89-Year-Old Huntsman Melvin Poe leads the Bath County Hounds out on a beautiful November morning (click on image for larger picture)

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.
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Who wouldn’t want to look like that and ride like that at 89?

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.

English Hound: Live Oak Apache

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.

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.

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!
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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.

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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

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

Trevor Morse, Warwickshire Hunt

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

Cheers as the hunt goes out in Market Bosworth, Leicestershire

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.

The Exmoor Foxhounds

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.

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.)

Illustration by Randolph Caldecott (1846-1886)

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.

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.

Britain’s Government has banned ownership of pistols, rifles, self defense, and hunting. Participants in the Countryside March against the Blair Government’s Hunt Ban wish Britons had defended their liberties before it was too late. Tony Martin, the Norfolk farmer jailed for defending his home, certainly wishes so even more.

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.

Blue Ridge Morpeth stallion hound

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

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.

A handsome red fox rockets away from hounds yesterday in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. (Photo by Karen L. Myers)

Richard Newton, Jr., Major W. Austin Wadsworth, MFH, Riding Devilkin, 1915

John J. Head writes, in the Summer 2007 edition of the Social Register, an appreciation of the painting used to illustrate an article noticing the centenary of the Masters of Foxhounds Association of North America.

Often called the ‘Dean of American Foxhunting,’ Major William Austin Wadsworth—heir to a large land-holding in the Genessee Valley of western New York State and an 1870 graduate of Harvard with a degree in chemistry who pursued post-graduate work at the University of Berlin—was deemed by his peers, in 1907, to be suitable presidential material for the newly formed Masters of Foxhounds Association of America.

The American artist Richard Newtown, Jr. captured on canvas the qualities that so appealed to Wadsworth’s fellow masters, insofar as any painting can embody traits of character and breeding, in his 1915 oil portrait. ... Amidst soft autumnal colors, under a steel-gray sky, we observe this keen judge of dogs and horses as he surveys the pack of foxhounds he has carefully and scientifically bred to hunt his ancestral territory of 60,000 acres in Geneseo, NY. Members of the Genesee Valley Hunt, which was founded on the centennial of the Revolution, wear unique attire. In a display of pastriotism, traditional scarlet coats are eschewed in favor of dark blue melton coats, buff collars and buff breeches, the colors worn by the Continental Army.

Reuters:

A British artist has eaten chunks of a Corgi dog, the breed favored by Queen Elizabeth II, live on radio to protest against the royal family’s treatment of animals.

Mark McGowan, 37, said he ate “about three bites” of the dog meat, cooked with apples, onions and seasoning, to highlight what he called Prince Philip’s mistreatment of a fox during a hunt by the Queen’s husband in January.

“It was pretty disgusting,” McGowan said of the meal, which he ate while appearing on a London radio station on Tuesday. Yoko Ono, another guest on the show, also tried the meat. ...

Corgis are the favored dogs of the queen, who has owned more than 30 of them during her reign.

McGowan’s Corgi had evidently died of natural causes. One likes to hope of some particularly loathesome and communicable disease able to survive cooking.

Let’s hope that Prince Phillip will soon hunt another bold fox, and that the nincompoop McGowan will consequently get to consume some more dead dog.

And don’t forget to save some for Yoko!

Photo gallery

1:01 MSM video

1:21 YouTube video lets you hear this idiot’s vulgar accent and see his hostility.

His web-site announcing the event.

Wikipedia entry detailing this great artist’s other contributions to civilization.

Neil Everley of the Quorn with Golden Eagle/Steppe Eagle cross

As we noted last December, the infamous February 2005 Hunt Ban, enacted by Britain’s Labour Party as a gesture of class animosity and urban spite, banned hunting par force du chien (i.e., the traditional pursuit and reduction to possession of the quarry by a pack of hounds), but included certain loopholes: drag hunts (i.e., hunts in which the pack hunts an artificially created line of scent) are lawful; and hounds can be used to follow a scent and to flush out a fox, which may then be pursued by no more than two dogs, and ultimately shot or taken by means of falconry.

The strange consequence of this vile legislation has been a curious revival of falconry employing large raptors by several enterprising hunts. Last year, the Cheshire Hunt was seen taking to the field accompanied by a European Eagle Owl (Bubo bubo).

This year, the illustrious Quorn is training a huge Eurasian Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos chrysaetos) and Steppe Eagle (Aquila nipalensis) cross.

Melton Today

Hat tip to Steve Bodio. I’m less pessimistic than Steve’s correspondent Patrick, who evidently accompanied the link he sent Steve with prognostications of havoc.

Let’s see—amped up hounds, lots of people, a couple hundred horses, a panicked fox, and someone in a coat and tie handling a massive Golden Eagle cross in the middle of it all. Madness on stilts if you ask me! When the eagle is injured or killed, it will be described as an “accident” rather than planned stupidity.”

I’m sure some very interesting misadventures (and ones worth writing about!) will inevitably occur, but it’s all part of the game in the sporting field. And I’m rather pleased myself at the irony of the same detestable English Puritanism which nearly extinguished the ancient sport of falconry in the British Isles in the 17th century, inadvertently ushering it back in in the 21th century, and in a particularly colorful and grandiose form to boot.

Lady Thompson in horse trough

In 1999, the (no longer young) members of the Rylstone Women’s Institute in North Yorkshire posed for a nude calendar as a fund-raising device to benefit a leukemia charity, producing an unexpected hit which raised more than a £1 million. The calendar was talked about around the world, and subsequently became the basis for a feature film, Calendar Girls (2003), starring Helen Mirren and Julie Walters. Not altogether surprisingly, nude calendars, featuring femmes d’un certain âge, their assets artistically concealed, have become a charity staple in Britain and elsewhere.

The Telegraph reports that the latest beneficiary is to be the hound pack of Britain’s Oakley Hunt, whose country lies in Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire and Cambridgeshire.

They must basically like doing it, and are just looking for excuses, don’t you think?

Joseph Pearce identifies the real issue underlying Britain’s hunt ban.

The urban proletariat and its Labour Party representatives perceived hunting as a preserve of the rich and as an archaic throwback to the days of feudalism and privilege. In fact, hunting is enjoyed by all social classes in rural England and is an expression of the community spirit that still survives in the countryside, even as it has long since become extinct in the cities. This fact was made glaringly obvious by the sheer enormity of the size of the pro-hunt demonstration by the Countryside Alliance before the ban became law. The rural rich and poor descended on London expressing the unity of the countryfolk of England against the stripping of their ancestral rights by an urban tyranny alienated by the very notion of cultural roots and traditional notions of communitas.

The central issue is not, however, merely a question of tradition versus modernity, though this is doubtless a key and important factor in the tension between town and country. The central issue is connected to what the Catholic Church has termed “subsidiarity.” The principal objection to the banning of hunting is that the urban proletariat had no right to override the wishes of the majority of people in the countryside to pursue their ancient traditions unmolested. No foxes are hunted in Hampstead or in Birmingham. No stags are pursued through the streets of Liverpool or Manchester. What right, therefore, do the people of these areas have to dictate what the people of Much Wenlock or Moreton-in-the-Marsh can or can’t do in the fields surrounding their villages? Why should the tradition-oriented folk of the English shires be forced to conform to the conventions of what Evelyn Waugh described “as our own deplorable epoch”? Why should the civilized remnant of England be forced to practice the new barbarism of our modern cities? These, as I say, are the key questions raised by the banning of hunting.

We have the same thing here already with respect to gun ownership, and our traditional forms of field sport will sooner or later inevitably also face threats of legal prohibition inspired by urban intolerance.
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Hat tip to Steve Bodio.

Faced with a tyrannical ban on Hunting, the British countryside responded this year with an increased turnout for Boxing Day hunt meetings.

The infamous February 2005 Hunt Ban, enacted by Britain’s Labour Party as a gesture of class animosity and urban spite, banned hunting par force du chien (i.e., the traditional pursuit and reduction to possession of the quarry by a pack of hounds), but included certain loopholes: drag hunts (i.e., hunts in which the pack hunts an artificially created line of scent), are lawful; and hounds can be used to follow a scent and to flush out a fox, which may then be pursued by no more than two dogs, and ultimately shot or taken by means of falconry. Consequently, the Telegraph reports:

In Buckinghamshire, for instance, a good time was had chasing a scent line across country, while the Cheshire rode out with two hounds and an eagle owl, as solemnly permitted by Act of Parliament.

These new, officially sanctioned forms of hunting might seem daft but, objectively considered, they are no more so than the traditional version.

The point of the [fox] hunt, after all, was always highly necessary pest control, and that in itself is a pretty joyless business. But an accumulation of seasonal rituals, special drinks and menus, private language and silly clothes turned an onerous obligation into a community festival, and the native absurdity of it was always part of the enjoyment.

So if the opponents of hunting thought that the spirit of traditional countrymen would be broken by making them ride with an owl, or chase a false scent before accidentally encountering a fox (as though that had never happened before), they were rather pitifully missing the point. Hunting was always absurd, because fun usually is.

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Earlier reports.