Foxhunting Life with Horse and Hound

The Blue Ridge Hunt (VA) will welcome in a very few days the arrival from England of two new professional staff members—huntsman Guy Allman and first whipper-in Thomas Hopson.

Huntsman Allman comes to Blue Ridge after twelve years hunting hounds at the Mid Devon Foxhounds in England. Before that he was kennel huntsman at the Golden Valley, first whipper-in to huntsman Anthony Adams at the Heythrop, and kennel huntsman and whipper-in to Nigel Peel, MFH at the North Cotswold and earlier at the Chiddingfold, Leconfield and Cowdray.

Tom Hopson is a Yorkshire man, a graduate of the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester, a keen rugby player, and a dedicated horseman. Oh yes, he hunts, too! He was first whipper-in at the Berkeley for a season.

The two will need much support from the hunt membership as they take over an unfamiliar pack in equally unfamiliar country.

Posted April 30, 2012

Kellie Witte piloted her Twin Kiss to a second victory in two starts this season in the Junior Field Masters Chase.The sixty-third running of the Blue Ridge Hunt Point-to-Point Races was held Saturday, March 10, 2012 under a brilliant blue sky and over good footing at the Woodley Farm racecourse.

Two horse-rider combinations repeated their winning ways of the previous week at Thornton Hill: Twin Kiss ridden by Kellie Witte in the Junior Field Masters Chase and Mischief with Annie Yeager aboard in the Amateur/Novice Rider Hurdle Race.

Trainer Jimmy Day posted a win and two second place finishes. Top jockey was Carl Rafter with two wins and a second. Rafter rode Day's winner, Trappe d'Or owned by Bruce Smart in the Maiden Flat Race; Zoe Valvo's Triton Light to the wire in the Open Hurdle Race; and posted a second on Red Ghost in the Novice Timber.

Jockey Jeff Murphy rode trainer Teddy Mulligan's The Editor to a win in the Novice Timber Race and posted two second place finishes for the day as well.

Huntsman Robert Howarth has been working his way south. He will carry the horn at the Blue Ridge Hunt in Virginia this year, arriving after a season hunting hounds at the Myopia Hunt in Massachusetts and before that the Hamilton Hunt in Ontario. Howarth will succeed Dennis Downing, now completing his eleventh season at Blue Ridge.

British-born Howarth started his professional hunt career as whipper-in at the Belvoir at age sixteen. After two seasons at the Belvoir he moved on, as is the custom of those in hunt service in England, and whipped-in at several other hunts for the next fifteen years.

He then went to the Holderness as huntsman and carried the horn there for eleven seasons. After twenty-seven seasons of hunt service in England, Howarth emigrated to Canada to hunt hounds at the Hamilton Hunt and then moved on to Myopia.

Howarth, who is steeped in the breeding of the Old English foxhound from his experiences at the Belvoir and the Holderness, will take over a pack of modern English and modern English-American crosses bred for the past eleven years by Blue Ridge Master Linda Armbrust.

Blue Ridge is still seeking to hire a professional whipper-in for the 2012-2013 season.

Posted January 6, 2012

Helen Laverack photo

Fifteen Cleveland Bays convened for a celebration of the breed at a special meeting of the Blue Ridge foxhounds at Farnley. / Matthew Klein photo

How fitting that a large contingent of Cleveland Bay horses should convene at Farnley Farm for a special foxhunt with the Blue Ridge Hunt on Saturday, November 19, 2011.

The late Alexander Mackay-Smith, a past Master of the Blue Ridge, and his wife Joan purchased Farnley, near White Post, Virginia, in the 1930s. During Mackay-Smith’s travels in England over that decade he decided that the Cleveland Bay horse made the ideal field hunter. He imported and bred Cleveland Bays and introduced the breed to foxhunters and to other horsemen in this country.

Today the breed is dangerously rare, with only about five hundred purebreds in the world and less than two hundred in North America.

Emily Digney and Mr. Goodbar, Farmington Hunt, were Champion, 13 and Over.With more than two hundred entries, organizers Douglas Wise, MFH Old Dominion Hounds (VA), and Iona Pillion, Blue Ridge Hunt (VA), were thrilled to observe that the 2011 Junior North American Field Hunter Championship drew the biggest fields to date in the nine years of this unique trial. The program listed twenty-one finalists in Hilltoppers, twenty-two in First Field 12 & Under, and twenty-one in First Field 13 & Over. On November 6, 2011, trailers from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia gathered in the heart of the Warrenton Hunt country for what is turning into a huge event that bodes well for the future of foxhunting.