The analytical mind of a classical scholar'

In the second of a series about great foxhunters he knew personally, Alastair Jackson tells us about the renowned hound breeder and long-serving master of the New Forest, Sir Newton Rycroft

I HAD taken two years out of hunting to run the Crown Hotel on Exmoor when the phone rang.

"Alastair," said the unmistakable voice of Newton Rycroft, "will you come and hunt my hounds? My huntsman has shot himself!"

Well, it turned out that an accident with a humane killer had resulted in a wounded foot and I certainly wasn't going to turn down the opportunity of hunting this remarkable pack of hounds. For several months I travelled down to the New Forest twice a week to stay with the Rycrofts and hunt the hounds the following day.

They were everything that I had been told. They drew fast and wide, hunted with enormous drive and accuracy, and with a very good cry indeed. They were biddable, easy to handle and were absolutely steady to all forms of riot. But we must start at the beginning to tell the story of this remarkable man as a breeder of hounds.

Newton Rycroft was master of the New Forest Foxhounds for 22 seasons from 1962 to 1984. He studied and practised the science of hound breeding with a more academic and intelligent mind, completely uncluttered by fashion or tradition, than almost anyone in the 20th century. Before the foxhounds, he founded the

Dummer Beagles and bred them to a standard in both work and looks in which they were in a class of their own.

DISCIPLINE IS KEY

BROUGHT up at Dummer in Hampshire, both his father and grandfather had been masters of the Vine Foxhounds. It had always been his ambition to own, breed and hunt his own pack. So it was that after leaving Winchester and Oxford, where he developed his high academic abilities, he founded the Dummer Beagles in 1939.

Meanwhile, he had been able to hunt with the famous George Evans, master of the neighbouring HH and the young Rycroft used to stay at the kennels for the early cubhunting meets.