Hunter Fact File

By Midge Todhunter

Jim Meads' latest book 'Going Home' (£30) is published by Quiller
ISBN: 9781846890413
To order call 01939 261616. Please quote ‘HSBS’.

Jim is still ambitious: in the last 58 years of running with hounds he has visited 483 hunts and says his next milestone ambition is to add another 17 hunts to make the total 500. That record, he says, will surely never be broken.

Jim launched his new book ‘Going Home’ stateside last week in a big US superstore named Horse Country, in Virginia near Washington DC. He said: “I sat there for 14 hours on that day signing books, with people queing up. We sold 600 books at $60 each. It was so rewarding to get so many people coming from various parts of America to meet me and collect their copy of ‘Going Home’. And afterwards people hung back to chat about their favourite picture in the book, etc.”

Self employed since May 1950, Jim’s enthusiasm for hunting still burns as brightly as ever, and he told us about a wonderful day out he’d just had with some beagles. “Yesterday I took pictures here in mid Wales with a pack of beagles in four inches of snow and the wind-chill factor was minus10 degrees. It was quite unbelievable, and I got some fantastic pictures, including a first - there was a 12yro girl on school half-term out hunting, and she built a snowman on the hillside. Now I’ve never had that out hunting before.”

Jim is in his 59th season as a photographer since leaving National Service with the Royal Air Force. “My first job was with Hatfield Aircraft Company. There I’d flown with war-time fighter pilots; had eight flights in a Halifax bomber, wearing parachutes. We were doing de-icing tests on propellers in those days. We’d fly up high, wait until the propeller was iced up, and then I’d open the window, lean out and take pictures of the propeller when it was feathered, and then we’d activate the de-icing equipment, and do it all again.

“Imagine leaning out of an aircraft window doing 180 mph these days! But I loved every minute of it. With all that experience, when I joined the Royal Air Force I thought they’d make me a pilot, or photographer - but they made me a lorry driver?”

Since then, Jim has flown in 86 different aircraft, including the Royal Air Force, the US Air Force, a jet fighter, and an aerobatic plane which had stress plus and minus 13 Gs. He’s covered many different events, including a boat race from Putney to Calais where he photographed the race form a helicopter with the door removed, and him standing on the running rail. He’s covered six World Championship Horse Trials, and 32 Badminton Trials.

In his early days he travelled around the country at weekends taking pictures of hunting and submitting them on spec to country focussed magazines. The editors started using them, and hunting people started buying them: “After the first fifty years, it became easier!

“When Michael Clayton became editor of Horse & Hound in 1973 I went all over the world with him for 25 years. I’d worked with Michael since 1971. He was a war correspondent with the BBC, and then worked for the Evening Standard in London: he was the Jeremy Paxman of his age. I still talk to him once a week - we call him‘Captain’ as he looks like a military man.

“My family during World War II lived in Hatfield in North London right through the Blitz, and the Battle of Britain. 1 July 1944 a Doodlebug landed on our house with us in it, but we got away with only cuts and bruises. Father was on night shift at the Aircraft factory, but me, my mother, my sister and brother all survived and dug ourselves out. The house was a bit of a mess…but we were so lucky to come out of it alive.”

“You could hear the Doodlebugs coming: when we heard the bomb’s engine stop, we all knew that’s when they’d begin their power dive, and we’d all run for cover. But we were in bed and asleep when the Doodlebug hit our house.”

Jim has worked on promotional work for the Zimbabwee Tourist Authority, and other commissions in Tunisia photographing driven wild boar shoots: “That was a hectic trip; I was there for 10 nights and slept in nine different hotels. During the day it seemed I was dodging bullets and wild boar, but thankfully I wasn’t running about in the heat.”

He has been knocked over by hounds three times in his career, and kicked once by a horse: “Kicked in the face - 30 years ago next month - when out with the Tanatside, and  I woke up in Welshpool Hospital still holding my camera. I have an old handle on it; I never use a neck strap - you can’t run with a neck strap”

For the technically minded, Jim has never upgraded to digital: he only ever uses standard Fuji 400 ASA film. He only uses one camera, and one lens: and all the pictures in ‘Going Home’ were taken with a standard 50mm lens. He has three Canon T90s which are manual, very sturdy, never go wrong, and keep going in the pouring rain.

“I could never tell anyone how to take a picture. I’ve found you could make mistakes - but never make them twice. I set the camera by judgement. When I started the cameras had no means of focussing or exposure setting. You had to get used to judging distance and exposure. And I don’t use zooms and all that stuff.

“I’ve been lucky all my life. How many people do you know have been on a jet airliner which landed at 300 miles per hour, and we walked away from it? Arnold Garvey (previous H&H editor) and I did. The stabilisers had jammed on our plane and we couldn’t fly below 280 mph. We flew around Cincinattie for two hours knowing we were going to die…

“The aircraft staff were very good, and said there was a slight problem with the wing flaps, but they knew what was happening - and I knew because I’d flown so much. We were diverted to an airport with a five miles runway where we took 4 ½ miles to finally stop.

Jim has so many memories: “I have some hand written letters from Jackie Onassis which I treasure greatly. She was a lovely lady. I met her in Virginia when they had a six-days hunting festival, and I had tea with her every night.

Jim with Dalesman, surrounded as usual by beautiful girls

Best days hunting? “One was with the West Shropshire Foxhounds, and the other was when the Bicester with Capt Farquhar visited his cousin Brain Fanshaw at the Cottesmore country. They were unbelievable days.

“The Bicester only had two hunts, which covered most of their best Cottesmore country, and if I hadn’t seen the fox - you could almost have said they were hunting a drag, they were going so fast.

“Ken Williams was huntsman at the West Shropshire, and they were mostly draft hounds and borrowed hunt country. Again they only had two hunts in the day: the first one was a long hunt and the fox got away by swimming the swollen River Seven. The second was a late hunt, and they killed their fox in the open. On both those days there was a holding scent.

“I’ve had some tremendous hunts in the US on coyotes. 10 Miles flat out, and they catch ‘em….or run them16 miles, and they get away. If you don’t catch a coyote in the first 1 ½ hours, you’re not going to catch him that day. It a bit like stag hunting - the coyote will stand at bay at the end of the hunt.”

Is this your last book...? “Well…any nice pictures I’m taking from now on may prompt another one, and that will have to be have to be called ‘Gone to Ground’…for obvious reasons.  If you know what I mean…boy?

Jim in the USA

The USA has been the other major factor in Jim’s life where he has so much going on. The US hunts pay Jim to travel out and be their hunting photographer for the day: “I love it in America: I wanted to move out there 23 years ago, but my wife thought it too far to go, so we ended up in Wales.”

“My hottest day’s hunting was with Ben Hardaway in Alabama where I ran a four mile point in 95 degrees heat. The highest I have ever taken hunting pictures was 7,000 ft in the Rockies in Wyoming, and that was in 90 degrees.”

Jim says Ben Hardaway could be described as the Sir Newton Ryecroft of America, as he’s done the same kind of experimental breeding with hounds over there. He’s had French stag hounds, July hounds, all sorts to try and breed special type.

“In January 2007 the American MFHA had their centennial hunt ball in New York City, and I was lucky enough to be part of the cellebrations. The New York hunt ball was held in Cipriani’s Restaurant where 850 people attended in hunt clothes, and danced the night away. Ben Hardaway had put up $150,000 so everybody could have free drinks all night.

Only two weeks ago Jim was in Charlottesville, USA, doing another book launch. The day had begun with a foxhunt at 9am. “People had travelled from Navada, North Carolina, Tennesse, and goodness knows where else. It was a lovely, almost a spring like day, with bluebirds and butterflys, and we where right under the Blue Ridge Mountains with all the trees in full autumn colour. It was beautiful.”

Jim stays with Dennis Foster in the USA several times every year: “Dennis is a great guy, and he does so much to stop ‘the antis’ out there. He really has his finger on the button. “He was in the American special forces behind the lines in Vietnam, and in the Gulf. He was a hell of a soldier."

Jim the Cricketer

Cricket has been a significant part of Jim’s life, and he has used it every summer to keep fit. “I never saw any sense in smoking, and I was never a boozer. In the summers I played cricket four days a week as a fast bowler, and as a batsman. That kept me very fit. The other summer thing I did to keep fit was ballroom dancing. I now get invited to lots of Hunt Balls in the US, so my ability to dance has been useful.

I played cricket for the late Queen Mother’s National Hunt team, as a ‘ringer’ really. We played cricket at Lords, and at Barbados, playing for David Nicholson’s jockeys’ team with David, Josh Gifford, Terry Biddlecombe, Andy Turnell, and John Buckingham: the latter is famous for winning the Grand National in 1967 - the year of the big pile up when Buckingham’s mount Foinavon escaped the melee and coasted home at 100/1.