The Hunts of the United States and Canada - Their Masters, Hounds and Histories

HUNTSMAN

THE BERKSHIRE HUNT

IN the spring of 1903, a few gentlemen who spent the summer and autumn months in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, of whom the moving spirit was the late Arthur Sturgis Dixey, Esq., decided to establish a small pack of draghounds, to be supported by subscription from the summer residents living in and about Lenox. Mr. Dixey, being aware that Mr. A. H. Higginson, with whom he happened to be acquainted, was giving up a pack of beagles which had shown very good sport after a drag in Middlesex County, headed a committee which, after visiting the kennels, eventually purchased the entire pack.

Starting in this small way, the Berkshire Hunt has grown, until now it has been recognized by the National Steeplechase and Hunt Association and has a large following.

The beagles soon proved to be too slow to please the Field, owing to the character of the country, in which stone walls and snake fences predominate; and the first Master, Clinton Gilmore, Esq., soon found it necessary to give up the beagles and procure a draft of English foxhounds. Some of these came from the well-known Meadow Brook pack on Long Island, while others were recruited from the kennels of the Myopia Hunt at Hamilton.

Mr. Gilmore did his best to induce the Field to give at least part of the time to fox-hunting; but the frequent occurrence of wire, the bane of all Masters in America, made it next to impossible, and the project was abandoned with reluctance for the time being.

In the spring of 1905, the Master’s health forced him to resign, as he found that the task was too great for him, and the present Master, David T. Dana, Esq., was elected in his stead.

During the summer, a draft of ten couples of hounds was imported from England, coming partly from the Warwickshire and partly from the Pytchley, and with these as a foundation, the huntsman, David Somerville, late of the Grafton, has been able to breed a fast and fairly level pack.

At present, there are fourteen couples of hounds in the kennels, and the Hunt Staff consists of the Master, who hunts the hounds himself; David Somerville, kennel huntsman, and two whippers-in, Wilde and Peterson.

The Master formerly took hounds out but two days a week on the drag; but during the season of 1907, fox-hunting was inaugurated, with fair success. At the beginning, the main objection to this better form of sport was as has been said, the prevalence of wire fencing throughout the country, but a Wire Fund being established in 1905, and during the last two seasons being generously contributed to, all the fences in the hunting country are now carefully panelled, owing to the universal co-operation of the farmers; which enables the Field to follow hounds wherever they go. In later years, perhaps, the Berkshire M. F. H. will become as keen on fox-hunting as he now is at the drag game, and of course this will mean more hounds, of better quality, and an eventual abandonment of drag-hunting, as has been the case in another Massachusetts Hunt, the Middlesex.

The country hunted consists, for the most part, of rolling pastures, interspersed with the well-cultivated estates of the summer residents. The attitude of the landowners is all that could be desired, and the Hunt is growing in popularity with them each year.

AUTUMN STEEPLECHASES, 1905

In return for the courtesy shown the Hunt by the farmers, a Breakfast is tendered annually at the residence of some one of the wealthy summer colony, who are almost all members of the Hunt, to the farmers over whose land the Hunt rides. At this time, also, is held the annual Horse Show, the programme of which always includes classes for farmers’ horses, with large cash prizes. The sport-loving residents of Lenox and the neighboring towns have joined the hunting fraternity in all their projects and, during the past four years, a small race meeting has been inaugurated, which is now held under the auspices of the National Steeplechase and Hunt Association. These meetings, starting at first with practically local entries only, have grown to such proportions that in 1907 there were seven races, with a total of seventy-eight entries. This spirit of steady improvement has marked all the proceedings of the Hunt, and great things are to be anticipated in the future.

THE BLACKSTONE VALLEY HUNT

IN the autumn of 1906, the Messrs. Paul Whitin, James E. Whitin and Leon W. Campbell, decided to try the experiment of putting together a number of hounds which each owned, as a scratch pack. Invitations were sent to a number of their friends, making regular fixtures for meets for a month, and arranging for Hunt Breakfasts at their various estates on some of the days of meeting. Mr. Paul Whitin, who had had a good deal of experience with foxhounds, having been honorary whipper-in to Mr. Smith’s pack (the Grafton) until 1905, carried the horn himself and managed to show such good sport that the meets proved much more popular than had been anticipated; the enthusiasm aroused ultimately leading to the formation of the Blackstone Valley Hunt in January of 1907. Mr. Whitin was, as a matter of course, elected M. F. H. and, considering the short time in which he has had the hounds, has developed a very fair working pack.

The Master is a rabid American hound man, whom no amount of argument can stir from his conviction that English hounds are absolutely unsuited to New England fox-hunting conditions. The following statement quoted from a letter to the authors, shows his position quite clearly: "We use American hounds entirely, as we find that, with careful training, they can be handled about as easily as English. So many parts of our country are either unrideable, or so rough, and a horse’s pace through them is necessarily so very slow, that we need hounds which will hunt by themselves, as it is quite impossible to stay with them. We have not been breeding very extensively as yet, but have had fair results with what we have undertaken.

PAUL WHITIN, ESQ., M.F.H.

"Some of our hounds were bred from a strain which Mr. Campbell has developed along lines of his own for a number of years; some of them are from the South, and we find that those from the Walkers in Kentucky give the best all-round results of any we have bought.

We also find that the Campbell hounds, which have a distant cross on the old-fashioned New England foxhound, have very keen noses and are very useful on dry, windy, poor-scenting days, when Southern hounds are relatively at a disadvantage.

The country over which the Blackstone Valley Hounds hunt is rather rough and wooded and there is also a good deal of swamp-land. The big woodlands are fairly rideable, and most of the open fields are bounded by stone walls which are usually rather low, but as the land is apt to be very rough on either side of them, the jumping is extremely trappy and the horses which go best are very quiet and clever jumpers. A hot horse is really dangerous in many of the rough pastures and thick woodlands. The landowners are, on the whole, well disposed, being only too glad to do all they can to keep down the foxes, which are steadily on the increase. Owing to the character of the country it is impossible to do any systematic earth-stopping, hence all the chances are in favor of the fox, and hounds are rarely able to kill above ground.

Hunting men who are lucky enough to have a good grass country over which they can enjoy a sustained gallop, scarcely realize the tremendous difficulties of fox-hunting in parts of New England, but to those who are great lovers of the niceties of hound-work, as are Mr. Whitin and many of the members of the Blackstone Valley Hunt, the abundance of foxes more than makes up for the difficult character of the country. As the immortal Beckford says: The countries which are favorable to horses are seldom so to hounds.

THE BLUE RIDGE HUNT

THE Blue Ridge Hunt, which was founded in 1888, with headquarters at Millwood, Clarke County, Virginia, is blessed with one of the most beautiful hunting countries in America. The large rolling Shenandoah Valley, with the Blue Ridge on the east and the Allegheny mountains on the west, affords a variety of country which it would be hard to equal; strong woodland coverts where the foxes are plentiful, stony upland pastures and acres of good blue-grass are there, while the fencing is of every variety—stone walls, post-and-rails, Virginia snake fences, and last, but not least, alas! the wire, the greatest curse of the hunting man, in America as well as in England. And, worst of all, on the increase here, as in many other places. If the farmers only realized the truth of the poem at the end of this volume, they would never put up a strand of wire again; but even with this drawback, the followers of the Blue Ridge hounds have little to complain of, for the Master shows good sport on Wednesdays and Saturdays from September 15th to April 15th—a long season for any country.

EDWARD GAY BUTLER, ESQ., M.F.H

The pack consists of about a dozen couples of American hounds; a very fair lot, which were bred in the Shenandoah Valley and hence adapted to the country hunted.

The type of horse most used is a half or three-quarter bred one, as the pace is not particularly fast and there is a good deal of very trappy jumping. Hunters that have been schooled with the Blue Ridge hounds are to be found in many of the northern countries. Pendennis, a stallion of great reputation as a getter of hunters, stood in this section for a great many years, and one of the best lady’s hunters the authors have ever seen was a brown gelding by Pendennis named The Wizard, owned by Mrs. Henderson of Millwood, which has been hunted regularly with the Blue Ridge and Middlesex packs.

When the Hunt was founded in 1888, Dr. Gwynn Harrison was elected M. F. H., and continued to hold that office until 1896, when George Jones, Esq., carried the horn, only to be followed in 1897 by Arthur Bevan, Esq., who remained in office for a year, when Dr. Harrison again took the pack, remaining in office until 1904, when Edward Gay Butler, Esq., of Berryville was elected. Mr. Butler built quarters for the hounds at his own place, Annefield, and has remained in office ever since, hunting the hounds himself, and showing excellent sport, the Fields averaging from twenty to twenty-five in number.

The attitude of the landowners is most friendly, much of the country hunted over in Clarke County being owned by members, and an annual luncheon is given to all landowners over whose property the Hunt rides.

Foxes are plentiful, and of two varieties, red foxes predominating along the Shenandoah River, while the grays are to be found in abundance along the Opeguon.

THE BLUE RUN HUNT

ONE of the younger Hunts in the vicinity of Charlottesville, Virginia, is the Blue Run, whose kennels are located at Waverly Farm, in Somerset, Orange County. In December 1905, a number of gentlemen, landowners who controlled most of the hunting country around Somerset and who had been hunting from time to time with the Charlottesville and Keswick packs, came to the conclusion that they might as well support a Hunt of their own and, joining together under the Presidency of Mr. William DuPont, formed the Blue Run