Foxhunting Life with Horse and Hound

Karen Myers photo

Huntsman Dennis Downing has moved from the Montreal Hunt (QC) to take up the horn at the Saxonburg Hunt (PA). That position became available when former Saxonburg huntsman Hugh Robards decided to make a move of his own.

Downing has been at Montreal for just one season after having hunted hounds at the Blue Ridge Hunt (VA) for eleven seasons. His current move is of special significance to him as both he and his wife Sue are now U.S. citizens.

“I’m very pleased to return to the States as a citizen,” said Downing. “And I’m happy to be working with a smaller hunt, but one with a very enthusiastic membership.”

The British-born and -trained huntsman has been in professional hunt service for forty-one years. Starting in 1972 as second horseman to the North Cotswold, Downing went on—as is the custom in English hunt service—to whip-in to six hunts over a ten-year period: the Croome, East Sussex, Llangibby, High Peak, Pendle Forest and Craven, and Meynell.

He carried the horn for fifteen years in England for the Llangibby, South Tetcott, and Croome, before moving to the U.S. as huntsman to the Mooreland Hunt (AL). There he discovered a new quarry—the coyote! He remained at Mooreland for three years after which he moved to the Blue Ridge.

Downing is no stranger to Saxonburg MFH Floyd Wine. “I’ve known Dennis for ten years,” said Wine. “He sent me drafts from the Blue Ridge. I know he’s a solid individual and a good man for hound breeding.”

Posted May 20, 2013

An unregistered pack of dogs is hunting in New York City according to Fox News.

The Ryders Alley Trencher-fed Society has been meeting weekly at promising fixtures throughout the city for about ten years. Recently they met near City Hall on a couple of nights to draw the nearby alleys with two Border Terriers, a Jack Russell Terrier cross, a wire-haired dachshund, a Patterdale Terrier, a cairn terrier, and a feist (a type bred in the American South that hunts squirrels).

As most foxhunters know, a trencher-fed pack is one where privately-owned dogs (or hounds) come together with their owners for a day’s (or night’s) hunting as a pack. This was common practice among foxhunters in the old South going back to Colonial times.

The Ryders Alley Trencher-fed Society’s quarry is rats, if you haven’t yet figured it out from their acronym. At their best, the dogs will work as a pack, each to a particular role. One will sniff out the quarry and speak; another will flush it out; and others will wait to catch it when it flees.

“Tally ho,” yelled one owner. After a bite, a shake, and a kill, the dog trots back with the rat in its mouth and relinquishes it to the owner. In one recent night, thirteen rats were accounted for inside of a half hour.

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has expressed its outrage, but Richard Reynolds, a New Jersey businessman and un-titled Master of the group, argues that rats that consume poison die more slowly and painfully.

In the nineteenth century, ratcatchers worked the streets of London with terriers and ferrets. The attire worn by foxhunters during the informal foxhunting season has its roots in the garb worn by these vermin-control practitioners.

Read the complete article by the Associated Press in Fox News.

Posted May 1, 2013

The Lonesome Palm Hounds (FL) has dissolved as of May 1, 2013. Established by the Kerry Kornacki Family in 1991, the hunt was Registered with the MFHA in 1994 and Recognized in 1996. The mixed pack of Crossbred, English, and Penn-Marydel hounds hunted red fox, gray fox, coyote, bobcat, and the drag in northeastern Florida and southeastern Georgia.

Within the past seven years the family received two devastating blows—first the death of eldest son Brandon and just last September the passing of Dr. Kerry Kornacki.

In a FaceBook posting, the family said, “Foxhunting and restoring old cars was Kerry's passion. To be in the woods and listen to his melodious horn blowing brought chills to everyone who had the pleasure and privilege to hear. He loved his hounds, and his hounds loved him and hunted just for him. That bond can not be replicated nor should we even attempt to try.”

As mother Deb and children Jenn and Travis (who served as Joint-MFH to his father) begin yet another healing process, they hope to find themselves welcome as visitors to other hunts in seasons to come.

Posted April 30, 2013

Flying Change: A Year of Racing and Family and Steeplechasing by Patrick Smithwick, Chesapeake Book Company, 2012, 360 pages, $30.00Writer/horseman Patrick Smithwick has been awarded the seventh annual Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award, for his 2012 autobiographical work Flying Change: A Year of Racing and Family and Steeplechasing. The work which was reviewed enthusiastically by Foxhunting Life is a follow-up to the author’s 2006 volume Racing My Father: Growing Up with a Riding Legend, itself a finalist for the inaugural Book Award in 2006. A $10,000 winner’s check and a custom-designed Irish crystal trophy were presented to Smithwick on April 10, 2013 during an evening reception at the Castleton Lyons farm in Lexington, Kentucky.

In Flying Change, the author—son and nephew respectively of Racing Hall of Fame horsemen Paddy and Mikey Smithwick and a rider possessed of his own bonafide credentials—relates the story of his return to steeplechase competition in his late forties, a quarter-century removed from his previous racing career. With humor, elegance, and charming introspection he recalls the difficult road back from complacent middle-age to athletic fitness…the doubts, the joys, and setbacks along the way in his quest to compete and to defy the passage of time.

Smithwick’s beautifully written book impressed all three judges, who remarked on the loving detail included therein, and the honesty—sometimes brutal—with which the story was told.

Submissions for the Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award came from all over the world, included among them histories, biographies, fiction, and a volume on equine law. In addition to the winner, finalists for 2012 were: Kentucky Derby Dreams: The Making of Thoroughbred Champions, by Susan Nusser; and The Garrett Gomez Story: A Jockey’s Journey Through Addiction and Salvation, by Rudolph Valier Alvarado, with Garrett Gomez.

Dr. Ryan, a successful businessman who founded Europe’s Ryanair airline in 1985, loved horse racing and a good story. In 2006 he tipped his hat to both by launching the Castleton Lyons Book Award, which with $10,000 in prize money quickly drew entries from some of the world’s foremost sporting authors. Although Dr. Ryan passed away the following year, the contest now named for him has since been carried on by his son Shane, president of Castleton Lyons.

Judges for the competition were Kay Coyte, managing editor of the Washington Post-Bloomberg News Service; HRTV broadcaster and producer Caton Bredar; and attorney and author Milton C. Toby, winner of the 2011 Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award for Dancer’s Image: The Forgotten Story.

Posted April 29, 2013