IRISH huntsmen are enjoying the opportunity to hunt a pack of foxhounds in America. Such huntsmen include Limerick’s Graham Buston in Virginia, Kildare native Willie Dunne in North Carolina and Joseph Hardiman from Galway in South Carolina. Former County Limerick huntsman Hugh Robards, now retired, enjoyed a second career hunting hounds in Pennsylvania and Virginia.
In America, foxhunting and National Hunt racing go hand-in-hand. Irish National Hunt jockeys like Darren Nagle, who hunted with the Duhallows, Ross Geraghty who hunted with the Meaths and Wards, and Paddy Young who hunted with the Iveagh Foxhounds, have all been US Champion Timber Jockeys.
Mark Beecher, now a trainer who hunted with the West Waterford, has ridden the winners of every big race in the USA, such as the Maryland Hunt Cup three times and the Virginia Gold Cup, the Colonial Cup, the American Grand National and Pennsylvania Hunt Cup a similar number of times. Big purses have attracted top Irish trainers like Willie Mullins and Gordon Elliot to handpick races.
Galwayman Ivan Dowling
Another Irishman, Galwayman Ivan Dowling, has managed to combine hunting a foxhound pack, race riding and training National Hunt horses in the USA.
Ivan’s home pack was the Galway Blazers since childhood, starting on his pony Candy where he often found himself in front of field-master Lady Hemphill. He rode hunters for Blazers’ field-master Willie Leahy, and then whipped into the Roscommon Harriers.
He chose not to follow the family tradition of dentistry as his father, grandfather and uncle were all dentists, and his brother founded one of the top hi-tech dental labs in Ireland. Ivan qualified in engineering instead, but his engineering qualification went by the wayside after working for a few large companies in the UK and Ireland as he soon concluded that office life was not for him.
He first went to the USA to whip-in to the Stone Valley Hounds in upstate New York where businessmen and women from New York kept hunter liveries or hired horses for hunting. He was working with a pack of Penn-Marydel hounds, that don’t have a presence in Ireland, which he found to be very honest, accurate and have superb voices. The hunt followers proved to be fond of Irish hunters and many were imported from Ireland for clients.
Mr Stewart’s Cheshire Hounds
Ivan’s next move was to Mr Stewart’s Cheshire Hounds in Pennsylvania which is one of the top packs in North America. Their facilities, like most USA packs, are superb.
Dowling’s kennels sits on 50 acres, the original site that was chosen by the hunt founder and New York banker Mr Plunkett Stewart in 1914. It is beside Plantation Fields eventing and point-to-point course, owned by hunt trustee Cuyler Walker, so it is wide open for exercising hounds or schooling horses.
They hunt three days a week from August to April, usually around 100 days hunting in the season. There are numerous houses for hunt staff on the property, and it has a new American barn finished in natural wood with 16 stalls for hunt horses, two wash down areas, a tack room, drying room, feed room, a loft for hay, and a machinery shed for housing tractors and equipment for keeping the grounds tidy.
The staff include one professional and one honorary whipper-in, a barn manager, a kennel man, a stable hand, and a groundsman who also doubles as a road whip.
The hunt country covers over 30 square miles of some of the best grassland hunting country in the world, populated with woods and gullies, well foxed where wildlife find natural homes. Farms are mainly pastureland, bordered by post and split rail oak fencing so they do not break easily and if you do not jump well, there is always the danger of a rotational fall.
Crops such as maize and alfalfa grass are grown, which is also ideal cover for foxes. Ribbon development of residential and commercial development is not allowed, as much of the hunt country and water sources are protected as open space for leisure activities by Conservation Easements.
This is a policy adopted by the hunt founder Mr Plunkett Stewart over 100 years ago, and has been maintained by the board of the hunt in the meantime. The legacy has resulted in the protection of over 30,000 acres of the cream of hunt country.
What was even better for Dowling was that many of the followers are horse trainers, race riders or bloodstock agents, with many of the top American international eventing community based in the area.
That suited Dowling as he likes to cross country at speed. At a meet, you will see many racing saddles being used, and their riders always have their leathers a few holes higher than normal!
As the area is a centre for National Hunt trainers, there is a close tie with foxhunting, and the country is ideal for hunting what are known as timber racehorses, as pasture land is divided by split rail oak fences, three or four rails high with no take-off line.
Olympic greats
Among the eventing community in this hunt country are American eventing internationals Olympic gold medallist Philip Dutton, Boyd Martin, Jennie Brannigan and Australian Ryan Woods, as well as owners like Annie Jones and Kathleen Crompton.
Across the road from the kennels at Chesterfield is Olympic gold medallist and world champion Bruce Davidson, and his son international event rider Buck, who competed also at Tattersalls International in the past.
During the Plantation Fields Horse Trials, Ivan and his wife, Steph, organised a Bareback Puissance Wall competition. Fellow Galwayman Niall Molloy was whipping-in to Ivan at the time, and gained a reputation as a talented rider, crossing the wall with ease.
One of the highlights was Ivan and Philip Dutton jumping the puissance wall bareback at over six feet upsides each other. Now I don’t think that has been done too often!
Hunt horses
The barn houses the 16 hunt horses – all thoroughbreds – for Ivan and his whipper-in. Hunt staff usually use second horses each day, with the barn manager meeting them at a decided draw for the exchange. To maintain the number of 16 hunt horses each year, replacements come from former flat or jumps racehorses, and Ivan makes all the new horses himself.
He has the experience as he ran a breaking yard in Galway when he took a break from hunting hounds before being asked by the board to come back from Ireland and hunt the pack again when the then huntsman left before the season was over.
The horses that work out often have a kink in them. Some well-known horses have been hunted by Ivan including Young Dubliner, who started racing in Enda Bolger’s, and the horse still holds the record time in the Maryland Hunt Cup when ridden by Brian Moran.
Another was George Strawbridge’s gelding With Anticipation who won five Grade 1 races on the flat and $3.5 million. A difficult horse when retired from the flat, Strawbridge offered him to Ivan who schooled him over fences and he would never let another horse head him in the hunting field.
Pal Woodley, a winner on the flat, was Ivan’s favourite hunter, but you had to sit tight on him! Three times Irish point-to-point winner Up N Under was another horse Ivan hunted hounds off but he was hot and had to be on the move.
In the barn at the moment is What Did You See by the in-demand stallion Tapit whose stud fee is $400,000. Dowling raced him over fences but he has taken to hunting hounds, probably the only Tapit horse hunting hounds! Ivan says that he can jump anything, but he is another that one can never relax on.
Hound breeding
Dowling has developed a Cheshire Crossbred hound, a project started with former master Russell Jones by crossing Penn-Marydel hounds with English hounds – an experiment that’s proved successful in developing a hybrid cross to give the steadiness and the booming voice and accuracy of the Penn-Marydel with the drive of the English Hound.
Bloodstock agent Jones has horses in training with Jessica Harrington and he is a shareholder in Union Rags that won the Belmont Stakes in 2012, trained by former Olympic gold medallist showjumper Michael Matz, who lives near the kennels.
What does Dowling look for in a hound? Well very simple, voice, then nose, nose and nose, as he says if a hound can’t scent on a line he can’t hunt!
Racing and training
While maintaining his position of hunting the Cheshire Hounds, Ivan has ridden for trainers like Bruce Miller, Sanna and Kathy Neilson, Joe Davies, Ricky Hendricks and 10-time champion timber jockey Paddy Neilson.
Ivan was the first professional huntsman to ride in the spectacular timber race known as the Maryland Hunt Cup. He rode in it it twice, on Haddix and Fort Henry, who he was third on in the American Grand National.
The horse is still hunting away in retirement from racing by Ivan’s wife, Californian-born Steph. Among the races Ivan has ridden winners in is the prestigious Willowdale Chase at My Lady’s Manor on Flying Contraption and also on Thermostat.
As well as race riding, Ivan held a trainer’s licence before Steph took it over. From a small number of horses in training, he had some interesting successes. He trained Where’s The Beef to win the New Jersey Hunt Cup and Organisateur who ran a close second in the Virginia Gold Cup.
Steph’s barn
Ten minutes down the road, Ivan’s wife Steph runs a field hunter barn where she boards liveries, prepares horses for sale, and coaches.
Steph is a very talented rider in her own right. For a number of years she campaigned on the competitive eventing circuit, completing the Rolex five-star event in Kentucky on an Irish-bred horse Macloud, and later competed on the showjumping circuit in Europe. She galloped racehorses for top trainer Michael Matz, trainer of classic winners Barbaro and Union Rags.
Later Steph worked for champion trainer Jonathan Sheppard (featured in last week’s issue of The Irish Field), Philip Dutton and Buck Davidson, who shares a barn across the road from the hunt kennels along with his father Bruce.
Ivan and Steph met when she whipped-in professionally to her husband before setting up their own barn. She has trained Maryland Hunt Cup horses and others that campaigned on the timber racing circuit. It’s now a work life balance as Ivan and Steph have a two-year-old son Conor who is already sitting up on horses.
Talking to Dowling in November, he was just home from hunting after hounds had a cracking 22-mile run, one of three such runs during the same week, so staff, horses and hounds were tired. Yes, careers in hunting and racing in the USA have been good to Ivan, who, with his wife Steph, make a great team.