Fox hunt takes after eastern NM coyotes

With bellies full of port and sherry, the ladies and gentlemen of an Albuquerque-based fox hunting group cantered over the eastern escarpment of the Pecos River Valley for the first time this month. The group, Juan Tomas Hounds, is a member of the Masters of Foxhounds Association of America established in the 1960s and usually hunts only on ranches located between Albuquerque and Santa Fe or the undeveloped land on the Duke City's West Mesa. But two Roswell JTH members persuaded the red-coated masters and their hounds to hunt coyotes on Bureau of Land Management-owned land just opposite Bottomless Lakes State Park. "We like to hunt in various places," said Leandro Gutierrez, a veterinarian at Casa Querencia Animal Health in Roswell who scouted the land three weeks before the hunt. "We're from here, and it's a great honor for us to host a hunt here." In traditional 16th-century British form, the riders sipped their wine from plastic cups (well, almost traditional) during the "Stirrup Cup" prior to the hunt, then donned traditional English hunting attire. Masters and former masters wear scarlet coats, while women wear colored collars on their riding jackets. Everyone sports breeches, English dress riding boots and black hunt caps with ribbons on the back...more

If nothing else they probably scared the coyotes to death.