I HAD the privilege of serving on the committees of four different hunt clubs, foxhounds, harriers and beagles, including the Galway Blazers Hunt Club whom I first started hunting with over 60 years ago when Paddy Pickersgill hunted hounds. I later had the good fortune to follow the renowned Blazers’ master and huntsman Michael Dempsey at the height of his career.

That, and reporting on hunting around the country and abroad for The Irish Field, I have seen many changes in hunt clubs, hunt followers, standards of hunting, changes in farming practices and the erosion of hunt country through development in that time.