Ghost Dog

The Amazing Colors of Fauna and Flora

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Picture of the Week

By Norman Fine

Photograph by Liz Callar

Photographer Liz Callar says this was “just a great moment after trying for ten years to get a great Orange County fox!”

Liz not only captured her fox—one that invites me to rub my hands on its fur—but a photograph that includes all the colors of nature both in crisp focus and in fuzzy pastels. Every color in the visible spectrum is represented in this lovely composition of a graceful and healthy fox standing alertly in the midst of its natural world.

Click for larger image.

Posted December 26, 2018

On the Grass With Blue Ridge and Thornton Hill

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Picture of the Week

By Liz Callar

Photographs by Liz Callar

By the north-western banks of the Shenandoah River, just under the sweep of the Blue Ridge Mountains, huntsman Beth Opitz, MFH, Thornton Hill Hounds (VA) readies to move off to the first draw with her pack of Penn-Marydel foxhounds. Husband and Joint-Master Erwin Opitz (in scarlet) helps to keep the pack together.

The joint-meet at the southern-most end of the Blue Ridge Hunt country at Blue Ridge Master Jeff LeHew’s beautiful Shannon Hill fixture was held on Tuesday, December 4, 2018. It was new country for Thornton Hill’s Penn-Marydels, and a different experience for the Blue Ridge hosts who regularly follow their Crossbred pack of Modern English and American lines, but also includes some pure Old English, pure Fell, and crosses on these bloodlines as well. (See “A Level Pack or a Team of Specialists?”)

Why Some Autumn Hunts are Unforgettable

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Picture of the Week

By Norman Fine

Frances Player photo

Early every season, foxhunters get to sit for a special moment on a horse, in the midst of the natural world, as the rising sun ignites crystals of dew, and the slanting light creeps across the once dark fields. All is silent but for nature’s sounds, and then...

“...the sounds of the hunting horn and this year’s young entry could be heard in the cornfield, giving hope for a promising season ahead,” said Heather Player, professional whipper-in for the Keswick Hunt (VA).

Heather’s mother, Frances Player, took this lovely photo.

Posted September 14, 2018

Discovering the World In Springtime's Glory

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Picture of the Week

By Janet Ladner

Janet Ladner is a sporting photographer in the UK who shoots spectacular foxhunting and beagling images in the southwestern tip of England on the cliffs of Cornwall. This young cub and two other littermates were whelped in this huge earth covering about twenty feet of a granite stone hedge not far from the village of Ludgvan, writes Ladner.

“There are usually cubs in this field each year, and it’s where we walk our dogs regularly. I’m not sure how long they will be here as the potato crop is about to be harvested,” says Ladner.

She has been watching the earth for a couple of weeks, and used a Nikon D7200 with a 300 mm lens for this shot.