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People
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Written by Norman Fine
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Melvin Poe celebrating his ninetieth birthday
Douglas Lees photo
Hounds were screaming, and the huntsman was cooking. A cattle guard loomed ahead—a coop to the left and a gate to the right. The huntsman veered left.
"Melvin," someone yelled, "the gate’s on the right!"
"Melvin just kept kicking on, right over the coop," recalled Joe Conner, shaking his head and grinning in wonder.
Conner, who has whipped-in to Melvin for years at Bath County (VA), didn’t resurrect that story out of a distant past. It had happened only weeks before Melvin Poe’s ninetieth birthday celebration.
A month or so earlier, I had recognized the same notes of awe and wonder as I stood chatting with Brian Smith, my farrier, about Melvin’s upcoming ninetieth birthday.
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Hunt Reports
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Written by Alexis Macaulay, MFH
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Anytime I see Melvin Poe, I always make a point to speak to him and show him his Florida strain of the Orange County red ring-neck foxhounds. He’s always so approachable and friendly and, of course, always interested in the red rings. In fact, last year at the Virginia Foxhound Show, I nearly missed one of our classes because I was talking to him just outside the ring. Luckily, Mac came running over and told me to get in there!
Our association with Orange County began in 1996, during our first season, when Kerry Glass, former Master and huntsman of the Norfolk Hunt (MA), contacted Melvin and arranged for us the draft of Orange County Boots, Bundles, and Britches. After our very first breeding to Boots, we instantly shifted our previously tri-color pack to red. Whenever we come to Virginia, we visit the Orange County kennels. It’s a ritual.
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Norm Fine's Blog
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Written by Norman Fine
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The young lady was waiting in line—a long line, all the way outside the building—at the Virginia Foxhound Show when a soft-spoken, older man started a casual conversation. Where are you from? What hunt? Did you bring hounds to the show? How are they bred? What is your country like? He was interested in all she had to tell him about her hounds and her hunt. Then he strolled off.
"Do you know who you were talking to?" gushed a friend nearby.
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