Ollie Cornock

Imagine if you could “design” the day’s hunting of your dreams… What hounds would be hunting, where would it be, who would you take with you?

- Frank Houghton Brown.

THE Whaddon Chase country in between the wars would have been a wonderful place to follow hounds. It is even more special to think about it given that so much of the area that made up what was affectionately known by hunting folk as Londoner’s Leicestershire has now been subsumed by Milton Keynes. It was renowned as a good scenting country, with flying fences, plenty of grass, and not a strand of wire.

It’s safe to say that the current movement from a number of hound breeders to out-cross modern hounds with old English lines divides opinion. Captain Farquhar’s introduction of Vale of Clettwr Fairy 63 is now widely considered one of the great successes of modern hound breeding, with descendants in packs the world over. So I’d like to transport ourselves 10 years on from today and see just how a pack of old English crosses hunt.