Rockbridge Hunt Newsletter, April 2002

See the Calendar of Events


Silent Auction

A big thank you to all those who contributed to the silent auction to make it such a success. Please patronize and thank the following businesses that contributed to the 2002 Silent Auction:

Augusta Farmers Cooperative, Fairfield and Staunton, VA - see them for your horsefeed & farm supplies
Dominion Saddlery (across from the Horse Center)- see them for your horse show & hunting attire
Mary Donnarumma - riding lessons in the Radford area
Fancy Hill Jams & Jellies - add jams and jellies to your next gift basket
Farm Choice, Staunton, VA - see them for your Purina horse feed
Fitzgerald Lumber & Log Company, Inc., Buena Vista, VA - sawdust delivered
Marsha Heatwole - see her art work and children's book at Artists in Cahoots, Lexington
Kroger's, Daleville - shop in their wine department
Lincoln Hill Florist, Lexington - flowers for all occasions
North Shore Design - Embroidery - see them at most large horseshows at the VA Horse Center
The Pink Cadillac - stop in after hunting or trail riding
Rockbridge Farmers Cooperative - a large selection of tack & horse needs
Saddles 'n Stuff, Route 220 N, Daleville, VA - a full line of horse equipment
Second Story Bookshop, Lexington, - see them for new & antique horse & books
Eastfield Farm - Bill Streaker - See Bill for your next hunting horse
Jan Sweet Tack Repair, Bent Mountain, VA (drop off point at The Tack Room, in Roanoke) - quality tack repair
Lisa Sweet Fredrick - Jewelry - call her for custom made jewelry 540-929-4313
The Tack Room, 7717 Williamson Road, Roanoke, Va - English equipment & apparel
Virginia Born & Bred, Washington Street, Lexington VA - beautiful gifts made in Virginia
Francis Yeardley, dressage lessons in the Lexington area
Tish Vest, horse training in the Lexington area
The Southern Inn, Lexington, - upscale casual dining
Ruley Automotive - see Gary for inspections & repairs
Special thanks to Buster Lewis & The Jefferson Florist for the wonderful decorations.

Mr. Dominick Alberti
Mr. Frank Bierman
The Bowring family
Chris Bowring
Mr. Fred F. Burks
Ms Mary Lynn C. Camper
Mr. Joe A. Conner
Mr. and Mrs. N. Thomas Debevoise
Dr. Kathy Y. Eichelberger
Mr. and Mrs. Frank Farmer, Jr.
Dr. Judy Gustafson
Maj. J. Frank Hartis
Mr. Bernard Hylton
Mr. and Mrs. Leon B. Jarvis
Blair and Erica Jones
Ms Ann B. Layman
Ms Diane I. Long
Nina Marshall 		Family of George Moore
Mrs. Pamela S. Moskal
Ms Wendy Orrison
Ms Terry Poff
Mr. and Mrs. Terry Secker
Mr. and Mrs. Wilson E. D. Shepherd
Ms Brenda Simmons
Mr. William E. Streaker
Ms Doreen Tansey
Ms Jean G. Taylor
Ms Paula J. Ursoy
Ms Bobbie Jo VanNess
Ms Joanne Van Siclen
Ms Tish Vest
Mr. William and Dr. Joy Watkins
Miss Viola Wise, MFH
Ms Cameron York
Mr. and Mrs. James S. McMillan


Annual Meeting

The annual meeting will take place at 7 PM on Wednesday, May 8th at Tilson Lodge. Currently business scheduled is:


If you have additional topics you would like addressed, please provide them to Carol Atwood as soon as possible.


Financial Activities Summary 2001-2002

(6/1/01 through 4/8/02)

Note* Because these activities take place near the close of the fiscal year (June 1 to May 31), the figures include expenses from upcoming events and income from past events. This is not a financial statement for the 2001 Horse Show or for any one Hunter Pace event.

Bowring prints Hunt Ball & Silent Auction
Remaining debt 477 Expenses
Income 75 Decoration 890
Subtotal 75 Entertainment 2,400
  Food & Facilities 7,627
Breakfasts (includes VHW breakfast) Postage 170
Expenses Printing 363
Misc 114 Income
Staff 300 Receipts 9,565
Food, supplies 1,060 Silent Auction 4,121
Income 1,230 Subtotal 2,236
Subtotal 244
  Hunter Paces
Endurance Ride Expenses
Expenses Awards 166
Awards 164 Facilities 55
Facilities 631 Food 826
Food 343 Postage 211
Insurance/Fees 296 Printing 44
Postage 0 Staff 200
Printing 0 Supplies 72
Staff 610 Income 3,075
Supplies 47 Subtotal 2,236
Misc. 100
Income 3,945 Landowners Dinner
Subtotal 1,754 Expenses
  Staff 40
Horse Show* Other 25
Expenses Income 0
Awards 212 Subtotal 65
Facilities 0
Fees & Other 325 Newsletter
Food concession 46 Subtotal 612
Postage
Printing Virginia Hunt Week
Staff 1, 550 Subtotal 1,453
Income
Entries 4,605
Sponsorships 235
Subtotal 2,707 Activities Total $8,805


Masters Report

Another hunting season has ended and it was a good one in spite of the drought. There was more game in the area than we've seen recently. Strangely enough, for the first time in several years we didn't see any coyotes while out hunting. We did view red fox and gray fox and black bear. I'm not sure anyone saw bobcat while hunting but it's likely that we chased a couple of those. And any time you're on a horse you're likely to see deer and wild turkey. Even though those aren't our quarry it's always a good sign to see a variety of wildlife.

I'm sure all of us want to thank our landowner members for this past year. They've been generous and welcoming and gracious about last-minute rescheduling. The luncheon for our landowners was changed from fall to spring this year and was well-attended, as usual. It was a pretty day and it's a wonderful group of people - I always enjoy seeing them and getting a chance to talk to them.

This year several of our landowners waited until after the hunting season ended to put out the baited coyote snares. In some cases that was a conscious decision for the convenience of the Rockbridge Hunt and in other cases it may have been coincidence but it's certainly appreciated.

Right now the hunt staff is busy getting hounds ready for the Derby Day Hound Show. They have also gotten some new coops installed at Broadview - just in time for the hunter pace. Alan Tilson is also building (and planting) some brush boxes - it won't be just coops.

The hunt staff worked hard this year, as usual - thank you! David Conner did a great job with the hounds. That's nothing new but it's a lot more fun when the hunting is good and it's been nice for him to receive some recognition. Several people who know hounds have commented on how good our pack looks and how well they're hunting. David, along with Katharine Conner and Gary Ruley, put in countless hours getting the pack fit and working well. Joe Conner and Pete Whitlock led the field by example: quietly and competently, pitching in wherever needed. I know that Dick Ford led the second field on many occasions and Blair Jones led both fields at different times during the season. And David Bolen was always in the right place at the right time, solving all kinds of problems.

I want to thank the riding members for all their work. Someone always appeared on the scene whenever and wherever they were needed, doing all the things that have to be done for us to keep hunting, whether that was in the hunt field or at fundraising activities. I know that Dick Ford led the second field on many occasions and Blair Jones led both fields at different times during the season. I won't try to list everyone because I inevitably forget someone but the work done this year has been tremendous. That's the good news. The bad news is there's always more to be done.

The hunt staff and the Executive Committee have been talking about a few new projects but the calendar is already terribly full. Inevitably some changes will have to be made. We'll consider the options and try to make the right decisions. I know the Rockbridge Hunt membership can be counted on for help and support. Thank you.

Cindy Morton


Bits and Pieces

Don't forget our hunter pace scheduled for April 28th (and rain/snow date May 4th)at Broadview ranch 11:00AM to 1:00PM. Lunch will be available AFTER you make your loop. Bring some friends and make up your own 'herd'. Entry fee is $30 per rider adult; $20 for juniors.

And, our annual hound show/derby day is on schedule for Saturday, May 4th. We hear that Oak Ridge is going to bring some hounds and the judge will be Jake Carle. All this will happen at Glenmore this year at the Shifflet Pavilion. Classes start at 1:30 PM and the derby party starts at 4:30 PM. Please contact one of our MFHs if you need directions.


Fox hunting in Nebraska

My friends often tease me about being a Yankee when my nasal twang gives me away as a native of some place other than Virginia. I usually correct them by saying that I am no Yankee, I am a "flatlander", born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. Really, though, when you get up close and personal with the sod of Nebraska (as I have all too many times when my horse and I had a miscommunication), it is not flat. I foxhunted there with the North Hills Hunt for ten years, and it was rare we hit some really flat ground unless riding along a creek bottom. For those infinite stretches of flat earth, you need to go south into Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.

But Nebraska has hills. All kinds of hills. The North Hills Hunt had its kennels and primary territory just across the Missouri River from Omaha, in Iowa. The hills were made up of loess, wind-drifted silt from ancient glaciers that at one time covered the northern part of the continent. You can dig a long way and find no rocks in the fine, grayish-brown soil. In grid patterns, the mostly unpaved county roads run ruler straight, making neat square-mile boxes of the countryside. Driving to a hunt, it didn't matter what kind of trailer you owned, your horses would be covered with a thick layer of dust by the time you turned off of the two miles of dirt road that ended at the kennels. With five acres and a house for the kennelwoman, these sat in the middle of plowed farm fields, interspersed with wooded ravines and grassy pastures. While the crops (corn and soybeans) remained in the fields, our territory was greatly limited. A big part of our master's job in the fall ! was to urge the local farmers to harvest their fields.

There were very few fox where we hunted. The coyotes generally did not share their territory with fox. Except for some rare instances when the hounds came across a fox scent (and some not-so-rare but embarrassing times with deer, sheep, and farm cats) we hunted coyote. The hounds were crosses between English and American Foxhounds, and we had gotten several of Ben Hardaway's castoffs. Shortly before I joined North Hills Hunt in 1989, the master began breeding the hounds for greater speed, and the pack got faster and faster over my time there. Previous masters had liked a more leisurely hunt, but this master was more aggressive. In the thirty years North Hills Hunt had existed before I joined, they had never caught or killed anything. (At least, nothing they would admit to.) In the ten years I was with them, they killed three coyotes. Although this was not the real goal, it shows how much the pack had improved. Of the three, one was chased into an old outbuilding an! d cornered and killed. Another, when flushed from cover after we removed the hounds a hundred yards or so, was obviously too sick to speed away from the hounds as coyotes normally do. The third, in a one-in-a-million chance, was sleeping in waist-high grass on a very windy day, and did not hear the hounds that literally stepped on him while following the master's horse to the next cast.

Many people hunted on thoroughbreds. Those who used draft crosses knew that they would be left way behind at least once on most hunts. I happened to have an old racehorse that had great stamina and good speed when he quit bucking. One typical hunt, we had the hounds about a mile from the kennels along one of the county roads, and the master cast them. Usually they went into the field between the road and a ridge of hills, and followed the lowlands along the road. Not this time. They immediately were hot on line and scrambled straight up the ridge, over and out of sight, entering the one piece of land in the middle of our territory we were not allowed to ride on. Nothing for it but to gallop the mile back to the kennels, turn left three miles up another road, turn again and another two miles went by before we could get close to the now scattered hounds. No jumps, no difficult terrain, just miles of soft gravel roads. We started out with about thirty-five riders, but ! at the end only three of us had kept up with the field master on his arab-thoroughbred cross (luckily, my horse quit bucking early on and we kept up). We usually had at least one good, long gallop every hunt, and sometimes had several. I worked harder at getting my horse into shape and keeping him in top condition than I do hunting fox in Virginia.

We had one opening hunt on a beautiful day (Nebraska has at least five beautiful days each year) in early October with about eighty riders, most of whom never hunted except at opening or closing hunts. Many of these biannual hunters rode horses unprepared for the mob mentality of a foxhunt. We had walked away from the kennels only about five minutes when the hounds opened up and began a seven-mile run down dirt roads, over fields so laced with holes you could not safely go faster than a slow trot, up and down plowed cropland with terraces so steep they were more like drop jumps than slopes, bunching up at several ravines and coops, on through woods and briars that tore skin and clothes, over earthen dams, finally to end up in a field next to a patch of woods where the scent disappeared. I counted at least five bucking horses in the first thirty seconds, and we lost the casual riders in the first few hundred yards. I was riding a quarterhorse that I usually kept firmly in! hand, but we hit a flat, long meadow with grass up to the stirrups and a firm bottom and I let him go. He flattened out and it seemed as if he no longer went forward but pushed the earth behind him. We passed everybody. I will never forget the feeling, or the sound of the grass hissing by.

We had three other fixtures in Nebraska that were variations on this theme. The one near the capital of Lincoln had the added challenge of scrub hawthorn trees (big bushes, really) with long thorns that would rip whatever came near: clothing, skin, boots, tack, whatever. The coyotes seemed to take malicious pleasure in leading us at speed through patches of them. Our venerable and dignified retired master appeared at our Hunt Board breakfast at the local country club looking like he had been attacked by a lion, with bloody scratches on his neck and face, and bloodstains on his stock tie. I still have furrows on the sides of my boots that no amount of polish or boning will cover.

But my favorite fixture, Burwell, was 200 miles west of Omaha, in central Nebraska, the start of the Sandhills. For our part of the Western Challenge Hunt Series we used this fixture. We hunted there twice a year, October and April. Large cattle ranches on sandy grasslands, rolling hills with steep, eroded ravines, a large dammed lake in the background with mist rising off of its surface in the mornings, lots of cactus, few trees, and no rocks. Very little cropland meant few fences -- the sandhills soil does not react well to disturbance. It needs the long grass roots to keep it stable. The vistas were awesome. Also the cow paths. You have never seen such cow paths. At times three to four feet deep, only about a foot or so wide, they snaked around and over the hills and appeared under your horse's feet with no notice whatsoever. And not just one at a time. Sometimes it felt like my horse was playing hopscotch at a full gallop, and I was praying I wasn't going to b! e the stone tossed to square number ten.

What made Burwell such a good fixture was the opportunity to watch all the action, no matter the size of the field. Rolling hills and few trees or bushes meant that you could see the coyote, with the pack chasing it, for miles. We were all standing on top of a hill when the hounds struck one time, and we saw the coyote two hills over, the hounds giving chase. Reaching the top of the next hill at full speed we could again see hounds and coyote still headed away from us. When we got to the next hill we arrived in time to see the whips gathering the hounds at the fence that marked the end of our territory. That rancher had been known to shoot our hounds, and the clever coyote, year after year, made a beeline toward that same fence. It felt like we had a permanent place on the coyote's dance card.

The ground in Nebraska generally freezes solid around Christmas and stays that way until March. Even when we got a week or so of sunny warm weather, as we usually did in January or February, only the top few inches would thaw, creating a slick surface on top of impermeable ice. Fields that would start out on opening day at about sixty or seventy riders, would dwindle to maybe twenty regulars through Thanksgiving, and then down to about five idiots once the ground froze and the thermometer headed south for the winter. Average January temperatures are a high of 31-degrees and a low of 11-degrees. Over the other sixteen layers of necessary clothing, we often wished we wore body armor when the ice balls from the horses' feet in front of you started bulleting past with lethal intent. Most of January we hunted a part of our home territory that had no jumps, fewer steep ravines, and more plowed fields. After one joint hunt in October, a full three hours of freezing rain, hail! , snow, sleet, wind, lightning, and thunder, I had to have someone help me hold the coffee to my lips, my hands were shaking so hard. Some of the most fun I have ever had being miserable was foxhunting in Nebraska.

Submitted by Louise Golian



Rockbridge Hunt Executive Committee

Jt-MFH: David Bolen (bolendw@vmi.edu)
Jt-MFH: Cindy Morton, W 463-8109, H 463-6025 (mortonc@wlu.edu)
President: Carol Atwood (cftatwood@yahoo.com)
Treasurer: Katharine Conner
Honorary Secretary: Wilson Shepherd (shepL@rockbridge.net)
Steward: Fred Burks (montafon@cfw.com)
Steward: Kathy Eichelberger (bergrbnch@aol.com)
Steward: Paula Ursoy (millcreekfarm@earthlink.net)
Steward: Sandra Worthy (CWorthy380@aol.com)


See the Calendar of Events


Rockbridge Hunt
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