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Coonhounds returning to Greencastle April 13-15
United Kennel Club will welcome 96 of the country’s top coonhounds to Greencastle April 13-15 for the third annual UKC Tournament of Champions.
The event will be headquartered from the 3 Fat Labs event venue west of Greencastle. The 2023 UKC Tournament of Champions will be the third annual gathering of the country’s top hounds.
The UKC Tournament of Champions is a competitive event for UKC coonhounds and their owners/handlers. The dogs must qualify prior to attending, in the previous calendar year.
The 2022 qualifying year saw 1,300 dogs reach qualifier status. All qualifiers were then sent to regional competitions (the first weekend of April), and only the Top 96 received a ticket to Greencastle.
There is one round of competition each on Thursday night and Friday night, followed by the semifinal and final rounds on Saturday night where the overall champion will be determined. The winner takes home $50,000.
While the coonhounds are bred and trained to pursue live raccoons, no game is taken during the competition – the dogs are scored only on locating the game. In the UKC Tournament of Champions Nite Hunt, hounds are judged on how accurately they trail wild raccoons and how quickly they alert their handler to which tree the game climbed. No game is taken.
UKC has multiple competition coonhound events across the country each year, some having been held annually since the 1960s. The UKC Tournament of Champions was held for the first time in 2021. The coonhound breeds showcased at this event are descendants of the trailing hounds brought to the United States shortly after the country was founded. These hounds and hunting remain an inherent part of the country’s traditions, and the breeds are some of the most documented of all dog breeds.
UKC is the largest all-breed performance-dog registry in the world, registering dogs from all 50 states and 25 foreign countries. UKC events highlight the instincts and heritage of dogs that look and perform equally well, as more than 60 percent of its annually licensed events are tests of hunting ability, training and instinct.
United Kennel Club, a Kalamazoo, Mich.-based company founded 1898, is guided by the belief that dogs make a difference by being the best partner a human can have in the field, on the job or in a competition event.
The dog-human bond is celebrated through family-friendly programs highlighting the instincts and heritage of purebred and mixed-breed dogs alike at more than 18,000 licensed events annually.