Importance Of ACHA World Hunt!

It could be debated how important the ACHA World Hunt was in the development of the hunts and the popular rising of the sport.

It is important to look at the history and the progress of this sport and that is what we will do here.

HistoryNutt said:

To fully understand the importance of the ACHA World Championship a person needs to visit the past and how it was like back then. Field Trials were a big thing. People were just getting into the competition hunts and it took effort to find one and get to it. The ACHA (American Coon Hunters Association) World Hunt was the one to win and that is where the World Champion Coonhound came from.

Back then we didn't have the roads we do now ( a lot of highways we would use now didn't exist) nor the vehicles. If you look at some of the old pictures you saw that a lot of the hunters loaded the dogs up in their cars to go to the hunts. Believe it or not there was once a time when everyone DIDN'T have a truck.

As each year passed competition hunts and shows gained in their popularity. But it wasn't easy to get to them as it is today. It took effort.

In the mid 60's our Coonhunting club had over 300 members. Why? One of the reasons was it was the only one around. It was a big deal when we got our first UKC Hunt and Show. It wan't unusual to have to drive 150 - 200 miles or more to attend a UKC Hunt and Show. If you wanted to compete you had to put some effort into it.

As UKC was the set of papers people thought of when talking about a dog being registered, ACHA was what people thought of when thinking about a World Champion.

In it's day the ACHA World Championship was the hunt everyone wanted to win. Of all the hunts going if a person could pick the one he wanted to win the most it would have been the ACHA World Hunt. The same as if a dog had papers they wanted to make sure at least one set was UKC papers. Most wouldn't have considered the dog truly a registered dog if he didn't have UKC papers.

There use to be only one World Championship and one World Champion and that was the ACHA World Champion. Now there are numerous organizations that have World Championship Hunts. If you want to go to a competition hunt most will be able to find fairly close to them a UKC, AKC, NKC, ACHA (WCCHR), PKC hunt. It is not hard to find a place to go to and compete.

How important was the ACHA World Hunt in the Treeing Walker Breed becoming the most popular coonhound breed? I believe it was very important. First the breed had to perform but perform they did.

From 1948 to 1985 there was 38 ACHA World Champions. Of that 38, 28 were Treeing Walkers. From the year 1958 to 1976 all 19 World Champions were Treeing Walkers.

In 1985 ACHA reached it's peak, they hunted 635 dogs in DuQuion, Il. and every coon hunter in the country wanted to win "THE WORLD CHAMPIONSIP", the ACHA World Championship!

The next year ACHA and AKC merged to form ACHA/AKC. The merger was a disappointment to both parties and was dissolved shortly after it was formed. Since that time ACHA and AKC have gone their seperate ways and to this day remain two completely seperate and independent registries.

I believe there was a 3 year period that the winners of the ACHA World Championship forever changed the face of the sport and the treeing walker breed.

In 1963 House's Bawlie won not only the World Hunt but the World Show. A beautiful hound that caught people's eyes and introduced the world to the HOUSE strain of dogs.

In 1964 Stan's Sailor Jr. won the World Hunt. His strain (Sailor Boy - Hershberger) had already be introduced to the world in 1961 when his father won the world hunt that year. But the fact that a son of a world champion also was a world champion got people's interest in this strain.

In 1965 Finley River Spot won the World Hunt and introduced to the world the FINLEY RIVER CHIEF strain. Then the next year 1966 a grandson won the hunt and if that didn't get people's attention in 1970 another son won the World Hunt.

If you will take these three strain of dogs and research the dogs of today you will find that most of the
hounds of today go back to at least one of these strains and in a lot of cases all three. If these dogs hadn't won the ACHA Championship would these strains have gotten the attention they deserved?

During this period winning a ACHA World Hunt meant your dog was going to get a chance to breed a lot of females and get pups on the ground to prove what they could do. Winning the ACHA World Hunt created buzz about the dog and what his breeding was.

The ACHA World Championship was a very important part in our great sport and our great breed.