvious close physical resemblance to the individual in the above picture that resulted in the gentleman’s perfectly natural confusion.

It did occur to me not long afterward that I could have simply played along, and when he introduced me with the wrong name and organizational affiliation, I could simply have corrected him, attributing to myself the mastership of an imaginary hound pack named for my Pennsylvania farm, and then people in Northern Virginia hunting circles would be laughing over the incident for weeks, but I expect that would have been going a little too far for a joke, and the chap they actually wanted might justifiably feel hard done by.

There won’t be much, if any, blogging tomorrow. I’ll be attending the hound show at Morven Park.

Hillary had better be careful. Efforts to embrace false images of red state lifestyle are easily overdone, and there has gotten to be a journalistic tradition of ridiculing bogus claims of personal prowess in the hunting field. Hillary’s recent reminiscences of gun handling—

“You know, my dad took me out behind the cottage that my grandfather built on a little lake called Lake Winola outside of Scranton and taught be how to shoot when I was a little girl,” said Clinton.

“You know, some people now continue to teach their children and their grandchildren. It’s part of culture. It’s part of a way of life. People enjoy hunting and shooting because it’s an important part of who they are. Not because they are bitter.”

She later added, however, that she is not herself an expert with firearms: “As I told you, my dad taught me how to shoot behind our cottage. I have gone hunting. I am not a hunter. But I have gone hunting.”

The MSM and the blogosphere has moved on from unimportant subjects like Islamic terrorism and the upcoming presidential election to what really matters: Is that really a babe reflected in Dick Cheney’s fishing shades?

McClatchy:

Since Wednesday, the blogosphere has been atwitter over a photograph on the White House Web site of Cheney with a caption that said he was fly-fishing on the Snake River in Idaho.

The photo is a tight shot of Cheney’s face sporting dark sunglasses and his trademark grin.

What’s stirring all the buzz is the reflection in the vice president’s dark glasses. Some thought that the reflection looked like a naked woman and, this being Cheney and this being the Internet Age, they immediately shared that thought with the world.

In a Google search for the words “Dick Cheney” and “sunglasses,” 79,300 hits came back at mid-afternoon on Thursday. By 7 p.m., the count was 130,000.

On DemocraticUnderground.com, the discussion starts with this question: “Notice anything … interesting … reflected in his sunglasses? Something that has little to do with conventional ‘fly-fishing’?”

Photographers discuss.

We’ve spent much of the last two days attending the Spring Trial Pack Competitions of the National Beagle Club at the Institute in Aldie.

The Wolver Beagles returning from competing in the Three-Couple.

Karen and I follow the two packs illustrated above, who did not win.

Friday’s Three-Couple Pack competition was won by the York County, Pennsylvania’s Holly Hill Beagles, who ran a cottontail for 45 minutes and then captured the quarry, alive! People are still talking about that one.

John Borsa, Master of Beagles, holds the captive safely, Whip Amy Burke stands by his side. (Photo: Russell Wagner)

If America’s increasingly aging sportsmen don’t make more of an effort to recruit members of the younger generation, in the years to come, hunters and anglers will become a smaller minority increasingly outnumbered and out-voted by anti-field sports advocates and gun control supporters. Britain’s ban on hunting with hounds is a sample of what we can look forward to here.

AP:

Sales of Vermont hunting and fishing licenses have dropped more than 20 percent over the last 20 years, leaving the Fish and Wildlife Department pleading with lawmakers for extra funding.

Other states report similar drop-offs:

—Arkansas hunting license sales dropped from about 345,000 in 1999 to about 319,000 in 2003.

—Pennsylvania sold about 946,000 hunting licenses in 2006, down from just over a million in 1999, and a peak of 1.3 million in 1981.

—Oregon had 100,000 fewer licensed anglers last year than in 1987, and 70,000 fewer licensed hunters.

—West Virginia sold 154,763 resident hunting permits in 2006, a 17 percent decrease from 1997.

The nature of the problem can be seen in the ignorance, bigoted animosity toward field sports, and implicitly Disneyfied perspective of Drew Curtis’s 3/29 link to the story on Fark.com:

Interest in hunting and fishing dropping among Americans, who are finding other things to do than inflict pain and death on nature’s beautiful, innocent creatures.

The news had begun to circulate yesterday that George Maurer, proprietor of Sweetwater Bamboo Flyrods, had died suddenly of a heart attack.

Maurer had been the most renowned rod maker to work in Pennsylvania since the 19th century era of John Krieder and Samuel Phillippe. He built parabolic rods inspired by the tapers of Paul Young, and standard tapers based on the works of Jim Payne and Goodwin Granger.

Maurer was a friend of the angling writers Harry Middleton and John Gierach and built rods named after some of their books. I’ve never owned one myself, but I’ve often heard the model he called the “Old Philosopher,” a 7’ 5” for 5 wt., singled out for exceptional praise.

Maurer’s shop in recent years was located at a wide place in the road along the rural highway paralleling the Big Pine Creek in North Central Pennsylvania, where cities are far away, and newspapers are few. It will be a while before a full obituary appears.

Len Codella

Trout Underground

Lame midi

The wife and I attended today the Old Dominion Hounds’ Joint Meet with the Casanova Hunt (to which numerous other Northern Virginia Hunts—including our own Blue Ridge Hunt—were invited).

The joint meet was a fund raiser undertaken to support efforts to oppose Dominion Power’s plan to build 16-story 500-kv electrical transmission towers through scenic and historic Frederick, Warren, Rappahannock, Culpeper, Fauquier, Prince William and Loudoun counties.

And for what? To bring more electrical power to the District of Columbia to illuminate federal offices whose functionaries are busily employed drafting new regulations and spending more tax dollars.

If the evil federal government wants more power, let ‘em build nuclear power plants in the District, or do without and borrow some cardigan sweaters from Jimmy Carter.

Not in my backyard, and not in my neighboring fox hunt’s backyard, say I.

We did not get our fair share of abuse, actually. But we did see some fine riding and some lovely scenery. The Blue Ridge really is blue down there in Fauquier County. And the natives are as charming and hospitable as in the rest of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Link to photos at my wife’s hunt diary.

The Nantucket-Treweryn Beagles at Greenwood. A perfect autumn day.

The event was near the village of Bokonbayevo, some 186 miles east of the capital Bishkek, August 24, 2007. More then 20 hunters with dogs and eagles took part. The slideshow illustrates exhibitions of hunting with Taigans and Golden Eagles using domesticated wolves as the quarry. The Salburun (hunting) festival has been held annually since 1997.

Hat tip to Dr. Milton Ong.