The Southern Shires Bloodhounds were founded nearly nine years ago, in a pub called the George & Dragon, just on the outskirts of Reading. The pack are now hunting in their 10th season.

The pack started with just two and a half couple (five) hounds. These were kennelled at the home of the hunt chairman.
As the pack, and the neigbours' concerns grew, they moved to larger kennels at New Barn Farm, Bucklebury, the pack has now become very independent, and have settled at Park Farm, Wherwell in the Harewwod Forest, just east of Andover.

The hounds are kennelled together with the stabling for the hunt horses. This not onlymakes it easier to exercise the hounds from horse back, but also developes familiarity and trust between the hounds and the hunt horses.

A new pack starts with hounds drafted in from other packs. This results in a somewhat unusual and unbalanced pack, as the hounds drafted in, tend to be; rather old; rather young; difficult to manage; or of mixed parentage.
The challenge then is to set up a breeding program to improve the pack, while maintaining the good hunting skills and physical characteristics appropiate for a working bloodhounds.
These are mainly;
Well knuckled feet
Strong legs
A deep girth for stamina
Clean eyes for kennel management

The Southern Shires Bloodhounds now have 12 1/2 (25) couple of pure bred or 7/8th bred bloodhounds in kennels. No new puppies were bred last year, due to the concerns with foot and mouth disease and the future of hunting in general. We now need to ensure puppies this year, to keep young hounds coming through.

Just one item to put the records straight, you may read or hear that "The Southern Shires Bloodhounds is not registered" this is being said because we are not registered with the Masters of Draghounds and Bloodhounds Association, i.e their association. Just to put things into perpective, we are a registered pack of hounds, just not with that Association, but with the International Masters of Bloodhounds Association,(after all there is more than one political party) of which Sir Rupert Buchanan-Jardine is the President, and Sir Richard Body is the Chairman. There are more packs registered with the IMBHA than just us. If you have any questions on the matter above then we will gladly answer them.

The history of our hunt livery and name goes like this.....
When we first formed, we were being called renegrades, rebels to name a few, but then thats another story. We had not thought of a name at this time, so looking at the titles already being given to us, ideas began to be thrown around. Then eureka! in America the rebels came from the southern states, so why not the Southern Shires, the colour of our livery is confederate grey, as is the collar, the hunt buttons are silver, due to the fact that the confederates wore silver buttons on their uniforms. So there you go, thats how we thought of the name "The Southern Shires Bloodhounds" and where the hunt livery and colours came from.