r Keith Medley expresses his satisfaction as his Platinum Champion Medley’s Hardwood Swamp is inducted into the PKC Walker Hall of Fame. And, a group of youth hunters reflect the joy of hunting at Walker Days as their cast is called on Saturday night.

All the way around, this was one of the most enjoyable events this writer has attended in many moons. Speaking of moons, a beautiful Illinois moon lit the way for the casts each night in what could be described as very mild and comfortable hunting conditions. The southern Illinois river bottoms contained much more water than usual and despite the bright conditions, normally a detriment to scoring coons, most casts produced plus points.

A look at the results over three nights reveal some solid, realistic scores posted by the finest competition hounds in the nation this year. I’m proud of the sportsmanship shown in the woods as evidenced by the lack of problems coming into the headquarters building each night. Questions were handled professionally by the limited number of panels required and the decisions were accepted professionally by the handlers. I call it PKC Pride in action.

One of the highlights of this year’s hunt was the opportunity for many users of the PKC message boards on PROHOUND Online to meet personally for the first time. Some of the frequent users of the boards that were seen sharing stories and experiences around the tables in the headquarters building were Ray Stein, David Fletcher, Johnny McClanahan, Bruce Conkey, Vickie Lamb, Lee Dunning, Mike Pulke, and several others. Walker Days was indeed a PROHOUND Online reunion.

We’ll be running several candid photos, thanks to the photography of Tri-tronics’ Mark Zepp in the July issue of PROHOUND, which will feature complete Walker Days coverage.

Looking back at the Walker Hall of Fame, Winston Aron’s Skuna River Lockett was the female inductee. Mr. Aron was not present to accept the award.