• U.S.

Sport: Foxchasing Foundation

3 minute read
TIME

There was, of course, nothing literally new, even in the year 1079, about the stretch of timberland, oak, ash and thorn, patched with open spaces of bog and heath, between the Solent, Southampton Water and the Avon. William the Conquerer only called it “New Forest” because it was connected with a new idea of his. Seeing how the farms of Hampshire, unrolling like green quilts, were slowly pushing away the woods, he set New Forest aside as a place for trees to grow and noblemen to hunt. For a long time any rogue caught killing the king’s deer there was taken to the nearest town and hanged. William and his successors rode through New Forest after stags and boars. Herds of pigs grew fat in the forest on truffles and mast; their carcasses helped feed forest keepers.

Last week it was announced that a tract unlike anything since the New Forest has been created in the U. S. Not kings but rich sportsmen will ride there, hunting foxes instead of stags. They have formed an organization, Southern Grasslands Hunt & Racing Foundation. They plan to raise $3,000,000. Memberships are $10,000 each. In Sumner County, Tennessee, they have bought about 15,000 acres (23 sq. mi.) of land to gallop over—rolling grass country, dotted with farms. They plan an endowment for the land’s upkeep in perpetuity. It is the biggest tract made safe for private chasing since King William had his idea about the woods in Hampshire. Workmen are pulling down wire fences, putting up rails, stone. Some of the farms will be rented “under strict agreement” and the rents, like King William’s pigs, will help pay for the hunting.

Founders: Stableowner John Hay (“Jock”) Whitney, Publisher Col. Robert Rutherford McCormick, Poloists Thomas Hitchcock and Louis E. Stoddard, Stableowner Joseph E. Widener, Lord Stalbridge (onetime M. F. H. The Fernie, England), Sir Edward Curre of Wales, Yeastmaker Julius Fleischmann, Editor Richard E. Danielson of The Sportsman.

Hounds: the famed pack of Joseph B. Thomas of Manhattan.

Further plans: to hold the kind of races that were held in Andrew Jackson’s time, when gentlemen rode against each other on grass courses, watched by their friends, with the public, bookies, professional riders not invited.

Racing Committee: Colonel Philip Chinn of Lexington; Arnold Hanger, whose stable has horses like Victorian and The Nut in it; Rogers Caldwell of Nashville who owns Hourless, now in stud, and who bred the fine mare Lady Broadcast that won the Canadian Derby.

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