Tilda Bogue Farm sits in foxhunting country, and the place is set up for the kind of riding that country asks for.
Tilda Bogue was a creek a long time before it was a farm. Bogue comes from the Choctaw bok, a stream, and it is scattered all over the state: Bogue Chitto is big creek, Bogue Falaya is long creek, Bogue Culley is spring creek. Tilda Bogue is generally given as palmetto creek, and that is how Keith Baca lists it in Native American Place Names in Mississippi. Nobody I know is certain about the Tilda half, so I will not pretend otherwise.
The creek is still there, north of Canton, and the United States Geological Survey keeps a gauge on it that they call Tilda Bogue near Canton. We took the farm's name from the water rather than the other way around. I like that it is a plain story. The Choctaw named this ground for what grew along it, and a couple of hundred years later we are still riding through the same wet low places where the palmetto is.
Here is the part that undoes all of it. The waterway actually running through this place is called Big Ditch. What Big Ditch would be in Choctaw is anyone's guess.
Chula Homa, whose hounds open the season here, is Choctaw as well. It means red fox.
There are trails to ride, water to cross, hills enough to make a horse honest, and pasture where horses live out together the way they would rather live. The barn is small on purpose. Halters hang at the stalls, lead ropes stay at the grooming stations, and everything goes back where it came from. It is a simple system and it works because everybody follows it.
Three things keep going here year round: boarding for a handful of horses, hunt horses for hire by the day, and sidesaddle lessons and saddle leasing. The rest of the calendar fills in around them with trail rides, clinics, and the opening meet.
None of it is fancy. All of it is fun.
ASTM approved helmets on every rider under eighteen, no exceptions. No galloping or jumping outside a lesson without permission from a supervising instructor. Swim horses in the designated areas only, and never by yourself.
Horses live out together and come in to their stalls to be loved on, with a half scoop of feed apiece. Nobody walks into the pasture after a horse. It is safer for the person and easier on the herd.
Sweep the aisle, scatter the manure, put the tack back, and take your trash with you. Small barn, shared work, no hard feelings.
The Chula Homa Opening Meet comes to Tilda Bogue Farm on November 14, 2026. Hounds, a piper, the blessing, and then the field moves off from the farm. It is the best morning of the year and the one to come see if you have never watched a hunt go off.
Guests are welcome. If you want to be mounted and do not have a horse, hire one and I will put you on something that knows the way.
