Foxhunting Life with Horse and Hound

Foreground (l-r): Michael Brown, huntsman and Oliver Brown, MFH, Rappahannock Hunt with host Epp Wilson, MFH, Belle Meade Hunt /  Karen Raiford photo

This article—about foxhunters on the road and the joys of visiting—is being published in several installments: 1. A Huntsman’s Perspective, 2. One Master’s Perspective, 3. Another Master’s Perspective, and 4. A Member’s Perspective. Here is our second installment.

I first met the Ambassador of Foxhunting, Ben Hardaway, MFH, of the Midland Foxhounds (GA) in 1973. It was Ben’s first trip to Virginia, and I was in awe of this traveling foxhunting circus. His members were so excited as were his hounds to show their adaptation to a different territory. Many more times did he come to hunt with us, and I also had the pleasure of being invited to hunt with him in his country. But I envied being able to take your own hounds to strange territories. So after hunting in Midland several times and becoming enthused, my son Michael and I made our first trek south with hounds in 1999.

On the Road: A Huntsman’s Perspective

Visitors from the Rappahannock Hunt at Memorial Gate in the Hitchcock Woods for a meet with the Aiken Hounds / Karen Raiford photo

This article—about foxhunters on the road and the joys of visiting—is being published in four installments: 1. A Huntsman’s Perspective, 2. One Master’s Perspective, 3. Another Master’s Perspective, and 4. A Member’s Perspective. Here is the first installment.

On January 20, 2012, members of the Rappahannock Hunt left the familiar hills and mountains of Virginia for the mostly flat, somewhat sandy hunting territory along the border between South Carolina and Georgia. Some of us have been making this pilgrimage for more than fifteen years now.

Harry Stimpson photo

Clifford Hunt, a genuine old horseman and a passionate foxhunter, passed away on December 2, 2010 at age eighty-four. I can’t begin to tally the number of individuals whose lives this man changed. He was a teacher who created many dedicated foxhunters. He was a hosteller, and, with his wife and partner Laura, he provided visiting foxhunters with bed, meals, hirelings, and transport at his well-known Hunting Box in Boyce, Virginia for twenty-six years (1978–2004). Sportsmen came to The Hunting Box from Canada and all the northern states to experience foxhunting in Virginia. Many loved it so much they moved here.

Leica eventing at age 24. She placed third because she was too fast cross country.

Leica was a remarkable horse whose career took her from incorrigible youngster with a vicious buck to an impressive third-place finish at age twenty-four in the grueling MFHA Centennial Field Hunter Championship. She was still hunting and showing at age twenty-seven, when she had to be humanely euthanized as the result of a pasture injury.

With her bloodlines and dazzling good looks, Leica was primed to be an outstanding dressage horse. An imported bay with touches of white, she was registered Hanoverian (by Lindberg, out of St. Pr. Kari) who was also entered in the main stud book of the RPSI (Rheinland Pfalz Saar International) and Holsteiner registries.

But after abuse from trainers who pushed her too far too fast, Leica had other ideas, says owner Julie Whitlock McKee of Grantville, Georgia. McKee acquired the hard-headed mare at age four after the trainers gave up on her. The pair did not get off to an auspicious start, with Leica rearing the first time McKee threw a leg over her. Rearing and bucking would become a regular occurrence.

Liz Callar photos

By March 7, Virginia’s record-setting snowfall had disappeared, but the rivers were running high and fast.

“Some of those hounds had never seen water like that,” said organizer Greg Schwartz, huntsman for the Bull Run Hunt (VA). “Thought we’d have to get life jackets for some of them,” he quipped.