Helen Hastings, website designer for the Borders Bloodhounds asked Jeremy Whaley MBH (while he was Master there) a number of questions about bloodhounds and hunting the clean boot. The questions and answers are reproduced here. If you would like to add your question, please send it to Jeremy@SouthDownsBloodhounds.com

1. What bloodhound characteristics do you need for this type of hunting and which do you want to breed in?

2. Why are purebred foxhounds not suitable for clean boot hunting?

3. Is a dog or a bitch pack easier for hunting 'clean boot' ?

4. Is the 'voice' something that has to be bred for?

5. How do bloodhounds develop pack instinct?

6. What do you think motivates a bloodhound to hunt human quarry?

7. Can you talk a bit about getting hounds fit for hunting; exercise, feeding, training etc?

8. What do you enjoy about hunting with bloodhounds?

Question: 1
The Borders Bloodhounds are not pure bred bloodhounds. What bloodhound characteristics do you need for this type of hunting and which do you want to breed in?
JW: This question is more complicated than it looks. Intelligent Masters of Hounds (MHs), whatever breed of hounds they use, have in the past followed the principle of “breed hounds for work and make them as good looking as you can.” There have been and still are some MHs who breed hounds for the show ring and take the view that work comes second. I will let you use your imagination to understand what I think of them. Suffice it to say that in the foxhound show ring today we have ended up with foxhounds that look like greyhounds and the only way you can tell the difference between the doghounds and the bitches is to look between their hind legs!

Although hunting with packs of pure bred bloodhounds has been done - I think there is still a pack of pure breds in Germany – most people have found that they are not well suited to pack hunting. Physically, pure breds are neither athletic enough for most countries and lack the stamina and mental stability to provide quality sport for a mounted activity. They are also prone to a number of constitutional weaknesses – eyes, ears, hips, tendency to suffer from bloat etc - that would lead to too great a turnover of hounds. Therefore cross breeding pure breds with other scenting hounds has generally become the accepted way forward.

I have seen 6 out of a total of around 12 packs of bloodhounds in the country. The Coakham Bloodhounds are I believe the oldest pack in the country and Nic Wheeler certainly has bred a “type” and many of them are aesthetically indistinguishable from pure breds. The East Anglian Bloodhounds are impressive to look at, but they are closer in type to foxhounds than bloodhounds. The Four Shires are more towards the bloodhound type, but were a bit on the small side. The Readyfield and The Cranwell are mainly black and had other similarities, while The Southern Shires have a number of interesting outcrosses. So there is very little type to be found between the packs by which you could set a “standard”. When I say the Coakham Bloodhounds are “aesthetically” indistinguishable from pure breds, it is because although they look like pure breds, the vast majority of his hounds do not have the poor movement associated with pure breds. The Coakham Bloodhounds do, as we know, produce good sport. Therefore I think as they have the bloodhound looks and produce good work, they must be the closest to the standard we should be trying to develop.

Now I know what you’re saying, one minute he says we should breed for work and then he rabbits on about looks! Yes but it is only possible to put work first if you have a breed of dog which will breed to type; this is easier to do with pedigree dogs than hybrids. Therefore breeding working bloodhounds is a very complicated balance of aims. How do we balance those aims?

My way is to first choose which individual hounds I want to breed from, dog or bitch, and this selection will be driven by the hound’s working ability. In the case of a bitch, her work would ideally be above average but in certain circumstances, which relate more to the sire I choose, a bitch of average working ability may be suitable as long as her conformation is good. With this above average working bitch, I would then seek a dog that I believe to have above average working ability but that has none of the physical weaknesses that the bitch my have. Usually the dog will be one outside my own kennels and I will have to trust its owner to give me a fair assessment of its work. The only reason I would ever breed from one of my own doghounds is because it was exceptional in its work.

Perhaps a good example of all this, is my use of “Tailor” (year unknown) as a stallion hound last season. Tailor, an otterhound/bloodhound cross, is as ugly as John Prescott but unlike Prescott, is an exceptional dog in his work. In hunting any quarry the most important attribute a hound can have is to be able to hunt with a good voice and at a fast pace, but turn exactly where his quarry turned. Hounds that drive on too hard overrun the place where the quarry turned and then if the huntsman is the sort of man who rides too close to his hounds, or worse still the field rides too close, by the time hounds check you find there are now horses standing on the turning point, making recovery of the line slower if not impossible. This might also apply where hounds run towards stock and where the quarry has turned before the stock, the hounds drive on into the foil and then find it difficult to recover the turning point because they become tainted with foil or even move the stock onto the line. I have on so many occasions seen Tailor turn out of the middle of the pack in full cry and stay on the line. This shows this dog has skill and extreme confidence. He also has a good voice, a critical factor for me when choosing hounds to breed from.

It is important when you find a dog like Tailor, not to be blinded by his brilliance and ignore any faults he may have. Indeed once I find a hound that I am impressed with I look hard for faults, working or physical, because it is those I will want to correct by breeding. So what are Tailor’s faults? Well the main one is that whilst he has sufficient pace to stay with the pack, because of his conformation he lacks a bit of stamina.

I also had a bitch called Sultry 03 that I wanted to breed from Sultry 03 has pace and once again a very impressive ability to turn with the quarry and because she has plenty of foxhound in her blood, she has plenty of stamina. So was this the ideal mate for Tailor? No. Tailor is an Otterhound/Bloodhound cross, Sultry 03 is a foxhound/bloodhound cross; both are a bit on the small size and a mating of these hounds could have taken us in any direction. I am trying to build “type” into the pack without losing ability, whilst such a mating might well produce good working hounds, it is unlikely to produce a good bloodhound type. The thought of ending up with a whole litter of John Prescotts is more than I could stomach!

So I looked at the rest of the bitches and chose Platter 02, more average in work than outstanding, but more importantly she has many of the physical characteristics that I will be working towards in building a pack of hounds of a more uniform appearance than we currently have.

But what about Sultry 03? Well in normal circumstances I would not have been in a hurry to breed from such a young hound, but because we are such a “young” pack it was a choice of breeding from the best bitch or breeding from an older more average bitch. Sultry was born from a foxhound bitch, Berwickshire Piecrust 00, who had two lines back to bloodhounds. I have been involved in this family’s breeding for the last 23 years in three packs of hounds, although the aim then was to breed hounds to hunt foxes. Now I am trying to revert this line back to hounds which hunt humans. So I took this bitch down to Nic and Sue Wheeler who very kindly allowed me to us their pure bred dog “Sidney”. One would imagine that using a pure bred bloodhound on a foxhound bitch with two lines back to bloodhounds would give us something closer to a bloodhound than a foxhound, now wouldn’t you? Not so; Sultry and her brothers and sisters turned out more foxhound than bloodhound to look at and I was terrified at the prospect of entering them to the clean boot. Fortunately my fears were groundless and they all work extremely well on the clean boot. But I needed to find a mate with a heavy dose of bloodhound in its pedigree.

So it looked like I would have to flog down to East Sussex again to find a suitable mate, but as luck would have it I found a Coakham bred bloodhound cross, called Ryan, being used for search and rescue near St Boswells. I went and looked at the dog and he was a good size, if marginally on the heavy side, but that doesn’t matter as Sultry is a bit on the light side. The fact that he does search and rescue means that he must have ability. So this was the sire I chose for Sultry and I now have five whelps on the ground. My big worry is that bloodhounds working alone rarely give tongue and Sultry’s voice is a bit on the weak side. Did I make a good choice? Time will tell!

The breeding of good foxhounds is not easy, but because you are breeding a pedigree animal only bone idle idiots do it badly. By using the hands on knowledge and pedigree of the individual foxhound you are trying to breed from, together with the knowledge of the pedigree of the mate you are choosing, you can reduce the chance of producing something too far out of type. There will be a pre-potency in this sort of breeding which you can use to your advantage. It’s like mixing shades of yellow; you know you will end up with yellow even if you don’t know what shade of yellow it will be. When breeding hybrids, especially using all sorts of outcrosses as we do in clean boot hunting, it’s like mixing all the colours of the rainbow and still trying to end up with one colour. It is not easy and there are no certainties, you just have to feel your way by instinct.

The breeding of the pack bloodhound is in its infancy compared with breeding other pack hounds. I would love to come back in 200 years time and see where it has got too. Now there’s a frightening thought to leave you with!!

Question: 2
Why are purebred foxhounds not suitable for clean boot hunting?
JW: Foxhounds are not as low scenting as bloodhounds. To take the argument to extremes, we know that pure bred bloodhounds can differentiate between individual human scents, but have no evidence that foxhounds can. It is arguable as to how much human scent clean boot hounds are hunting and how much is disturbed ground. I suspect clean boot bloodhounds tend to hunt one or other or both depending on scenting conditions. So to sum up I think it likely that bloodhounds are more capable of discerning human scent while foxhounds hunting the clean boot would be more likely to rely on disturbed ground. Ground can be disturbed by a number of things therefore you want a hound that we know can differentiate human scent; hence we use bloodhounds.

Follow up question:
I remember one chase on a windy day last season going up the side of a hill when the hounds were following two different lines. You said that some of the hounds were following the scent on the wind. I guess the others were scenting the disturbed ground?
JW: Yes, that is precisely what the hounds were doing. Of course the huntsman always has to keep this in mind when the hounds appear to be splitting, because there could be alternative explanations, the most obvious of which is riot. As the huntsman is riding along he is rarely just enjoying the ride. He is constantly analysing what the hounds are doing and assessing how things that appear in front of them will affect them, and be weighing up what action he should or should not take. Ideally he should interfere with the hounds as little as possible; they will learn more from experience than being shown what to do.

One of the great difficulties of hunting bloodhounds is that the huntsman thinks he knows where the quarry has gone and as such when the hounds are not doing what he expects he has to decide whether to trust them or not. Frequently clean boot quarries make mistakes, forced errors or use their own sense of artistic licence; when they do so there is enormous temptation for the huntsman to interfere, but to do so will damage the hounds confidence if he does so when they are right. With animal quarries, the huntsman rarely knows what the animal has done and has no option but to trust the hounds unless he sees compelling evidence to the contrary, so the animal quarry huntsman is faced with these sorts of judgements less often.

Question: 3
Is a dog or a bitch pack easier for hunting 'clean boot' ?
JW: When hunting foxhounds, doghounds tend not to like changing foxes, whereas bitches will change foxes quite happily. Equally doghounds do not like to be lifted while hunting and tend to lose enthusiasm if handled too much in a hunt. That is why huntsmen wanting to put on a show tend to like hunting bitches, they can change foxes quickly and “keep the tambourine rolling” as they say. From the little hunting of bloodhounds I have done, this rule would seem to apply to bloodhounds too, except that older bitches can behave like doghounds. Obviously hunting the clean boot you only have one quarry and don’t want hounds to change if given an opportunity, so if this trait is present in bloodhounds, doghounds may have an edge over bitches.

Question: 4
I had never thought of the 'voice' as being something that had to be bred for.
JW: Voice is obviously more important for hounds that hunt through woods, so that the followers can keep track. Nonetheless, it is voice which injects jealousy into the pack (i.e. he is making a noise, so he has got the line and I want it) and jealousy creates drive. Hounds that go to the voice of other hounds are ideal, hounds that dwell on the line (taking the view I don’t care what the others are doing) are a nuisance as they pull the lead (pack orientated) hounds back at a check. The difficulty with bloodhounds is that they can tend to make more noise when excited (anticipating a hunt) than they do when they actually have a line and are more prone to dwelling as they get older. Foxhounds are much better at keeping quiet as they go to a draw and only speaking on the line. This is the hundreds of years of selective breeding I was talking about.

Question: 5
You said that bloodhounds don't usually hunt in packs. How do they develop pack instinct?
JW: Bloodhounds have for centuries been bred to work individually and as such they have very little pack instinct. In other words the pack trait was not needed so it was not a factor taken into consideration when breeding them. (Similarly voice) However foxhounds must work as a pack, so hounds that did not display such a trait have not been bred from. It is the lack of pack instinct which makes bloodhounds difficult to hunt. When hunting foxhounds you are looking at pack and trying to identify individual qualities. When hunting bloodhounds you are looking at a number of individuals and trying to encourage them to work as a pack. The aim of any good huntsman of any pack of hounds should be to catch their quarry with all the hounds on. Huntsmen who leave hounds all over the countryside are a pain in the neck and in no circumstances should they be bred from!

Question: 6
What do you think motivates a bloodhound to hunt human quarry; after all, a handful of soggy dog biscuits is not much of a reward for their efforts?
JW: The question is really what motivates any dog to hunt? The answer is instinct. All dogs want to hunt no matter whether is a bloodhound or a pekinese. Some hunt by sight, greyhounds, whippets, salukis, foxes, some hunt by scent, hounds, labradors, retrievers, wolves etc. The ability to hunt obviously varies from breed to breed and even from animal to animal. The overall ability of the individual breeds depends on how they have been bred for the last 100 years or so. Therefore dogs that are bred for their working ability will be better than dogs bred to sit on the sofa.

All dogs would really prefer to catch a quarry and by that I mean catch, kill and eat. What do I mean “prefer” you might say, my dog doesn’t hunt and kill anything. Yes but that is because you stop it. If a dog from birth was permitted to chase things it would end up catching and killing animals even if we fed it as well. Ask Roy Hattersley – well known anti-hunting politician – about his dog and the ducks in the park.

It would be quite possible to get a pack of bloodhounds to catch kill and eat the quarry, but our quarries have never been very keen on the idea! Bit of a shame really as I am sure they would run a bit faster!!

So to sum up, bloodhounds hunt instinctively, they do not eat their quarry because we stifle that instinct.

Question: 7
Can you talk a bit about getting hounds fit for hunting; exercise, feeding, training etc?
JW: Bloodhounds, even cross breds, are the least hardy of pack hunting hounds and as such they need more exercise to get and keep them fit, I have always taken the view that hounds are better exercised rather than left in grass yards, both from a mental point of view as well as a physical consideration.

They say of a horse, “no foot no horse” and the same is true of a hound. However you can shoe a horse, you can’t shoe a hound! Therefore the most important consideration as you start to get hounds fit for hunting is to design your exercise to harden and strengthen the hounds’ feet. Roadwork is best and I start on foot but quickly get on to a bike in order to move at a pace more suited to the hounds, a lope. I like to get the young hounds used to going out with the pack as soon as I can, usually when they are about half grown. This starts getting the very young puppies used to going on collars and leads and then coupling the young hound to an older hound, until it learns and responds to its name. Great care needs to be taken with hounds on couples (two collars linked by chain) as the pulling that is sometimes involved with rebellious youngsters can tear their feet. So I don’t take them too far until they are moving freely. I have found that, with one or two exceptions, bloodhounds come off couples much quicker than foxhounds, even as fast as 3 – 4 days. A good huntsman can tell by the way the hounds move whether or not they are feeling the ground or moving without any tenderness, thus being able to judge when to increase their work.

Once the hounds are going freely on bikes, then the transition to a horse can make life more comfortable for the huntsman and gives the young hounds time to get used to horses before they are introduced to the rabble, otherwise known as the Field. I tend to get on to a horse quite quickly nowadays as my bike is very old and has got rather slow. Where it seemed to go up hills quite easily a few years ago it now tends to struggle and I don’t like to be too hard on it.

In the main I exercise the hounds on my own, so I have to make sure I have got good control over the hounds; not that I have ever thought that good control was not important. Indeed one of the biggest problems is that young huntsmen of today read books about hunting hounds that were written 20 to 50 years ago and fail to realise that road conditions and the general public’s expectations have changed substantially since the books were written. Accidents can happen in the best controlled packs of hounds, they just happen more often with packs that don’t consider control a priority.

The huntsman’s voice is important; I have always found that the best huntsmen tend to have a different tone when they speak to the hounds and I am sure this is helpful from the hounds’ point of view; they know when they are being spoken to and ignore his general chit chat to other people. A consistent vocabulary is also important; the words don’t matter as long as they are consistently used in set circumstances. For example I say “get over” to keep hounds to the left of me and “come bye” if I want them on my right, thus I can pass all sorts of distractions like people walking dogs, dead animals on the roads, cars etc. without trouble. As well as the last two commands I have “bike” for when I want them to come behind me after having let them run on in front, “come out” for when a hound tries to go into an open gateway or hole in a hedge. “Have a care” or “no” when young hounds see a roe deer, hare or rabbit cross the road in front of them, followed by “ware hind (pronounced “war inde”) as we cross the line of the deer or “ware hare” (war air) for a hare, “war wing” for a bird etc. Hound exercise is the time when the young hounds will learn how to read your voice and a huntsman with a good range of voice and consistent commands will handle hounds better than one who is monotone and/or monosyllabic. One bad experience on hound exercise can put young hounds back a long way and delay the time when they can be entered.

Of course one of the problems with exercising bloodhounds is that they want to hunt all the time. Bloodhounds live to hunt and hunt in their sleep. If someone has walked in front of you, or walked in to a gateway, you have to be careful that they don’t take off after them, while not being too hard on them. Not that if they did take off after anyone they would do them any harm, the trouble is that the “man on the Clapham Omnibus” tends to assume that if he has a pack of 30 slavering bloodhounds chasing him, he is going to get eaten and no amount of words of reassurance will make him feel any less nervous. Added to this some people are ridiculously sensitive about being covered in mud and slobber. The trouble is you don’t want to spend the whole of hound exercise with the hounds behind you; they would not develop confidence if they did. So you are constantly looking ahead and not letting hounds run further in front of you than you can see. But a man who lets hounds run ahead when he knows he couldn’t stop them if a roe deer or some other distraction jumps out in front of them, is a fool.

If I have got company on hound exercise I don’t like them to push hounds on all the time if we are on a quiet road. Once again hounds need to know they can fall back behind a horse and then come on past it when they want; it’s all about keeping a balance between keeping the pack together but letting them explore with their noses. Of course on main roads letting them fall back behind the whipper-in is out of the question. Some whippers-in suffer from verbal diarrhoea and need their lips sewn together. Whippers-in are there to quietly go after hounds if they don’t listen to the huntsman, not shout what the huntsman is shouting – but louder! Constant whip cracking and/or shouting does nothing for hounds other than to teach them to ignore commands.

Bloodhounds overheat very easily, but I have found all hounds appreciate being able to go into water as often as possible; also the occasional period standing still helps. You may have to repeat the routes you take quite often, but you should not repeat what you do on that route if you can help it. Don’t always let them run on in the same place and some times hold them on your left and sometimes on your right. The more you do with them the more they will enjoy working with you.

When the bloodhounds come back from exercise I always let them have a drink and cool off before I feed them; usually about half an hour. Bloodhounds, even hybrids, can suffer from bloat and they are better fed in a non stressed state. The feed will be meal that has been soaked in hot water before we set off for hound exercise. The meal is put into a long trough and the hounds called through one by one to join the feeding. I am, I believe, unusual in calling the whole pack through one by one, but I believe this helps the bond between us and also makes me think very carefully about each hound’s weight before I let it through. I use this time to look out for hounds who think they can just push through when they feel like it; if they learn now that they can’t get away with thuggish behaviour, they won’t try it on in the field. Using this method I ensure the young hounds and shy feeders go in first and the greedy guts go in last. I maintain strict feed room discipline. I wish someone would do that with me and then my hunt coat wouldn’t keep shrinking! The hounds are not allowed to put their hind feet in the trough and they are not allowed to fight.

The training of hounds is very difficult to explain; I am afraid it is instinctive and either you have it or you don’t. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t plenty you can learn, but just as I am unlikely to become a pop star, no matter how hard I study it, some people just don’t have what it takes to hunt hounds. The man (or woman before you accuse me of being a MCP) who has “it” is the man who has eyes in the back of his head and no matter what he is doing or who he is talking to, he never takes his eyes off the hounds and just knows instinctively when to talk to a hound. Because that is what training is about, talking to the hounds and being understood; knowing when to interfere with what hounds are doing and when to leave them alone; knowing when hounds have had enough or can do a bit more. It is instinctive, I’m not quite pompous enough to call it a gift, okay I am! Each hound is different and will respond differently in certain circumstances. One hound seeing a hare cross in front of him might need a flick with a whip, another may need “no” and another need nothing at all. Flicking the one that needs nothing will do damage to its confidence, while do nothing to the one that needs a flick will end up in it becoming riotous. In the days when I could afford a professional whipper-in I used to like to see them with hounds before I employed them I could see the hounds saying either “watch out lads this chap knows what he is doing” or alternatively “ whoopee we should be able to take the piss out of this bloke”.

One of the big problems with modern huntsmen is that the old fashioned training route under a hard task master is no longer there. Working with hounds, or horses come to that, cannot be achieved between 9 – 5. The man who looks at his watch when working with hounds is in the wrong job; you have to be prepared to do what is needing to be done, when it needs to be done. As such huntsmen work long hours, for very little money and have to recognise that everyone who comes out hunting knows exactly what he is doing wrong, but are much too polite to tell him! Oh yea?

Question: 8
What do you enjoy about hunting with bloodhounds?
JW: My reason for hunting is that I like working with hounds. In particular I like using hounds to hunt something that can be difficult to track. With bloodhounds hunting the clean boot, the hounds follow the natural scent of a human being, which is extremely subtle especially when you consider that the runners are clothed and wearing shoes. I have attempted to get the quarry to run barefoot and naked without much success; something about frightening the sheep they say! I know Nic Wheeler of the Coakham Bloodhounds gets his quarries to run in shorts, which may well ensure that his hounds get to hunt more human scent and less disturbed ground than is done by The Borders Bloodhounds; however given the Scottish weather, I felt it might be a bridge too far for the quarry here. To understand just how sensitive a bloodhound’s sense of smell is, imagine yourself trying to follow a green cotton line over a grass field, with different shades of green cotton intersecting the line you are trying to follow. Then imagine doing it while running as fast as you can and shouting at the top of the voice, now you are beginning to understand what the hounds are doing.

With my bloodhounds I like my quarries to deliberately make the line difficult to hunt - within the bounds of what a wild animal might do - I like there to be a degree of uncertainty: I like to look at the hounds and decide which hounds have the line and which ones are just following? Is that hound right or following riot? I like to watch individual hounds trying to work on the different surfaces of stubble, grass, plough, winter crops, foil, tarmac etc: I like to watch for the hounds that make the day and make mental notes about future breeding plans for them: I like to go home at night and think about how my breeding in the past has affected all these matters. I have heard someone describing hunting the clean boot as “pointless”, which is I feel a particularly ignorant remark. The point of all sports, be it hunting or tiddlywinks, is to fascinate and entertain. I certainly don’t take the arrogant view that because I don’t like tiddlywinks it is of less value than sports I do enjoy.

The reason why the overwhelming majority of people hunt is because they want a good ride across country; their interest is in their horse and their own riding ability. My aim is to hunt hounds and encourage others to become interested in the hounds and how they work. I do this for two reasons; firstly because if one enjoys the ride and enjoys watching the hounds work, you are getting more value for your money: secondly, hunting will only survive if we have people who have a deep and committed interest in the hounds welfare and ability. The children hunting today are the Masters of tomorrow; if we can get a few of them to be knowledgeable about hounds then we are half way towards keeping and improving the sport for the future.