Official Website of the Foxhunters Hall of Fame
IT DEPENDS ON WHO YOU ASK...
Hilton, It's about time you got back on here. The board has begun to look like a coming events, hound peddling service crossed on a soap opera gone wrong with characters like ????, Hunter and One Who Knows.
Good to hear from someone who does know some things and isn't afraid to sign his name.
You mention that Streakin Guinea D.'s pedigree is in question because of his sire. Don't have much if any Guinea blood in my hounds, but do have a lot of Streaker Haggin blood on back. What's the scoop?
Bobby Hatcher and others promoted the Guinea hounds but it was my understanding that Mr. Bud Davis in Texas bred and trained the hounds -- hence the Guinea D.
Rumors aren't something new in foxhounds. Some are likely true, others spring from jealousy and the desire to cut down someone who stands out from the crowd.
Despite the reps of others connected with the Guinea strain, it was always my understanding that Mr. Davis was an honest and very competent hounds man.
Barry, There are a lot of stories in circulation about the validity of paperwork on certain individual hounds and strains of them. Some of them are likely true.
Long ago I decided to concentrate on what I know to be true and make any pedigrees I contribute to as honest as I know how to.
I'd like to offer a couple thoughts on old Streaker. He was whelped within fifty or sixty miles of where I live and died seven or eight miles away from here.
A hunter with no axe to grind told me a couple of years ago that Streaker was 'the fastest hound I ever saw running a red fox'.
I never saw him run. He was retired the year before I started running hounds, but I saw truckloads of his offspring run.
Hardly ever saw one right out of him run in a pen, but saw lots of them outside on coyotes and reds.
In general, you are right. They were better coyote and red fox hounds than they would have been on grays. However, like anything else, there are exceptions to the rule.
I remember a few real track running hounds out of the old bird that probably could have put pressure on a gray fox, they just never got the chance up here.
Most of the Streaker hounds up here, had little or no trail, drifted the track, didn't open til they were within 100 yards of the game and would 'shut up and get up' if they weren't.
They were great on coyotes and also some of those hard-to-run-reds.
They wouldn't open way back and let him start laying out his snares. When they opened he was running for his life.
The only guinea hounds I remember up here came off a male called Pearts Rube Guinea that Steve Watts brought up from Louisiana.
He produced three or four gyps that could just set a red fox on FIRE, but by then pens were prevalent and they didn't have enough bottom for that kind of running.
However the best hound I've ever seen came out of crossing that blood with Streaker and Rose Haven breeding. The gyp had wheels, stick and could turn with the game ahead of big packs of hounds and never miss a beat.
I've also heard that the Thirsty Guinea hound was a good one, but he wasn't alone, I'll bet.
I may as well put in my 2 cents in.
Bobby came and was the master of the Cimmaron Valley hunt and brought about 40 pups out of Guinea D with him and sold them all the first 2 hours he was there. I new where 25 to 30 of them went to and out of those only 2 had the speed to get in a FAST coyote race in open country.
Most of them did not get over 22 inches and were kind of fat dumpy looking dogs,not what you need from the cimmaron river north.
Bobby never came back to this part of the country.
Barry he had the Indian Princess with him and she was very easy on the eyes, that for sure
BARRY IF YOU EVER SHOW UP WHERE I CAN LOOK AT YOU I WILL TELL YOU A STORY ABOUT A CROSS THAT WAS MADE THAT WAS NEVER CLAIMED.....THEN I CAN SHOW YOU A PICTURE OF A HOUND AND YOU CAN BE THE JUDGE....
Hilton, You can't excite me. I neither suspect or expect a thing.
Mr. Canoy, You're right about the jealousy.
They are also as good as any yard dog to let you know if a stranger came up to the house. 
Kevin Kinder
If you go back a few generations, a very high percentage of top western hounds have a cross or more of Guinea blood.
Maybe Julys too, but you'd have to read between the lines.
Houston Burns is exactly correct. I know Bud Davis very well and he has told that exact story to me many times. I never get tired of hearing it. Bud's wife started the name Guinea from the little gyp that had come in and was laying in the yard and it looked like a speckled Guinea to her.
Mr. Watters, Just one small quibble with what you posted -- I believe Don Richey bought Streaker from Ron Sheridan, who bred the hound.
Steve later purchased him back from Mr. Don and bred a number of gyps to him.
I'd appreciate any particulars you'd care to pass on about the bottom side of the Guinea hounds.
I remember Charlie Brown being in there as well as Watters Tuffy and My Dirt Dobber, who I believe Don Richey owned at one time.
Mark Curry and/or Bobby Hatcher had a bunch of the original Guinea hounds at the 1980 A.A. They were fine looking hounds, not much wonder they produced speed.
Dick, Interesting that the Delta Guy Rowden gyp crossed well on Guinea D.
I remember seeing the ad for Delta Guy a number of times and wondering what kind of hound he was. Do you have any info on him or his get?
What you've experienced also speaks to ANY famous stud hound -- it depends what you cross him on and how it works.
We tend to judge stud hounds on their pups, BUT they all have Mommas, as the old saying goes.
I've heard ol Rube Guinea was pretty tight-mouthed but the gyps I ran with out of him tongued every time they hit the ground.
I still believe that breeding successful hounds is more and art than a science, although a knowledge of genetics is a big help.
I've written about a couple Streaker Haggin hounds from a few years back, probably more than anyone cares to know.
For anyone still hanging in, I'd like to write about another one.
A couple of years ago, at the re-birth of the Penn State, I mentioned a hound called Winter Haggin W. who was right out of Streaker and a Punk Raider P. gyp called Watts Sarah Raider.
Streaker was crossed on a number of Raider-bred gyps that came out of the bloodlines bred by Herman Paugh in Warsaw, Ohio. He was out of a Pete Raider S. gyp called Paugh's Lady Bird.
Anyway, Winter was a big, stout white hound with better than average speed, excellent line control and a world of hunt. I cannot keep track of the mornings we waited for that old scounderel to come in, when everything else was in the box. You'd hear him fire up and away he'd go.
He was a very good hound, a hound that made everything in the pack better and a hound who'd face up to a coyote that didn't want to run and bay him til he did.
Winter was out of the first Streaker-Sarah cross. About the third or fourth time Steve and Hugh made the cross, it produced a hound called Wrightman's Night Rider.
Rider was the flip side to Winter. He didn't make other hounds look good. He made em look bad.
He had good hunt, not a lick of trail, very good speed and even better bottom. He was one of the few front end hounds I've seen that got better as the race went on.
He was a smallish tri-color hound that looked very ordinary and wasn't. He caught quite a few coyotes, running in country with lots of cover and tried to terminate every one he caught.
One time, before tracking collars, we'd caught every hound but Rider. A truck stopped and asked if we were looking for a hound, "because there's one up the road a couple of miles fighting a coyote. Both of them are up on their hind feet and locked on to each other pretty good."
In addition to catching and stretching a lot of coyotes, he ran at least one well-attended match race on a hard-to-run coyote that he had busting concessions when they caught him off next morning and won the New York State all age in one of the few trials he was entered in.
The hound never ran a deer or called in, to the best of anyone's knowledge.
He simply disappeared running south of Al Wrightman's farm, perhaps shot and killed, but no one knows for certain.
What we did know, was that he was an exceptional coyote and red fox hound, one of the very best that Streaker produced up here in Canada.
ERIC
I DON,T KNOW MUCH ABOUT CH DELTA GUY ROWDEN,HEARD IN HIS DAY HE WAS A GOOD HOUND,HIS BLOOD DID NOT BOTHER THE STREAKING GUEINA D GYP I HAD.HE PUT IN FOUR DAYS AND WON 73 USO MUST HAVE BEEN PRETTY GOOD.
HIS LINES GO BACK TO SOME OF THE GREATS OF THE PAST LIKE RAY RAIDER-FLYING CLOUD-BUCK BRANHAM-HUB DAWSON-BIG STRIDE-OLD HAGGIN ETC.
STREAKER HAGGIN I DO KNOW ABOUT THE STUFF HE WAS MADE FROM, BRED BY BARRY NELSON,GRAFTON ONT
I BELIEVE IN 74 OR 75.
HIS SIRE PRAIRIE HAGGIN R WAS A ROYAL BRED HOUND ,MOST OF HIS ANCESTORS WERE IN HOUR AND A HALF OF ME AND I KNEW MOST ALL OF THEM THEY WERE THE RIGHT STUFF FOR SURE.PAUGH LADY BIRD HAD THE GOOD BLOOD IN HER ALSO,BEING BY PETE RAIDER S HE BY OLD PUNK W AND A GYP BY THE REAL MC COY.
JOHN RACKLEY HAD PRAIRIE HAGGIN R AND PRAIRIE ELMO AT STUD IN EARLY 70,S HEARD SOME GOOD HOUNDS OUT OF BOTH OF THEM IN THOSE DAYS.THE KIND WE USED TO GET OUR SAT NIGHT HOUNDS FROM,ONLY LIVED 70 MILES FROM JOHN.BE SAFE COMING TO THE WOLF HOUND CLASSIC ,HOPE TO SEE YA THERE.
Dick, I believe Barry Nelson owned Paugh's Lady Bird at one time and Prairie Haggin R. as well.
I think Ron Sheridan must have bought or leased the gyp from him. It's my understanding that he made the cross that produced Streaker.
Steve and Hugh Watts bought old Prairie Haggin R. from Mr. Nelson, I believe, and bred to him extensively.
He put more type in the Paugh hounds and produced some excellent hounds. They always claimed he was a prepotent sire, producing good hounds on almost anything he was bred to.
Prairie Haggin died just before I got into hounds. The Watts brothers replaced him with Streaker. I DID see a lot of hounds out of both sires and they were very similar -- game hounds for the most part, good outgoing temperment, very little trail, drifted the track and could get up on a coyote or red, many of them had tenor mouths.
Steve and Hugh were running a litter out of Prairie Haggin and Freckles Paugh when I first met them.
It was an outstanding cross. They had a lemon and white male called Paleface Haggin that knocked heads with Streaker when they ran them together.
Streaker was retired when I saw him but I ran with Paleface a number of times. He was a very fast hound, although not as game as some of the others out of those blood lines. A couple of his sisters were probably better all-around hounds. Most of them had that tenor mouth and drew it out. They were hard to tell apart, listening to them, but you heard those mouths a LOT.
I think they placed four or five out of that litter at the Penn State derby back in the '70's.
I kind of laugh when I hear the stories about Streaker being out of a July gyp. Lady Bird came from Herman Paugh's.
I did not know Mr. Paugh but a number of friends I hunted with did and had bought hounds from him.
He was highly respected by those who knew him. He linebred extensively, refusing to breed to Walker hounds that didn't carry solid Raider-Pickett-Haggin bloodlines.
Maybe he did cross some July into old Lady Bird and maybe the tooth fairy really does come when you lose a molar. I'm getting to the age where that interests me again.
Looking forward to seeing you at the Classic.
I have lots of it, and so do a lot of others in this area. I live 20 miles from Curtis Lindsey and I bought a hound from him in 2001 that had three crosses of Cherokee Streak in him and Cherokee Streak is out of Streaking Guinea D, also I had a stud dog in the late 90's that won the 98 Texas State and he had lots of Guinea in him, and crossed him on a gyp that was a grand pup of Black Lightning Guinea, who was out of Streaking Guinea D so I have lots of it since I have crossed these three hounds back and forth together, so now I have lots of it but most of the actual Guinea name is in the fourth and fifth generation now. I imagine there are many hounds in the Texas, La., Ark., area that have lots of Guinea but probably not much any closer than the 4'th generation.
Mr Sharkey, he was the seventh place hound the first day of that trial and I have never seen him even close to quitting, that was a fault of his. He was too tough, I could never gather him up until late each day, even into the night. He got scratched for loafing the second day and was with a group of hounds that ran a coyote into the horse pen after 12 that day. I ran him in several trials and he always either placed or won, and as a pleasure hound he would run all night and I was always the last one to gather hounds up the next day because I was chasing him and two of his littermates, they would run all night and still go around you the next day even up into the hot part of the day. I'll never know what caused him to get scratched that second day but I can tell you, you or me either one has ever had a tougher hound than him and all his littermates. One of his littermates ran all night at Overton, Tx and I watched him cross the road the next day after a coyote all drawen up but he still wouldn't let me catch him and he died three days later with tick fever. You wouldn't want a hound or group of hounds with any more bottom than that dog had and ALL his brothers and sisters, I made the crosss three times. ALL WERE TOOOOOOOO TOUGH. The dog you are talking about blew a shoulder during the IRHC and I still ran him for several years as a all night hound with a weak shoulder. He came in limping for the first time in his life the second day of that hunt you are referring to. Now, I know what you are insinuating and I agree with you, I have seen lots of Guinea bred dogs that were a little short on bottom but as you know he was a grand pup of your Bronson Dog and Martin's War Eagle and this seemed to offset the short hours of lots of Guinea bred dogs. You can critisize him all you want to, he certainly was not perfect, he did have some faults but quitting wasn't one of them. I originally wrote seventy place but I meant seventh, as you can see I corrected that.
If you had to be a hounds man, the quality of Leon Canoy to post on here, there'd be a lot of slow days on Masterfox.
Most of us would have a lot more time for fishing, golf or maybe just training better fox hounds.
Mr. Canoy, To be a top hunter/breeder of foxhounds requires both intelligence and perseverance.
A hounds man who won't put in the hours to implement his ideas is like a hound with ability and no heart. He won't finish. That is why many of us are three hour hunters and arm chair (computer) experts.
Always great to hear from the individuals in our sport who have demonstrated that they possess both.