The Percy Hunt has bred four litters this year using all our own stallion hounds. The first litter we bred was from Poet ‘10, one of our best working bitches that we have been trying to breed from for the last three years, these are by our best dog hound Woolem ’09. She ended up with nine pups, five dogs and four bitches. We are very pleased with this litter as it ties in two of the best Old English lines that are still about, Belvoir Poacher ’96 and Limerick Tenor ’97, they are all now out at walk.

The second litter we had are by our own dog Spitfire ‘08, they are out of one of our older bitches, Article ‘07, this is her second litter, the litter she had before, four dogs and two bitches, are all very good in their work. This time she had five dogs that are also all out at walk.

Our third litter are again by Spitfire ’08, out of another very good bitch that we have not bred from before, Galaxy ‘10. Once again Galaxy is from a very good Old English line going back to Holderness Woburn ’98. The main reason we have used Sptifire again is that we are so pleased with all the pups we have had by him. Galaxy had five dogs and one bitch, these are all still at kennels.

We also bred off another good bitch Poetry ‘10, these are again by our own dog Woolem ‘09, she also had a very nice litter of eight but as we already have enough whelps we are only keeping one bitch and drafting the rest to another hunt.

We also had several other hunts use our stallion hounds this year, these hunts include the Hurworth, Holderness, Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn’s and the Cheshire. The stallion hounds used were Spitfire ’08, Woolem ’09, Gamble ’10, Clinker ’12 and Alnwick ’11.

We began summer hound exercise on bikes on the 05 May and will start on horses in the first week of August.

Robert McCarthy – Huntsman