Thanks to a spring snowstorm, the Middlebrook Hunt had to wait three extra days to put the last hurrah on this year’s foxhunting season. But the wait was worth it, agreed the 17 members who came out on the March 29 bye day at the kennels. After all, the 8 inches of snow had melted and a fox was running!
Honorary Huntsman and MFH Frederick Getty made his first cast of 14 couple of Penn-Marydel hounds into Bold Stream Hollow at the edge of Callison’s field. As the sun and warm breezes swept the spring earth, scent quickly became sketchy, but the hounds cold-nosed the smatterings of a line and gave enough early voice to excite the winter-weary foxhunters.
But it was not until the damp reaches of Swanbeck’s pines that the hounds found a line they could own, and own it they did, with the bitch Buttons running in the lead and young entries Dutchess and Dudley proving their maturity by working enthusiastically on the zigzagging line.
The scent led first through the pines, then up the hill behind The Granary, then back up the hill into the pines again. As the line strengthened, hounds worked with a will, puzzling out the fox’s wayward course down the hill toward the creek.
With whips on the road and the field–led by alternate fieldmaster Macy Fox–fast catching up, hounds carefully worked into a select-cut pine woods across the road. Maneuvering around tree limbs and over heaped clumps of red clay along skid roads, huntsman, staff and field alike took every precaution to ride safely and keep up with hounds. In the opened pines and hardwoods, the opportunity to watch the hound work was, as long-time hunt member John Cudahy related, “Spectacular!”
Leading across Powerline Hill, hounds worked the line back into a stand of uncut pines and then into the cut-over area once again. The fox had gone to ground, however. Hounds were hunted back to kennels, and everyone pronounced the day a fitting end to a season made difficult at every turn by incle-ment weather that seemed bent on striking especially hard on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
On the previous Saturday, not to be outdone by the unexpected late March snowfall, members, landowners and friends packed The Granary for closing hunt dinner.
A special 20-year tribute to Mr. Getty and his wife, Mary Ann, the first whip, went apace. Club President Henry Myers said that Middlebrook had been blessed to have the Gettys in residence for 20 years.
ADVERTISEMENT
“And we hope to have them here for 20 more years,” he added. “We were amazed from the first time we hunted with them. When Fred blew his horn, the hounds listened. This was new for us. We were also amazed they did not chase deer or groundhogs. But they did chase foxes.”
The Gettys arrived in Middlebrook in 1986 from Long Island, N.Y., at the invitation of long-time foxhunters Ray and Babe Swanbeck. Mr. Getty, from an Irish riding family, had begun hunting with the Smithtown Hunt and later trained as a whipper-in. One cold morning the master asked Mr. Getty if he could hunt the hounds as the present huntsman hadn’t shown up. “I can try, sir,” was the reply, and a new huntsman was born.
Later, Mr. Getty started the Suffolk County Hounds on Long Island. He traveled to Pennsyl-vania where a widow was selling her husband’s pack. He thought he had funds for perhaps one or two good foundation hounds. Instead, she sold him the whole pack for that price, liking his attitude and dedication to the sport.
How Mr. Getty began training the Penn-Marydel hounds became the stuff of legend. He literally spent every available minute with hounds, tracking with them in the forests and swimming with them in the sound until they were part of one another. He knew how they thought and worked, and they knew what he expected of them.
This training and dedication was what, according to Myers, revolutionized foxhunting south of Middlebrook. “People come from all over the country to hunt here,” Myers said.
He also praised the other hunt activities: the annual ball, the hunt work days to panel the country and keep trails opened, and the hunter pace series, as well as the twice-weekly hunt “breakfasts” or teas during the season, all turning the hunt into a cohesive unit whose members enjoyed the sport and worked throughout the community for conservation, hunting education and community service.
The Gettys offered kudos to the landowners, who were called forward, thanked and photographed. Mr. Getty thanked his joint master, Margot Case, his acting fieldmaster, Dr. Brent Hall, and his additional whippers-in: his son Frederick Getty, Alex Sproul and Deb Sensabaugh. Mr. Getty then awarded hunt buttons to Candace Fitzgerald, Whitney Cooper, Liz Kiss, Lisa Murphy, Sarah Twichell and Anita Warmington, and colors to Toby Levy and Donald Clark.
