IGL Retriever Championship 2026 comes to Arundel on 7 to 9 December

The International Gundog League (IGL) Retriever Championship comes to the Duke of Norfolk’s ground at Arundel in West Sussex on 7 to 9 December, and for the keeper and the shoot owner the ground is the story. Writing in Gundog Journal, the panel retriever judge James Bailey previews three days across a 14,000-acre holding in the South Downs National Park whose middle beat, Peppering, is the wild grey partridge project that won the Purdey Gold Award in 2010 and whose headkeeper, Charlie Mellor, was named BASC Gamekeeper of the Year in July.

Which beats will the championship run over?

Three, and each is a different kind of shoot. Angmering Park to the east and Arundel Park to the west are reared pheasant shoots; Peppering, in the middle, is wild-bird ground. Mellor and a team of eight beatkeepers oversee all three. Bailey expects the Angmering line to stretch across a tall, rising bank of coppiced woodland into mixed cover crops, with hedgerow tests and rolling mini-drives, while the wetlands of Arundel Park beside the River Arun may bring wild duck and snipe into a small drive, which matters because a drive certificate is needed for the title of field trial champion.

“The first myth to dispel is that this will be a driven championship, as southern trials are sometimes stereotyped,” Bailey writes. The 2024 championship at Combe Estate in Devon was predominantly driven; this one, on the present plan, is mostly walked up, with a long line moving hedgerow to hedgerow through stubble turnips and overwintered stubbles at Peppering, where brown hares are the more prevalent quarry. “Partridges, including French, are off the quarry list.”

A full day on Peppering’s wild partridge ground

“Perhaps the most remarkable prospect is that a full day may be run on a wild-game beat,” Bailey writes: no release pen and no feeding regime, though some reared pheasants may drift over from Angmering Park. Peppering’s story is one every keeper knows in outline. In 2002 the late Dr Dick Potts of the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) warned the Duke that the grey partridge, down about 93% nationally since 1970, would be gone from the South Downs within years. The project began in 2003 on 2,000 acres, now about 4,000. Three pairs were counted that spring, the late Duke of Edinburgh arranged nine pairs from Sandringham, and the spring count now stands at around 370 breeding pairs, with September stubble counts above 2,000.

The farm was redrawn to do it. Bailey records that 38 fields became 92, more than 10 miles of new hedgerow went in, and about 15% of the ground is managed for conservation, with headlands, beetle banks, wild-bird cover and pollen-and-nectar strips alongside commercial cropping and sheep. The GWCT’s three-legged stool of habitat, food and lawful predator control holds it up, and Bailey reports Mellor’s view that without the predator control two decades of work could be undone within two or three years. “The inconvenient truth for some,” Bailey writes, “is that shooting has provided both the incentive and the investment for this recovery”. Since 2010 skylarks on the ground are up 57%, linnets 94%, lapwings 71%, corn buntings 30% and yellowhammers 20%, and curlew eggs are being brought south under Natural England licence from the Duke’s Arkengarthdale ground for release in Sussex.

Who is running, and who is defending?

The defending champion is field trial champion (FTCh) Carnochway Red Rooster, known as Rocky, a fox red Labrador just over four years old, owned and handled by Fraser Forbes from near Inverness, about 600 miles north of the South Downs; Bailey asks whether a second title would make them the eighth duo with consecutive wins. Rinus Heijmans and International Field Trial Champion Beautiful Hunter Reeve, the current Irish champion, come from the Netherlands having won the European Retriever Championship in 2024 and the Irish Kennel Club championship in 2025. “Can they make history and complete the treble of championships?” Bailey asks. John Halsted has qualified for the 35th consecutive year, 87 qualifications with 27 dogs since his first at Sandringham in 1992, and “no other handler in the 117-year history of the IGL Retriever Championship”, Bailey writes, has matched his consistency.

The judges are Kevin Doughty, at his fourth championship, Sara Gadd, who judged in 2017, and Donald Leitch and David Logan on their championship debuts. The IGL’s 88 affiliated societies run about 65 two-day and more than 25 one-day Open Stakes a year, fields can approach 70 dogs, and 26 had qualified by mid-October.

What happens next

The championship runs from Monday, 7 December to Wednesday, 9 December, with the Duke and Duchess receiving competitors and guests for tea, cake and the awards in the Barons’ Hall at Arundel Castle. Spectators need a place under the IGL’s new application scheme: tractors and trailers move everyone around the ground, so there is no capacity for unregistered spectators, and more than 200 places have been offered over the three days to applicants from 14 countries. Everyone else can follow the live feed on the IGL’s website, which drew 88,000 views from 17,000 addresses in 2025. Bailey’s full preview, with the qualifiers so far and the records in play, is in Gundog Journal, linked below.