Why Would You Judge A Trial ?
By Bob Kimber, BraceBeagling author
July 16, 2002

Well, first of all, I would hope that you thought you were good at it. Or, if a novice, that you thought you would be good at it. I once read that: “confidence is the feeling you have before you know the whole situation”. There’s nothing wrong with having confidence, as long as you don’t get cocky.

If you are qualified to judge trials, and physically able, then I would hope you would continue to do so even if you have paid your dues. Realistically, I think that is the only way you can expect other qualified houndmen, that you like to run under, to continue judging and give up some of their opportunities to run their own hounds.

Evaluating and finding the best hounds and getting them in the right order can really be an enjoyable experience, especially if there are a few hounds there that will put on two or three consecutive quality performances that day. That can make it all worthwhile. Then there are other days when you feel lucky to leave the field with a good winner.

Working with a qualified partner can also be an enjoyable experience. To be qualified you obviously need to know the rulebook, you need to know good houndwork, and you need to be honest. All three are absolutely necessary or you shouldn’t be judging. The rules can be learned fairly easily, but there is no short cut on gaining houndwork knowledge. It requires numerous hours of following a lot of good hounds. You will learn more from following one good hound than 50 bad ones.

Several years ago, although it seems like yesterday, it was not uncommon to help judge around 100 sanction trials before you received your first license trial assignment. And that was when sanction trials would run between 25 and 50 hounds in each class. It was about learning to walk before you ran, gaining experience, and earning respect. There used to be sanction trials going on within 100 miles every Saturday and Sunday for about 9 months out of the year.

Now we have far fewer sanction trials. And probably most of those are small club member trials or derby qualifying trials, rather than trials with participants from 4 or 5 other clubs. So the opportunity for gaining grass roots judging experience has diminished in more ways than one. For new judging prospects, we probably need to pay attention to beaglers who regularly attend a lot of license trials and are interested enough to routinely follow second series. But if their pre-license trial judging experience is limited, then it is imperative they get braced with license trial judging partners that are good mentors.

Beaglers will drive a lot of miles to run in trials if they know the judges are competent and completely honest. Conversely, there is no point in driving two miles or two minutes to run under a judge that would favor a hound, a handler, or an owner. Anyway you cut it, giving or taking away something is simply being dishonest.

When a hound is looking like second series material, then I think you need to run the hound long enough to have some confidence it will stay on a check. And you need to be able to fairly compare that hound’s performance to the other hounds you might call back. If the hound is not down very long, or never has to work very hard, you aren’t going to know if it will stay. Most dogs can look good for a short distance, especially if the degree of difficulty is pretty easy. One way you can make sure you aren’t giving any hounds anything is to leave them down awhile so they can earn it.

How do you make sure you are totally impartial and fair to all the hounds? First of all, you really have to care about being fair to every hound and make it a high priority. Then you need to focus on the hounds when they are running and work with your judging partner to be consistent and do the best job possible. I’m not saying you can’t smile or have a good time, but you need to pay attention, concentrate, and stay focused.

What about picking up a brace of hounds right away that has messed up so bad that you couldn’t possibly use either of them? There’s not much point in running them further. You were hired to find the best hounds there that day, and they aren’t it. A good hound man wouldn’t want his dog down any longer than necessary if it has blown it big time, or it is down under circumstances it can’t handle.

If one or both of the hounds in a brace really aren’t terrible, and you don’t have that much in your book yet, then you better watch the brace for awhile. You may have to use a hound or two that puts on a mediocre or marginal performance in first series. If you don’t evaluate these hounds properly, you might not find the most deserving ones that could help you the most in second series.

Some people think if they get picked up running they had a “run”. And if they minimize some faults or mistakes here and there, they might even think they had a pretty good run. But unless the judges really liked the performance it is not a scoring run in the judges’ minds, even if they end up having to use the hound. Regardless of your definition of a run, the judges have to use the best performing hounds that day, even if some don’t measure up to their expectations and hopes for second series.

Judging is a lot more fun when you have more scored hounds than you can bring back. And then in second series if the hounds do it again, then you know you have judged a class with some real quality hounds in it. Judging can also be a real high when second series turns out great after first series wasn’t that much. That’s when you get paid back for your efforts to find the best hounds in first series.

If you believe that progress needs to be accurate or the hound is not accounting for the rabbit, and that accurate progress on the line needs to continue for as long as the judges need to evaluate the hounds; then I hope you are asked to judge a lot of trials and that you accept some of them.