In Part One last week, we talked about how New Jersey’s hunt clubs are adapting, becoming more welcoming, even offering options for people who just want to walk and trot while following the hounds. Here is a link to that story. This week, we discuss the future for these clubs.
Hunt clubs are about more than the chase. They play an important role in the equestrian community, often supporting Pony Clubs and a variety of activities such as hunter paces and small shows. That’s in addition to helping keep land open while encouraging an appreciation for the countryside and its way of life.
The beauty of horses and hounds running together could kindle admiration in those unfamiliar with equine pursuits, which might inspire them to explore an equestrian connection after glimpsing hunters in action.
So it is important that the clubs continue, but they face challenges in terms of sufficient membership and land on which to operate. Can they survive? It depends on the club, the area where they are located and the determination of their leaders and members.
“We’re in a spell now because of the changing times and changing economy where some hunts can’t stay viable,” said Andrew Barclay, director of hunting for the Masters of Foxhounds of America Association.
He called it, “A funny time for foxhunting, we are losing some hunts right now because of money or a change in the way people view outdoor country sports. It’s happening all around. People aren’t doing as much outdoors like they used to. Too many other things we’re competing against.”
Even so, he pointed out “There are other hunts that are trying to start.”
The most significant issue faced by many hunt clubs across the country is how to deal with a loss of territory as development continues its march. This is particularly an issue in densely populated New Jersey.
In Hunterdon County, the Amwell Valley Hounds’ Cindy Hoogland Nance, who serves as joint master with Dan Wasserstrom, worries that “We are on our last 10 to 20 years of foxhunting in New Jersey.”
She observed, “New Jersey is becoming slowly not a horse community, as it used to be. The farms are being bought up.”
Members of Amwell, founded in the 1960s, ride across farmland, not estates, as the Essex Fox Hounds often do, and not on state land, as the Monmouth County Hunt, with roots in the 19th Century, does at the Assunpink Wildlife Management Area.
“In the valley, our farmers are real farmers,” the Amwell master explained.
“They’ve owned the land and farmed it, normally for two generations. Some three.”
The younger generation, however, is not going into farming.
“These lands are getting sold off to people coming out of New York and taking 100 acres of our territory,” Nance said, noting newcomers often get bad legal advice amid fears that someone will get injured on their property if they allow the hunt to ride there. Although New Jersey has an equine liability law to protect them, they and their attorneys may not be aware of it, she suggested.
Amwell, Nance explained, is “getting encroached by suburbia. Once we lose a 10-acre slot, we tend to lose the coherence of being able to get to the 100-acre field on one side and the 100-acre field on the other side.”
The Amwell Valley Hounds hunt across farmland.
There are people coming in who don’t farm, and don’t want the hunt on their property. But the hunt can be a plus for landowners, she pointed out, since Amwell mows where it hunts and will clear fallen trees.
Similar issues with territory affect Essex in Somerset County and the New York-based Windy Hollow Hunt, which at times also meets over the state line in Sussex County.
Farmers like the hunt because the area is “infested,” as Nance puts it, with bold coyotes, pests that can attack goats, lambs and pets, in addition to children–sometimes when adults are just feet away.
Two such incidents in California were in the news earlier this year. Here are links to a couple of dramatic videos: A coyote attacked a toddler on a beach while her family briefly was looking in another direction, and a man rescued his daughter in front of a suburban home as the child was being dragged away by coyote.)
“Almost every pack in the country is hunting coyotes,” the MFHA’s Barclay said.
The Essex hounds operate wearing GPS collars, which joint MFH Jazz Johnson notes is particularly helpful with puppies who could stray, as well as when hounds are following coyotes.
The Essex Fox Hounds. (Photo © 2022 by Lawrence J. Nagy)
“Because coyotes run in a straight line, they can get way outside of our allowed hunt territory very quickly,” she noted. If one or two hounds start following them and are headed out of bounds, the GPS makes it easy to “go and retrieve them.”
Coyotes offer “a cracking run” but they can get so far so fast that the proximity of Routes 78 and 206 could mean danger.
She noted that hunts elsewhere are coping with coyotes too, and “a lot of coyote pressure means much fewer foxes.” She doesn’t think that’s the case around the Essex territory, but rather “it is a problem in other hunt countries where there’s a lot of open space.”
“Nowadays in the sport,” she said, “the aim is not really to be killing game, it’s really just the pursuit and the… sporting (aspect) of it.”
Nance coordinates New Jersey hunts’ fundraising event schedules, so one hunter pace doesn’t conflict with another, for instance. Could more such cooperation mean mergers as an answer to problems facing the hunts?
“We’ve been starting conversations on how we’re going to do it,” she said, emphasizing they are in the “very preliminary” stage.
She believes, “the future of us is coming together with the different hunts, combining these packs with each hunt responsible for a particular territory.”
That, she explained, would mean “we can move around a little bit more versus doing the same five or six fixtures and going around in a circle.”
Windy Hollow MFH Lindie Scoresone agreed, “the biggest problem is losing land.”
Windy Hollow rotates around its territory, spending one-third of the time in New Jersey, the rest in New York.
“You don’t want to over-hunt the area, you can’t be there every couple of days,” she pointed out.
The Windy Hollow Hunt setting out.
Vernon, N.J., is “one area where we’ve been very lucky. There are a lot of farms that have been preserved and are friendly to the hunt. Further down in Sussex, they’re putting in fancy horse breeding farms and saying, `Sorry, we don’t want you to come through here anymore.’ That makes it difficult to get around.”
All hunts need to make concessions to landowners, but as long as it’s a two-way street, it often can be done.
One farm where Windy Hollow hunts “has cows in there and we have to work around where the cows are,” Scoresone said.
They also had an issue with a deer hunting club that didn’t want Windy Hollow to come through their leased land. It was “touchy,” but such matters can sometimes be solved with negotiation.
At one point, Windy Hollow considered additional acreage that looked promising for hunting, but it was “close to Route 94 and sort of a dangerous area to hunt.”
With the Vernon option, “we can back away from 94 and into those areas that have been preserved. It’s much better than we ever thought,” Scoresone commented.
In terms of increasing membership, she noted Windy Hollow’s Pony Club kids are very young,” but “we’re hopeful that’s the next step.”
Lynn Jones, an MFH from the Essex Fox Hounds, feels the same.
“One of our real priorities is to get the interest of young riders in the sport. We’ve engaged with the Somerset Hills Pony Club and encouraged those members to come out with us for a very nominal fee. It’s been great to have these young kids out hunting with us. It’s actually one of my favorite things, to teach them the sport,” she said.
Children are the future for the Spring Valley Hounds, as they are for the other hunts seeking to expand membership. (Photo courtesy Scott Mickelsen Photography).
The Spring Valley Hounds decades ago adjusted to the suburbanization of its territory in New Vernon, just outside of Morristown in Morris County, by splitting time between that area and Allamuchy in more rural Warren County, where the kennels were located.
Now it visits New Vernon on only a few occasions, since that area is far less horse-oriented than it used to be, despite retention of its trail system and small showgrounds. But in the northwest part of the state, Spring Valley, which also hunts territory in Sussex County, has “a bunch of landowners who like to see us,” said Dr. David Schroepfer, who serves as joint master with Dr. Louise Barbieri.
Spring Valley has another edge. Unlike the New Jersey hunts that chase foxes and coyotes, it is a drag hunt, with hounds following a line laid out in advance. Rather than using messy fox scent, Spring Valley’s hounds sniff anisette; yes, the liquer. It also smells better to humans, should one happen to spill it.
Schroepfer notes an advantage of a drag hunt is its ability to be more nimble than a live hunt.
“If there are crops in one section, I can direct hounds around that. Usually, that takes care of some people’s issues,” he said.
The hunt has “a fair amount of young members,” while partnering with a stable means people can ride horses out from there. Schroepfer believes in a focus on youth and families. Spring Valley’s “Coffee and Cars” is an event that attracts people who may not want to hunt, but still like to be a part of things.
“My thought is, if I get the whole family involved, then everyone is involved,” he said. With a drag hunt, he pointed out, if new or novice people are out, it’s easy to control certain situations.
“We can just stop for a little bit and do something else and modulate things,” he explained. It also enables Spring Valley to avoid areas that host deer hunters on a private basis. By the time Spring Valley gets to those sections, the hunters usually are finished for the day.
The Spring Valley Hounds, led here by Dr. Dave Schroepfer, enjoy their location in northwest New Jersey. (Photo courtesy of Scott Mickelsen Photography)
The masters of the New Jersey hunts meet once a year for dinner and to talk over common issues as a group. One of those issues is the question of mergers.
“Spring Valley has no interest in merging,” said Schroepfer, though like the other hunts, Spring Valley does joint meets with other clubs.
“We just do our own little thing; things seem to be going along okay,” he said.
Could drag hunting provide an answer for clubs feeling the territory pinch?
Windy Hollow’s Scorsone notes, “We really enjoy live hunting and having a live view”
With drag hunting, she contends, “You draw a different group of people who just want to go out for a couple of hours and run and jump. We’ve talked about it, and maybe use one territory? Everyone says, `No, we’re not interested.’ But if it ever got to the point where we couldn’t hunt at all unless we do that, it’s probably the solution.”
