Derry Argue

CONTENTS

Who is Derry Argue?

Left: Derry Argue with Advie Miedema and Advie Dick

Personal Details: I am a British sportsman, born in Devon in 1940 of Irish and English ancestry, and now living in Scotland. My main interest is the breeding and training of working dogs. I am fascinated by the learning process, bored by pedigrees, and think dog shows ridiculous.

By the age of seventeen, I was hunting a pack of hounds, the now defunct Downside Beagles. In school holidays, I helped with the Dartmouth Royal Naval College beagles, the Britannia. We did everything; cleaned out, exercised, butchered dead stock, and hunted a huge wild area of the Mendip Hills in Somerset during term time and the hills and coombs of Devon during the holidays.

Later, during the long summer university vacations, I helped train dogs in some of the top gundog kennels in the British Isles, including John Nash's Moanruad kennel in Ireland. When I left university, that experience helped me to acquire my own dogs from the best available lines. First, Irish setters, then pointers, Gordon setters, and Llewellin setters.
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Photo right: Derry with FTCh Advie Gunsmoke on a Glenlivet moor

I developed an interest in falconry and successfully trained and flew peregrines, merlins, goshawks, and sparrowhawks. I learnt to make my own hoods and bells, became a specialist bird ringer for The British Trust for Ornithology and even got a footnote in the BTO's publication Bird Study. I ran my dogs for some of the top falconers in the British Isles; authorities such as Geoff Pollard and Ronald Stevens, experts who had their skills direct from members of the Old Hawking Club. I joined the British Falconers' Club in 1954. I attended the Royal Veterinary College in London, then the Royal Agricultural College, and the College of Estate Management, gaining a diploma and degree in estate management/rural economics to qualify as a chartered surveyor (ARICS).

I went on to manage several large sporting estates in the Scottish Highlands totalling over 250,000 acres. Later, I started my own business and ran a successful sporting agency/guiding business for oil companies operating in the North Sea. More recently, I bred pedigree sheep (the Welsh Lleyn) which were sold all over Scotland and the islands to Shetland and the Uists, and down to the north of England. I have written for all the major sporting/dog/hunting/farming journals and, in 1993, was commissioned to write "Pointers and Setters" by Swan Hill Limited. It is my belief that a writer has a duty not only to entertain and inform but also to provoke his readers into thinking about important and sometimes controversial issues. This belief regularly gets me into trouble!

Photo: John Nash with Patricia of Killone on the right, plus two other Moanruad Irish setters, all FTChs

The first gundog I ever trained was an Irish setter bred by John Nash. She had been declared untrainable by a professional trainer but I was determined to succeed. That achieved, I sent her back to John who successfully handled her to place in field trials. She was later exported to Norway.

My field trialing career began in the mid 1960's with Patricia of Killone (she is on the right in the photo above with John Nash), an Irish setter borrowed from John Nash. Patricia had never seen a partridge and I had only a few days before the trial to introduce her to game. So I got up at 3 a.m. on the day of the trial and ran her across some of the best Wiltshire shooting country. Later that day I won the first field trial I ever competed in, making Patricia an International Field Trial Champion.

I won a Diploma of Merit in a Champion Stake with another borrowed dog, Ahane Dan. A Gordon setter bred by me from Cromlix lines won the Champion Stake. In seven years of limited campaigning I made up four Field Trial Champions (three pointers and an Irish setter) of my own breeding and won many other prizes.

Some of these dogs were sold for record prices, notably FTCh Advie Gunsmoke who was exported to Japan for a record Ł5,000 in 1976 - equivalent to about Ł23,000 or 37,000USD in today's money. Many others were exported for big prices but I always kept the best for my own breeding. A farmer does not sell his seed corn.

To the best of my knowledge, the only dog from my kennel to have competed on the bench, pointer dog Advie Assar, has so far won three Challenge Certificates and was twice Best of Breed in Sweden during 1996/7 handled by Sofia Tornlov. Although I have no interest in dog shows or dog showing, I believe in the rights of others to pursue that interest -- on one condition: Please don't ask me to attend a dog show!

If you want to learn more about my pointers, click on the links!

Advie Gundogs
Miller's Place, Fendom
Tain, Easter Ross IV19 1PE
Scotland UK

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