Billy Birkett won the HTA Veterans Championship with General James – and it might be the swansong for both!
If General James is a veteran, so too is Billy who will reach the ripe old age of 90 in February.
“It’s getting a bit hard now on my own. I think it will be the last time I have one on my own, although I might get one and give it to someone to train.
“General James is coming up to eight and although he’s still a fine dog I think he might be at the end of his racing career. He’s done me proud,” says Billy.
General James had a very productive debut season as a pup. He contested 67 trails, winning 19 of then and only failing to ticket in one of them.
Unfortunately he had an accident the following year which held him back a lot although he has continued to pop up with some outstanding performances in the years that followed.
Indeed in International trails he has a very good record of one win, three seconds and a third.
This season, to win the Veterans’ title, there were six wins on his record while he also won an open trail at Helton.
Billy ranks General James alongside his grandsire Some Man as the best dogs he has had in a career in hound trailing which started 78 years ago when he was 12.
“Some Man wasn’t the best running hound but he was an excellent stud dog and he produced seven champions – five in the HTA and two in the Border Association. He did win himself at big trails, a couple of occasions at the May Day Trails.
“General James ran really well as a pup and it was a great shame he suffered a bad injury or he might have gone on from there,” he says.
He was bred out of Wendy Dawson’s bitch Beyonce, who was a daughter of Some Man and Quenton. Jonty Moore’s Try Again was the sire of General James.
Billy, who lives at Great Broughton with his wife Linda, was mine host of the Appletree in Brigham for 18 years.
He was born at Bigrigg and although nobody in the family was particularly keen on hounds Billy became attached to them and was given his first hound by a maestro of training George Nicholson, who had three-times champion Whitbarrow Lad.
The bitch he was given Winster Lass was no Whitbarrow Lad. She earned one ticket – fourth in a maiden – during the three years that Billy ran her.
But that didn’t put him off and he has never been without a hound since then. Even when he moved to live and work in Liverpool for a short time he used to travel up one mid-week and on a Saturday for the trails in south Lakeland.
“I’ve often just had one or two hounds and the most I have ever had at once was four. They’ve given me an enormous amount of pleasure over the years.
“It’s sad that trailing today isn’t what it used to be although there are one or two more young ’uns around the scene. Mind you if you took all the old age pensioners away there wouldn’t be many at the trails.
“I think it all started to go downhill when foot and mouth shut us down in 2001. It hasn’t been the same since in my opinion,” he suggests.
