South Tyrone foxhounds of Northern Ireland at Minterburn / Noel Mullins photo
The League Against Cruel Sports has Northern Ireland in its cross-hairs. As we mentioned in a recent News piece, England's Hunting Act of 2004 does not apply in Northern Ireland. Now, the LCAS wants to change that.
Britain―after having attacked, harried, and banned the sport of foxhunting―now finds itself missing the hedgerows built and maintained by foxhunters. Britain is missing her hedges not only for esthetic reasons but for practical reasons as well: carbon capture and the battle against global warming.
Robert Lane Fox, writing in the Financial Times, said, “The finest hedges in Britain are those planted and cared for by hunters: even as legal trail hunters, they want to be able to jump them with pleasure on horseback. For that reason, swaths of Leicestershire, say, or Herefordshire have been transformed and treasured. If hunters knock a hole in them they are promptly fenced at their own expense and cut and laid so as to grow back.
The puma (mountain lion, cougar), fourth largest species in the cat family, typically weighing a hundred or more pounds, coexists with the only other top predator in the Andes, the Andean fox at nineteen pounds.
Many hunts in North America during my hunting lifetime—just fifty years...a brief period in the scheme of thing—have migrated by necessity from foxhunting to virtually all coyote hunting.
Many of these hunts, whether by the size and nature of their countries or their long foxhunting traditions, would prefer to continue hunting the fox as opposed to the coyote. Conventional wisdom suggests that because the coyote and the fox compete for the same diet, the coyote will kill the foxes upon arrival in his new country or drive the fox away. This is certainly true in many areas and has been noted with dismay. But can the coyote and the fox somehow coexist?
Surely, one of the thrills of the foxhunting field is the sound of the huntsman’s horn. When huntsman and hounds are out of sight, the horn keeps the knowledgeable foxhunter informed as to the progress of the hunt.
When the huntsman doubles it in covert, that’s a good time to check your girth. When you hear the Gone Away, you watch your Field Master and anticipate that moment when the saddle tosses you standing in your stirrups and dancing to that seductive three-beat rhythm. The knowledgeable foxhunter can distinguish when the huntsman is blowing Gone to Ground to celebrate a successful conclusion, or simply collecting hounds after a loss. But have you ever tried to blow the thing yourself? Not easy!
Surely, one of the thrills of the foxhunting field is the sound of the huntsman’s horn. When huntsman and hounds are out of sight, the horn keeps the knowledgeable foxhunter informed as to the progress of the hunt.
When the huntsman doubles it in covert, that’s a good time to check your girth. When you hear the Gone Away, you watch your Field Master and anticipate that moment when the saddle tosses you standing in your stirrups and dancing to that seductive three-beat rhythm. The knowledgeable foxhunter can distinguish when the huntsman is blowing Gone to Ground to celebrate a successful conclusion, or simply collecting hounds after a loss. But have you ever tried to blow the thing yourself? Not easy!
MFHA Director of Hunting Andrew Barclay
In a September 2, 2020 letter to members of the Masters of Foxhounds Association (MFHA), president Tony Leahy made the following announcement.
“After an extensive search process, it is my pleasure to announce that Andrew Barclay has been appointed as the Director of Hunting.
“Andrew’s experience and knowledge of foxhunting combined with his work with the MFHA to further its mission has proven that he meets the needs of our members. Over the past 14 years he successfully led the Professional Development Program as well as supporting a variety of MFHA initiatives.
Now? This instant? Free of charge and legal? Something by a world-class author?
Edith Somerville, MFH, West Carbery Foxhounds riding Tarbrush. She was the first female MFH in Ireland, an author and artist as well, and, with her cousin Violet Martin, wrote some of the most hilarious and literate books on Irish foxhunting ever published. / Wikimedia Commons photo
Something perhaps by Somerville and Ross, G.J. Whyte Melville, and other brilliant writers of foxhunting stories as well as classic works of English literature. Many are in the public domain and may be downloaded and freely reproduced.
In 1971, Michael Hart, a student at the University of Illinois, conceived the most wonderful notion. He had access to a computer that was part of the government sponsored research network that ultimately became the Internet. He set himself a goal to make the ten thousand most consulted books available to the public digitally by the end of the twentieth century. He plucked a copy of the Declaration of Independence from his backpack, and it became the first Project Gutenburg e-text. Hart named the project after the German printer Johannes Gutenburg, who revolutionized the printing press.
Today, there are about forty thousand texts in the Gutenburg collection. For most works you have the option to download the full text as an epub to be read online (even with images); you can download Kindle files with or without images; or simply download plain text.
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