If you look in $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/default/props.conf, you will see that we do a TRANSFORM for the sourcetype syslog to pull out the host field:
[syslog]
pulldown_type = true
maxDist = 3
TIME_FORMAT = %b %d %H:%M:%S
MAX_TIMESTAMP_LOOKAHEAD = 32
TRANSFORMS = syslog-host
REPORT-syslog = syslog-extractions
SHOULD_LINEMERGE = False
If you add this TRANSFORM to the sourcetype that you want to perform syslog host extraction on in $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/local/props.conf, this should work for you. For example, if the sourcetype is "foobar":
[foobar]
TRANSFORMS = syslog-host