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Science May be Hunting’s Best Friend

Is This the Hunting Horn of Will Goodall? - From The Belvoir to Zimbabwe

Hunting and Animal Welfare- A Principled Approach

The Iroquois Hunt and The Hound Welfare Fund - Hounds and Charity- The Story of Stalker

Covert Surveillance – Is there an Anti Hiding in Your Bushes?

Kaptain with a “K”- The Story of a Hound

Potential Issues with the Supplementary Feeding of Garlic in the Hunter

An Irish view of the harsh reality of the countryside - The Essence of Good Land Management is Murder

True Libertarians Will Support the Repeal of the Hunting Ban

Some Problems of the Chase

The Show Must Go On

With the Brookside Harriers

Thoughts on hunting while riding side-saddle - Think Young, Ride on, and Pray Often

A Lifetimes Pursuit

Huntsmen through history

Articles

Science May be Hunting’s Best Friend

For a long time, many anti-hunt protesters have argued that using hounds to hunt quarry species means that the numbers of hares, foxes, and other such animals are lower than would be the case if hunting were to be stopped.However, an article published in the Irish Examiner on 25th February 2010 clai...

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Is This the Hunting Horn of Will Goodall?

From The Belvoir to Zimbabwe

Could a nine-inch copper horn complete with case and covered in dents that was bought at auction in Zimbabwe, really be the one that might have belonged to one of the great huntsmen of all time: Will Goodall, who hunted the Belvoir hounds in England from 1842 until his death after a riding acciden...

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Hunting and Animal Welfare- A Principled Approach

In this article, Jim Barrington, who joined the League Against Cruel Sports in 1972, when he was 19, and was its Executive Director for seven years illustrates succinctly and dispassionately, why, in forcing through the Hunting Act for political ends, the Government struck a blow against the concep...

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The Iroquois Hunt and The Hound Welfare Fund

Hounds and Charity- The Story of Stalker

It’s not your usual hunt supporters’ fund. But when members of the Iroquois Hunt Club in Lexington, Kentucky, established the Hound Welfare Fund, they applied the hunt supporters’ model to a different area: retired foxhounds. The HWF is now in its 11th year of funding happy, dignified retirements fo...

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Covert Surveillance – Is there an Anti Hiding in Your Bushes?

A notable criminal trial has just been conducted at Bournemouth Magistrates Court. The prosecution case lasted 6 days, something of a record in a summary trial. The assembled witnesses, lawyers and experts, as well as the accused, were informed, at 6:30 on the evening of the sixth day, that the case...

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Kaptain with a “K”- The Story of a Hound

About nine years ago, I started my pack with mostly American Hounds. Their aggressive hunting style and outgoing temperaments were what attracted me. Also, it was very significant that when I asked the people I knew for hounds to start my pack with that I was given hounds from American packs, namely...

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Potential Issues with the Supplementary Feeding of Garlic in the Hunter

With the recent bad weather affecting the ability of horses to exercise properly and therefore maintain required fitness levels, many horse owners look to alternative ways of finding and maintaining a positive influence on their horses metabolism. As a result we like many others have added an incre...

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An Irish view of the harsh reality of the countryside

The Essence of Good Land Management is Murder

It's a simple truth that no Green politicians are elected by rural constituencies. Why? Because country people there know that nothing is naturally natural. Everything in the countryside is managed, either through the brutal methods of nature, or by the hand and will of man. The Irish countryside is...

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True Libertarians Will Support the Repeal of the Hunting Ban

"Tony, if you invoke the Parliament Act it will be the most illiberal act of the last century". The late Roy Jenkins was no foxhunter, but he was a libertarian and his advice to Tony Blair shortly before his death in 2003 encapsulates the challenge of the Hunting Act for those who claim to follow in...

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Some Problems of the Chase

Written by H.F.C and published in an early Bailys, the author’s thoughts on hunting cover the behaviour of the field, the quarry, casting and scent. Written over 100 years ago the observations are as relevant today as they were when written and are much more than just a historical footnote. I SUPPOS...

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The Show Must Go On

Entitled ‘Virginia Foxhounds Run Wild in Show’ the following edited report appeared in the New York Times of 23rd February 1913, and seems to show what happens if a hound pack does not practice ‘showing skills’ on the flags whilst at home. Today foxhounds are effectively canine ambassadors for hunti...

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With the Brookside Harriers

This Report on the Brookside Harriers was taken from an early Bailys – according to Rawdon B. Lee, Kennel Editor of "The Field," the Brookside were one of the oldest packs in the country and is recorded as hunting from at least 1770 though they were subsequently sold in 1903 and formed the Brighton ...

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Thoughts on hunting while riding side-saddle

Think Young, Ride on, and Pray Often

Have you ever thought of the ladies of the past who fell in love with the hunt? What they must have endured to be a part of the field! The acrobatic skills in staying atop the horse while balancing with one stirrup, the bruised thighs from the lightly padded leaping horn, the thin dresses designed f...

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A Lifetimes Pursuit

The Australian artist Robert Wade once said “Watercolour is a lifetime pursuit... mostly uphill.” Now, almost everyone has tried to paint in watercolour, it’s often the first thing you did at school on your first day, so most of us can appreciate the sentiment. But, to become competent and then to ...

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Huntsmen through history

As other articles on this site have mentioned, each pack of hounds, whether they be:- Beagles, Bassets, Foxhounds or Mink hounds will always look for leadership from those individuals who are not just good, but have become exceptional in the eyes of their hounds, horses, and in their dealings with s...

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Reading Hounds is Essential

Whether you hunt to ride or ride to hunt, the ability to read hound body language and to understand what hounds are doing when they speak will enhance your enjoyment and knowledge. You’ll find trying to figure hounds out and thinking about what they’re about to do next both exciting and ...

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Hunting with basset hounds

Taking my own hounds for a walk earlier this evening, I reflected that next March it will be thirty years since I first went to a meet of a pack of hounds. It was the penultimate meet of the 1976/7 season, and hounds met at The Crown Inn, Great Casterton. From the meet we walked along what had once ...

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Hunting in Strange Places

Readers of old Baily’s Hunting Directories will know that they contain records of long-forgotten packs and of separate packs that were set up by keen huntsmen and which can today be found having joined with others to overcome a variety of challenges but that have ancestry that can be traced ba...

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A Case of Hunting Debate Déjà Vu?

What's the difference between the current media fixation with 'man-made global warming' and hunting? The answer – very little. Both have diametrically opposed proponents – in both cases, the opposition is of long standing and skilled in manipulating the media for its own ends – so ...

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Great Run Series

Belvoir Hunt (Waltham) Run

This is a report on the Belvoir Hunt (Waltham) Run on 10 December 1805, taken from the History of the Belvoir Hunt, by T F Dale, published by A Constable & Co. Notes are provided at the end of this article. It had snowed considerably in the morning and was inclined to freeze, and, as the sun had li...

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Handling The Young Entry

In this article, written by Cyril Stacey in the Baily’s Hunting Directory from 1901, the author seeks to provide advice for an inexperienced huntsman by describing how he would handle a fictional pack during Autumn hunting and, then ‘proper’ hunting as the hounds gain experience. It is i...

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The Story of Baily’s Hunting Directory

In the Officers’ Mess of The Royal Dragoons, and subsequently of The Blues and Royals, there has long stood a small mahogany bookcase with six compartments correctly sized, and labelled with small ivory plates, for key reference books. These were, in ascending order of importance, Cook’s...

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The Right to Hunt

It is a principle of modern democracy that minorities have rights, regardless of majority opinion, and that majority opinion does not make law. A democracy in which minorities are not protected, argued John Stuart Mill, is really a ‘tyranny of the majority’. In such a tyranny, social and...

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Great Run Series

The Famous ‘Clawson Thorns Hunt’ of 1926

This article was taken from the Baily’s Hunting Companion. The 9th January 1926 will long be remembered in Belvoir annals as the occasion of one of the longest and severest hunts that has taken place in Leicestershire for many years. The large field included the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Yo...

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Great Run Series

Mr. Musters' Great Run of 1872

What follows is an account by Mr Chaworth Musters of his pack’s ‘great run’ on 16th February 1872. It is reproduced from the 1904-5 edition of Baily’s Hunting Directory. On the 16th of February, Mr Chaworth Musters’ hounds met at Cropwell Grove, the residence of Mr. He...

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How to Breed a Pack of Hounds

This article contains thoughts of Ronnie Wallace, from the 1995 Baily's Hunting Directory. Ronnie Wallace has been Master and Huntsman of the Eton College Beagles, the Ludlow, the Cotswold and the Heythrop. He is now in his 18th season as Master and Huntsman of the Exmoor. Very few people have the ...

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Hunters: Their Breeding, Supply and Demand

This article is taken from the 1960-61 edition of Baily’s Hunting Directory. The laws of supply and demand are nowhere more apparent than in the hunter trade, for if there are fewer people who can afford to hunt than there were 50 years ago, the supply of horses suitable to be made into weig...

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A Letter from the MFHA

Repeal of the Hunting Act

We have started one of the most critical and fascinating twelve months in the history of hunting, culminating, we hope, in the repeal of the Hunting Act following a General Election which must take place in the spring of 2010. Repeal is no longer a matter of conjecture. If we get a Conservative gove...

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Nineteenth Century Thoughts on Hunting Equipment

This article appeared in the very first annual Baily’s Hunting Directory in 1897 and was obviously intended to give some words of advice on ‘what not to wear whilst on the hunting field’. It is included here both as a historical note and to provide a small degree of comfort to thos...

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