Goodwin Hounds
Performance Trial Champions Shine
-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.
Southern Hound Show 2022
The first foxhound show in North America in three years, and Hillsboro Wagtail ’20 has good reason to wag her tail...er...stern!
Grand Champion of Show is Hillsboro Wagtail 2020 / Wendy Butler photo
The fourteenth annual Southern Hound Show was memorable for several reasons. Nigel Peel, Ex-MFH, North Cotswold Foxhounds (UK), was ill and unable to come and join Co-Judge Marion Thorne, MFH, Genesee Valley Hunt (NY) and Apprentice-Judge Steven Thomas, MFH, Fort Leavenworth Hunt (KS). Ann Hughston, MBH, Ripshin Bassets (GA), who has judged foxhounds at Carolina, Virginia, the Canadian Hound Show, and Bassets at Peterborough, was a capable stand-in.
The mood was particularly festive as this was the first hound show in three years to be held in North America thanks to the Corona Virus. Sadly, Midland Fox Hounds (GA) had kennel cough and was unable to bring hounds, but eight packs showed hounds: Belle Meade Hunt (GA), Fox River Valley Hunt (IL), Goodwin Hounds (NC), Hillsboro Hounds (TN), Iroquois Hunt (KY), Live Oak Hounds (FL), Mooreland Hunt (AL), and Palm Beach Hounds (FL). Hounds competed under blue skies, but with chilly temperatures in the forties and low fifties and relentless high wind that made the seated lunch for over 150 people look like a food fight, with fried chicken, plates, napkins, and utensils flying through the air, all as the tent was trying to collapse!
Bedford County Detroit Is Grand Champion at Carolinas
Grand Champion of Show, Bedford County Detroit 2017 with handler Laura Pitts.The 2019 Carolinas Hound Show was hosted by the Moore County Hounds on May 11th at Lyell’s Meadow in the Walthour Moss Foundation, a paradise for horsemen and naturalists in the sand hills of Southern Pines, NC. The Foundation was formed in 1974 by Pappy and Ginny Moss, MFHs of the Moore County Hounds (NC), as a charitable trust of 1,700 acres preserved in perpetuity. With additional gifts through the succeeding years from Ginny Moss and others, the Foundation now totals more than 4,000 acres and represents Moore County’s principal hunting country.
Hounds competed in three rings, Crossbred in Ring 1, Penn-Marydel in Ring 2, and English, American, and Foot packs in Ring 3. That one ring is dedicated entirely to Penn-Marydel hounds, and English and American foxhounds are combined in one ring with foot hounds, strikes this reporter as a noteworthy indication of the growing affinity for Penn-Marydel foxhounds amongst North American hunts well outside of the breed’s native region of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware. Concomitantly, the consequence must be a reduction in the numbers of Pure English and American types now being hunted in these southern Atlantic states.
The Goodwin Hounds: New Hunt, Familiar Figure
"Tot" Goodwin and his Midland Crossbreds / Mary Kalergis photo
Jefferson “Tot” Goodwin and his wife Colleen have established a new hunt, the Goodwin Hounds, to hunt country in Inman, Statesville, and Union, North Carolina. The country was previously hunted by the Stonebroke Hounds which disbanded in the late 1990s. Landowners seem to be prepared to welcome the return of foxhunting to the area.
Not long ago there were there were four hunts in the Foothills area in the northwestern part of the state: Green Creek Hounds, Tryon Hounds, Greenville County Hounds hunting the Gowensville area, and Stonebroke Hounds hunting in Inman. The Greenville country has been assigned to Tryon by the MFHA, and Goodwin has permission to hunt from landowners in the old Stonebroke country. He plans to start small and has applied to the MFHA for Registration.
