Big Year Ahead for Junior Field Hunter Championships

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Juniors

By Norman Fine

The 2017 Finals of the JNAFHC will be hosted by the Belle Meade Hunt (GA) on November 10-12. In this photo, Belle Meade Masters and  juniors celebrate an Opening Meet on the front steps of the clubhouse, Boots Hall. Masters, standing in the back row are: (left) Epp Wilson, (middle) Dr. Gary Wilkes, and (right) Charlie Lewis.

How much foxhunting excitement can juniors buy for $75.00 these days? A junior with turbo-jet-powered horse transport could conceivably hunt with up to twenty-two packs of hounds in twelve states from the East to the Mid-West in qualifying meets over a three-month period this fall. Juniors without such a machine will still find several meets in their region plus an exciting weekend at the finals.

Information for the coming season’s schedule of meets and a single entry form for the entire series is available on the JNAFHC website. MFHA President Tony Leahy, MFH will be Chief Judge at the championship finals the weekend of November 10 to 12.

Some years ago, as the field was walking through the country during one qualifying meet, a child stared at an attractive house and asked a question that warmed the hearts of the organizers.  “Why,” she asked, “would someone build a house in the middle of such nice hunting country?”

Sculpting With Paint: The Art of Brooke Major

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Art

"Being original is for true artists," says Brooke Major.

While auditing art classes at the fine art school in Paris, France, Brooke Major, an American artist, was told that painting was finished. There was nothing new to be discovered. Since her passions included both painting and sculpting, she decided to prove the art professor’s statement wrong, and sculpt paint.

“I have chosen monochrome white,” said Major, “since white is a reflection of light and can be changed into any color." By changing the color of the lighting, by lighting from different directions, and even by lighting from behind, the optical illusions produced by a single painting may be completely transformed.

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General

Pensioned

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Literature

By Duncan Fife

From Scarlet Blue and Green: A Book of Sporting Verse by Duncan Fife, with Illustrations by Cecil Aldin, MacMillan and Company, London, 1932

I am Dan—ten years old, and a little bit blind—
But it doesn’t annoy me, for people, I find,
Seem to vie with each other in being most kind,
                                                  For I’m pensioned.

When the weather is wet and the wind blowing cold,
And the others troop out for their walk when they’re told,
I curl up in my chair by the fire, for I’m old—
                                                  And I’m pensioned.

Caelinn Leahy’s Horse Hunts, Wins $50,000 Grand Prix

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Juniors

By Norman Fine

Caelinn Leahy and Splendor go airborne, celebrating their Grand Prix Jumper win at HITS Balmoral in July. "He's so laid back out hunting!" Caelinn says. / Andrew Ryback photography

Back in the day, horsemen and women used to show or event their horses in the summer and foxhunt the same horses in the fall and winter. We don’t see that any more, except maybe in Ireland where they still believe that foxhunting teaches horses about some of the fun in life, how to handle the terrain, and how to get themselves out of trouble by finding that fifth leg when needed.

Fifteen-year-old Caelinn Leahy, who has a connection to Irish ways through her dad, Tony, foxhunts an eighteen-year-old bay Hanoverian gelding. His name is Splendor, and he’s a show jumper, too. On July 22nd, Caelinn and Splendor won the $50,000 HITS Balmoral Grand Prix in Illinois.

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William Faulkner and the Farmington Hunt

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People

By Elizabeth H. Sutton

(l-r) William Faulkner and Farmington huntsman Grover Vandevender share a flask.  /  George Barkley photo

William Faulkner, two-time National Book Award, Nobel Prize, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, came to Charlottesville, Virginia from Oxford, Mississippi in the last decade of his life. He arrived two years after his daughter Jill moved to Charlottesville with her husband Paul Summers, who graduated from law school at the University of Virginia and was working as city attorney. Soon, Faulkner, Jill, and Paul were hunting with the Farmington Hunt. Jill would become Master in 1968 and serve in that capacity for forty years.

Faulkner had a reputation among hunt members for being game and fearless to his fences, despite having taken up serious foxhunting only since his arrival. He’d ridden since childhood, foxhunted in Tennessee, and loved it. However, he experienced a couple of serious riding accidents, and died in 1962 at the age of sixty-four from complications arising from a fall.