It's showtime

Hound shows are a great spectacle of beautiful hounds, hunt staff and all manner of hunting folk with whom to gossip and chat, says Frank Houghton Brown

- Frank Houghton Brown

HUNTS up and down the country have a busy summer ahead. Hounds and staff have made a quantum leap from hunting mode to the summer season of hound shows: equally disciplined but diametrically different in nature.

These shows used to be the realm of hound aficionados and cognoscenti, but now they are much more relaxed affairs, where anyone interested in supporting their own hunt can feel at home.

The South of England Hound Show at Ardingly, West Sussex in early June (9–10 June 2023) is the first of the year and it is still part of the main agricultural event.

This is a showpiece for the southern packs and has built a reputation for friendliness and informality thanks to longstanding chairman Gary Lee and his wife Fee, who acts as show secretary. Each hunt has considerable local support and those hunts that win may be tempted to show again later in the summer.

The Wales and Border Counties Hound Show at Builth Wells comes at the end of June (29 June 2023) and is a veritable hunting jamboree where all types of hounds are shown on the same day.

Many of the fashionable foxhound packs turn up, usually with the green coats of the Duke of Beaufort’s and the Heythrop at the fore, but the main event is the Welsh ring where handlers hold their woolly charges on the flags to be scrutinised in minute detail.

Last year the Teme Valley huntsman David Savage had the honour of winning both the Welsh and Fellhound championships, but this year it will be interesting to see if the pack’s new English huntsman Jamie Whittle can have the same mesmeric effect on his hounds.