Hunt Club

State and federal authorities completed a four-year undercover investigation of a Dorchester County hunt club over the weekend, arresting or issuing citations to almost two dozen guides, fishermen and hunters charged with about 400 violations of game and fishing laws.Maryland Natural Resources Police say they began documenting illegal hunting and fishing at the 2,000-acre Golden Hills Farm in February 1995, booking hunting trips through the farm's guide service. They continued their investigation when the farm became a shooting club and began charging members annual dues in 1996.

FIRST OF ALL, fox hunting is really fox chasing. Rarely is a fox caught and killed in the cross-country pursuit of hounds and horses. The hunters and their pack do not dig out a fox from its den, or "earth" as it is called, once it has found shelter.Robert Taylor has been huntsman (hunt leader) of the Goshen Hounds Hunt Club in Maryland for more than three years. He learned from his father and grandfather, who were skilled huntsmen in his native Ireland, so he knows more than a bit about the subject.

Sheila McC. Jackson, a former master of hounds at Green Spring Valley Hunt Club, died of cancer yesterday at Jackson's Hole Farm in Upperco, where she lived. She was 76.Mrs. Jackson began riding to hounds as a child in Fairfield County, Conn., and it became a lifelong passion that she reluctantly gave up four years ago.In 1965, she was named master of hounds at the club, which was founded in 1892. She was the second woman to be named to the post, which she held until 1976."To have a lady master of the Green Spring Valley Hunt Club says much about her abilities.

In medieval Europe, St. Hubert of Liege was hunting one day when he came upon a stag with a crucifix between its antlers. Then he heard a voice warning him to turn to Christ. And then he began blessing hounds before a hunt.No deer were to be seen in Glyndon yesterday, but plenty of Jack Russell terriers, Labradors, and bassets were gathered.Dozens of people braved the cold yesterday to participate in the pious practice of blessing the hunt at St. John's in the Valley Episcopal Church.Founded by St. Hubert -- the patron saint of hunters -- during Good Friday hunts, the ceremony has become a 104-year Thanksgiving tradition in the area.

Thanks for the memories, Sun readers. We received almost 50 responses on the Sundial telephone information service when we asked for anecdotes from those who lived during World War II and found bright spots of humor that helped pull them through the bad times.Even taking into account that the fish grows larger each time the story is told, this selection of remembrances represents the tales we heard from men who fought and women who tended the home front.One shoe waylaid amid hugs and kissesI was working for the war department in downtown San Francisco on VJ-Day.

It might seem like a big leap from tropical plant huckster to professional matchmaker, but for Joe Luery, there are similar considerations to making a go of either business.For one, you have to keep in mind that "people are looking for perfection," he says.And whether it's paying for a fancy ficus tree for an office or a night on the town with Prince Charming, people today are "very cost conscious," he says.Mr. Luery has tried to keep both principals in mind in launching his new venture, a matchmaker service for heterosexual adults named -- no joke -- The Hunt Club.

The first Potomac Challenge, matching senior golfers from Maryland and Virginia, will be held Thursday and Friday at the Country Club of Fairfax.The Maryland team will come from the Free State Seniors Association.The format calls for 12 players for each side in two nine-hole pairings each day, with one point for each match. Thursday's play will be alternate shot and fourball and Friday's team aggregate and individual. Two 70-over golfers must play for each side in each nine-hole match and will go head-to-head in the singles.

The Middle Atlantic PGA -- as part of its ongoing effort to promote the game in general, and PGA services in particular -- has scheduled a seminar for representatives of Maryland and Virginia facilities without a PGA professional and course developers.The program, expected to attract about 70 people, will be held Tuesday at Shenandoah Valley Golf Club in Front Royal, Va.Rich Williams, from the national PGA office, will discuss the work of a PGA member and what such a member can do for a club.

Roland Run Club in Towson won the Baltimore Junior Interclub League title Tuesday, extending its league domination to a decade.Roland Run had 67 wins in 96 matches to clinch the overall title for the 10th straight year and also won the boys and girls titles.Roland Run pro Rieck Foelber said the key ingredient for the junior tennis success is home-grown talent."They're mostly just club kids who started young and started with the club program," Foelber, a 12-year pro at the club, said.Playing for Roland Run this year were Mark Levy, Mike Miller and Vasanth Santosham in 17-and-under boys; Wheatley Marshall, Trish Cummings and Julie Cooper in 17-and-under girls; Jason Mersey, DonSpies and Brooks Marshall in 13-and-under boys; and Shireen Santosham, Sarah Barnett and Lanie Pappas in 13-and-under girls.

A group of fox hunters is trying to block the sale of the 77-acre farm that has been home to the Howard County Ironbridge Hunt Club and its hounds for 60 years.Howard Hunt Properties Inc. plans to sell the land for $1.6 million to Triangle Howard Corp. But seven Howard Hunt shareholders -- including wealthy businessman and former Ambassador Kingdon Gould Jr. -- claim that the board is not authorized to sell the property and that a majority of shareholders has not approved thesale.The group is seeking an injunction from Howard County Circuit Court to prevent the sale.

Marie du P. Scarlett, a homemaker and ranch manager, died in her sleep Nov. 28 at her Annapolis home. She was 92. Marie du Pont was born and raised in Wilmington, Del., and graduated in 1934 from Miss Hall's School in Pittsfield, Mass. She was married the next year to J.P. Wade Levering, a Baltimore businessman, and the couple settled at Edgemont Farm in Dulaney Valley. They later divorced. During World War II, she volunteered at Union Memorial Hospital and managed Edgemont Farm. After the war, she was a longtime volunteer with the Children's Aid Society.

Sarah W. "Sally" Sullivan, a homemaker and accomplished horsewoman, died Monday from complications of dementia at Roland Park Place. She was 90. Sarah Whitall was born in Boston and spent almost two years on Nantucket before moving to San Rocco, her mother's family farm in Crownsville. She was a 1935 graduate of Garrison Forest School and studied animal husbandry at the University of Maryland, and the Women's College of Geneva, Switzerland. Mrs. Sullivan met her future husband, E. Murray Sullivan, while racing at the Gibson Island Yacht Club.

At the Marlborough Hunt Races in Davidsonville Sunday afternoon, thoroughbred racehorse riders will carry on a country steeplechase tradition that dates back to Ireland in 1752, when two men decided on a whim that a four-mile race from one village church steeple to another would be good fun. Those two thrill-seekers got something started. More than 100 thoroughbreds and their riders are expected for the 32nd annual races, organizers said, along with about 5,000 spectators enjoying the Anne Arundel County event under spring skies.

Robert M. Six, a lifelong equestrian with a renowned and contagious passion for hunting, horses and hounds, died Tuesday in a Forest Hill nursing home of congestive heart failure. The longtime Fallston resident was 94. Mr. Six worked as a groom, was a devoted fox hunter, participated in and judged hound and horse shows, founded a jousting club, loved to watch horse races, and kept horses and up to 20 hounds at a time on his small farm in Fallston. Long after he was able to fox hunt or attend races -- indeed, until the day he died -- he would ask friends and family detailed questions about recent equestrian events.

The Elkridge Club, the exclusive golf venue where Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. held a much-criticized fundraiser this year, has admitted an African-American member for the first time in its 127-year history, a club newsletter shows. Developer Theo C. Rodgers and his wife, Blanche, are listed as newly elected members in the September newsletter, a copy of which was provided to The Sun yesterday. But as Rodgers writes a new chapter in Elkridge history, a sister facility - the Green Spring Valley Hunt Club, founded in 1892 for fox hunting - awaits its first African-American member, club members say. One member of the Baltimore County club is Jervis S. Finney, the chief legal counsel and ethical adviser to Ehrlich.

Mary E. Harper, a homemaker and champion golfer, died of cancer Feb. 28 at her Owings Mills home, where she had lived for more than 50 years. She was 81. Mary Eberstadt was born in Baltimore and raised in Lloyd Neck, N.Y. A 1942 Garrison Forest graduate, she worked as a medical technician at Children's Hospital in Washington and at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City during the 1940s. In 1947, she married Laurence K. Harper Jr., an investment banker, and the couple settled in Owings Mills.

The Twin Rivers Sportsman's Club has been around since 1973, hunting the same leased tract in Somerset County for all that time. Members, most of them from the Baltimore area, have done a first-rate job keeping their 900 acres neat and their hunting activities safe. But on Wednesday, Twin Rivers, along with about 40 other clubs with Eastern Shore land leased from the state, will be evicted. To say the majority of the 1,700 hunt club members are upset would be an understatement. "We keep it up. We keep the roads passable.

Developers planning subdivisions in eastern Howard County or projects that require conditional-use permission must meet with neighbors before submitting plans to the county. The next meetings are: Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. at the Elkridge library, 6540 Washington Blvd., Elkridge, for a proposal to build three homes on 1.21 acres of parcel 53 of Hunt Club Road, 6018 Hunt Club Road. Thursday at 6 p.m. at 4835 Wharff Lane, Ellicott City, for a proposal to build 15 homes on 5 acres there.

THE CALL to the hunt is sounded on a crisp fall morning, and the hounds and riders of the Marlborough Hunt Club are off. For the next several hours, a group of formally attired riders will jump fences, cross streams and circle fields, chasing the hounds that chase the fox. Although their black coats and shining boots may appear fancy, the riders must be nimble enough to keep up with one of the three groups. This is not a sport for the faint-hearted. "It is all a game. Here in America, we do not kill the fox, we are technically `fox chasing,'" says Katherine Cawood of West River, one of three hunt masters for the 125-member club.

James P. Vonderhorst, founder and president of EPI, manufacturers of labeling equipment, was killed Wednesday in a motorcycle accident in York, Pa. The Parkton resident was 57. Born in Denver and raised in Long Island, where he graduated from high school, Mr. Vonderhorst earned his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Maryland in 1968. He began his career working with Allis-Chalmers' turbine engineering division and later with Becton-Dickinson and Co. He had been eastern sales manager for AccraPly Labeling Equipment Co., when he started his company, EPI, in the basement of his Parkton farmhouse in 1980.