FAMOUS HFNTER

Waikato Independent, Volume XLII, Issue 4003, 20 May 1942, Page 2

FAMOUS HFNTER

BECKFORD DESTROYED BROKE LEG AT TAUWHARE One of the best-known hunters in the Waikato for the past 12 years, Mr Wynn Brown’s Beckford fell and broke a leg during the meet at Tauwhare on Friday, and had to be destroyed. With the master up, Beckford came to grief in a ditch on Mr T. P. Coles’s property. Mr Brown escaped with minor bruises, but his famous hunter had heard the sound of his horn for the last time. Beckford came to the Waikato from Helensville 12 years ago as a four-year-old, and had been hunted by Mr Brown twice a week each season ever since. He had won many point-to-point races, including the double at Tauwhare in 1935.

After two seconds in the Heavyweight in the 1932 and 1933 Point-to-point at Hautapu, Beckford scored his notable triumph two years later by carrying otT both the Heavyweight and the Open. It is appropriate perhaps that this grand old linter should have died in the hunting field, not far from the scene of his greatest triumph. Ridden by Mr Ned Brown he led all the way to defeat jjwagman (with Earl Johnston up) by a neck, and followed up this success by winning the Open from Mr J. Bailey’„s Blaze.

In the Heavy-weight at Fencourt the following year he again defeated Blaze, and in 1937, for the third consecutive time, gained an easy victory over H. Alloway’s Matanuku Mick. Beckford will be missed by all followers of the Waikato Hunt, but particularly at “ Ngaheke,” where he was almost one of the master’s household.