Oak Ridge
UKC Forum Member
Registered: Aug 2003
Location: Indiana
Posts: 6168 |
As the former president of a club that hosted a week long elimination type "world hunt" let me share some observations with you all, and you can sort it out from there.
#1 Facilities are NOT cheap! The kennel club is either asking for "bids" or is footing the bill for the facility. Because of size, a fairgrounds seems to be the most common choice of location. I know in this part of the country, you are looking at a pretty good chunk of change to just rent the buildings!
#2 "Qualified" guides. Most of these hunts take place IN PART during the work week. Having good guides who are willing to leave their dogs in the kennel and take a bunch of whiny handlers to the woods on Tuesday night...and when the sorry dogs cant find a coon to tree...it's the guides fault. Isn't easy to get them to come back on Wednesday, Thursday, and by Friday they have all but abandoned the idea. Most handlers appreciate the guides, but it only takes one bad apple to spoil the whole bunch!
#3 At this level, everybody is an expert on the rules, or at least they think they are. And let's face it, even the most fair judge in the world is going to get hated on if he hands your dog minus points even when your dog deserves it.
I could go on and on, but the real fact is that on night one there are approximately 105 dogs. By the end of that night you are down to 20 dogs, or five casts.... Any sanctioned UKC club in the country should be able to pull that off without having to have the casts drive for an hour or more to hunt in a cut-over! It happened this year, and it will continue to happen every year up to and until we can figure a way to factor LUCK of the draw out of the equation. The only way to level that playing field in my humble opinion is to hold the event in a geographical location that lends itself to a dog being able to go somewhere within reason and within hearing to tree a coon! Over the next mountain, or through the cut-over to the next block of timber is NOT a good scenario and does nothing to prove which hound is the better hound.
Hey look, we actually still believe that the World Hunt is a measurement of "the best of the best"....and it is not even close. Heck, we can pick any 10 of the "frequent fliers" on this message board, and we can ask them independently how they would go about defining a "coondog"....and each and every answer will be different. We don't have a good yard stick to determine what dog is better than the other. Some love independance, some hate it....some love a track dog, others love tree dogs....I hate slicks, others don't mind them.... You get the picture, but the winner of the World Hunt means that they simply won 5 casts in a row. That is ALL......It does not make any one dog "better" than any of the other thousands of dogs entered from the RQE to the Final Four!
So yes, I have my own opinion about where and when a world hunt is best suited, but I am not delusional about what it means to win the world. I've hunted with at least a dozen or more World Champion hounds and handlers. Some were really nice hounds, others were far less than "impressive"...but they all won those casts. One I know of won the final cast while hiding in the dog box since it started raining!
UKC does an outstanding job with their world hunt, and they have made some recent improvements with the play-by-play, and timely (almost up to the minute) coverage. I for one really appreciate being able to keep up with the goings-on. Jim's idea has some merit...but if it ain't broke........
__________________
Joe Newlin
UKC Cur Advocate
Home of Oak Ridge Kennels
Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged
|
09-23-2013 07:44 PM
