MASTER OF FAMOUS HUNT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22351, 24 February 1936, Page 3

MASTER OF FAMOUS HUNT

WOMAN'S RARE DISTINCTION The rare distinction of being master of the Norwich Staghounds is held by a young and attractive English woman. Miss Sybil Harker. An article written on Miss Harker in The Queen states that in New Zealand she hunted over wire-infested country with the Rotoma and Bay of Plenty Hounds; in Central Australia nothing would satisfy her but to camp among the aboriginies; in Iceland it had to be a two-weeks' trip on ponies; she visited the Lapps above the Arctic Circle in Swedish Lapland; Oregon was only visited in order to experience the life of its cowboys; while for her the mountains of Sumatra were not to be admired from the luxury deck of a liner or from the leisured ease of a bungalow verandah, but were to be climbed, one by one, on the back of one of the agile ponies of the island. No follower of the beaten track is this lady, but a genuine student of the world and, moreover, a member of the Royal Geographical Society. England necessarily offers less varied outlets for her energies, but in her district commissionership of Girl Guides and in her mastership of the Norwich Staghounds, Miss Harker possesses two absorbing interests.

Miss Barker, -who is the daughter of Mr. William Harker. of Blofield Hall, Norwich, is now in her third season as master of this famous two-hundred-year-old pack of staghounds, and the average fields of 70 are as eloquent a testimony of her own popularity as to the excellence of the sport provided over the big plough and blind country hunted by this pack. The Norwich Staghounds, justly holding a proud position in old Norfolk hunting history, partly consist of 27in. bounds drafted from the Bicester, the Belvoir. the Essex and Suffolk (on the Essex side) and the Sussex Draghounds, and partly of home-bred hounds. Indeed. when it is remembered that, out of season, hounds are exercised three times a week, on each day covering an average of 45 miles, their hardness of condition is scarcely a matter for surprise. Hardness of condition is, in fact, a very necessary qualification in staghounds. the average point being eight miles (as against the record of miles in 1923), while the speed of the first 40 or 50 minutes considerably exceeds that of foxhounds.