TYPE OF FORMAT
Moderators: Pike Ridge Beagles, Aaron Bartlett
TYPE OF FORMAT
I run in the AKC SPO format and have done pretty good in the last few years. What about yall?
what format
You left out the largest ARHA format which is ARHA Little Pack
Big Dog
Big Dog
Black and Tans, Blue Ticks, and a few others bringing smoke
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favorite format
arha LP is my favorite and then UKC, I want to try MidWest SPO in the near future
Big Dog
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For years I felt that AKC Large Pack best tested all aspects of a rabbit hound. Many of our top competitors & winners in the early Deep South SPO trials won in both formats and many were of old Large Pack lines. There were some fine rabbit hounds out there
Today most AKC Large Pack is just "Speed & Drive" at all cost
I voted with SPO today. If judged properly, it's a great format. But I don't think hunt & search are being tested enough in some areas of the country.
And the pendulum swings...



"Run the most rabbit, with the least amout of wasted action"...
DG, I agree completely. We still have some darned good judges in LP today but I have to say in my opinion, we have too many guys who got their first beagle a couple of years ago and are now judging our licensed trials. It's not always easy evaluating hound work, especially when you have 40+ entries and poor running. It IS however, pretty easy to see which dog was first across the path and that's the extent of the evaluation you get at some trials. When a fellow has spent 10 years of serious hunting with a bunch of different hounds, good and bad, then he's probably ready to begin learning to judge. The rulebook plainly describes about a dozen positive characteristics that we should be crediting in our hounds and about as many demerits and pick up faults that should be taken into account but I rarely hear about any of these characteristics except how many times the dog lead the pack or how many times he was there at the check. Whatever is not tested for is soon lost. A big part of the problem is that we simply have less opportunity to hunt today than we did a generation ago and few young people get the exposure to rabbit hunting that many of us grew up with. From my experience, if you want to live in an area of prime hunting, at least on hare, you'll also find it difficult to make a living. Not much to keep our young people around here.