-Bull Run is Champion Hunt; Goodwin’s Indigo is Champion Foxhound.

-Bull Run shows pack depth with four hounds scoring in the top twenty-five percent of the pack of previously qualified hounds.

-Goodwin’s Indigo is champion foxhound, amassing the highest individual score of all fifty-four hounds in the pack.

Guest huntsman Tony Leahy, MFH, and his pack of finalists. /  Mark Jump Photography

Fifty-four foxhounds from twenty-two hunts across the country converged at the J. Robert Gordon Field Trial Grounds in Hoffman, North Carolina, to compete in the Championship Performance Trial finals this year. How does a hound qualify for the finals? It finishes among the top-ten hounds in any one of the regional qualifying trials held around the country over the season. On March 25, 2022, these proven hounds convened to be numbered and to duke it out over the next two days of hunting as a high-octane pack.

Guest huntsman for this talented pack was Tony Leahy, MFH and huntsman of the Fox River Valley Hunt (IL) for the past twenty-six years and a former president of the MFHA of North America. The venue was worthy of the caliber of the competitors: nine thousand acres of flat, sandy footing, streams and natural growth, no obstacles or jumps to slow down the mounted judges, and sand roads and fire lanes to traverse. The grounds are stocked annually with three-thousand quail, but the foxes and coyotes remain undisturbed all year.