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Horseman on a US Cavalry mount at Fort Riley, Texas
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From Foxhunting Life archives, now that we all have more reading time on our hands, here is this issue’s Bonus Article to fatten the content for our subscribers and to open more articles, previously restricted, to our non-paying registrants. We were reminded of Sir Arthure Conan Doyle's poem since we've been talking about Dartmoor in recent issues.
Janet Ladner photo
Photographer Janet Ladner was out following the Mid-Devon Foxhounds when she came across these wild ponies taking shelter from the snow. I have hunted on Dartmoor, in England’s West Country, and found it to be a fascinating landscape of bleakness and beauty, with visible reminders of cultures that serially take one back in time all the way to prehistory. While hunting, one comes across ditches left by tin mining activity that began in pre-Roman times and continued to the twentieth century, evidence of farm tillage going back to the Bronze age in the parallel rows running across the slopes, and standing stones erected in prehistoric times. During quiet moments when hounds check, one can allow the imagination to soar.
For me, Dartmoor also conjures memories of cold winter boyhood days at home, reading the spooky mystery, Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle. It was the third of his Sherlock Holmes novels to be published, and this Dartmoor mystery filled my young head with delicious terror.
By coincidence, Janet Ladner’s photos of the ponies on Dartmoor arrived just as writer/editor Steve Price sent me this foxhunting poem, written by Arthur Conan Doyle. A confluence of Dartmoor and Doyle. Who knew he wrote foxhunting poetry?
John Anderson, writer/editor/foxhunter / Douglas Lees photoIt’s been said that a “highbrow” is someone who can listen to Rossini’s "William Tell Overture" and not think of the Lone Ranger. In the hunting world, that might be said of anyone who’s never heard of Jeff Foxworthy’s “You Might Be A Redneck” jokes. Leader of the Blue Collar Comedy genre, Foxworthy’s shtick consists of such gems as:
If you can recognize your friends by the sound of their mufflers, you might be a redneck.
If your school fight song was “Dueling Banjos, …”
If you’ve ever cut your grass and found a car, …”
If you refer to the sixth grade as “My senior year, …”
Borrowing from this concept, herewith are a few examples of “You Might Be A Foxhunter.” (Some of these apply to horse people more broadly, but all of them apply to foxhunters.) So here we go.
Open Hurdle Race: (l-r) Praeceps (Alex Leventhal up) 4th; Orchestra Leader (Mell Boucher up) 1st; Noah And The Ark (Eddie Keating up) 2nd / Douglas Lees photo
Eleven-year-old Orchestra Leader, a grandson of Seattle Slew on the distaff side, has been winning Open Hurdle races for at least five years. Owned in his earlier racing days by the late Bruce Smart and trained by Jimmy Day, the brown gelding now races for Team Ollie, is trained by Lilith Boucher, and was ridden to the wire by Mell Boucher at the Warrenton Point-to-Point on Saturday, March 14, 2020. Orchestra Leader was the Leading Hurdle Horse in 2018 and won this same race over the same Airlie racecourse last year.
Judith on Parker, the Perfect
With the close of the recent hunting season, I’m feeling the need for some deep reflection since I fell six times. That’s right—six times—this season! Read on, as I evaluate each fall and its root cause.
Fall # 1: I was behind Ken Trogden when he and his horse, Moseby, took a bad jump over the coop into Gentlemen’s Hill. Ken hit the ground on landing and broke his wrist. My horse, Parker, and I were landing after jumping the coop just as Ken hit the ground and his air vest deployed. Parker spun at the sight and sound. I almost stuck it but, in the end, had to bail. When I ask myself how this ride went, I can hear Barbara Lee, one of my riding instructors, in my head, “You were following too close!” Okay. Mea Culpa.
HORSE-0 RIDER-1
What are you missing out on by cancelled events, and how are your horses helping to keep you occupied now that we are engaged in the newly-minted but necessary practise of social distancing? If you have such a story, share it with Foxhunting Life.
Over the next couple of months I was scheduled for book talks and signings at five libraries and at one of the oldest country clubs in the U.S. Of course, that schedule has gone by the boards along with your own schedules.
I have been publishing Foxhunting Life from my home office from the start, and can certainly continue to do so. Since publication of my new book, Blind Bombing: How Microwave Radar Brought the Allies to D-Day and Victory in Europe, just last December, I have also been giving talks and signing books at museums, libraries, bookstores, and cultural centers. I spoke to a large, knowledgeable, and engaged audience in Georgia at the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force with a ninety-six year old B-17 WWII pilot sitting in the front row. That was a thrill!
Watching huntsman and hounds draw across Dartmoor, 365 square miles of wild, open, and uniquely English moorland.
“I hope they’re feeding Royally properly,” murmured my grandmother (ninety-three), as she departed peacefully from this earth. Sixty years earlier, back in 1926, the foxhunter and show rider had won the ‘Girls Hunter’ class at London’s International Horse Show, riding her beloved Right Royal side-saddle, and I don’t think anything ever quite matched up. I’m gazing at her huge cup as I write.
Little did anyone dream that I’d continue the family equine theme, but earlier this year I opened a new business for experienced riders from around the world, offering riding and hunting holidays direct from my home, Wydemeet. Nestled in the heart of remotest Dartmoor—the wildest, most open landscape in Southern England—Wydemeet sits at the cusp of all four Dartmoor hunts: Dartmoor, South Devon, Spooners and West Dartmoor, and the Mid-Devon Foxhounds.
Point-to-Point host Larry Levy in the paddock for the first race over his new racecourse at The Hill with jockey Emme Fullilove. Levy’s Easy Exit reached the wire for a third place finish...preceded by two Irish-breds! / Douglas Lees photo
Saturday, March 7, 2020 marked the return of the Rappahannock Point-to-Point Races to the spring schedule after a twelve-year absence. Larry Levy had a brand new racecourse ready for entries at The Hill in Boston, Virginia, and, except for the two-horse Lady Rider Timber race, all races were well filled.
Of six races, Irish-bred horses won five! And in two of those races they finished one-two. In the First Division of the six-horse Open Flat race, Irish-breds placed first through fourth. Just saying.
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