25th Huntaway Festival will be ‘huge’
hunterville is getting ready to be taken over by Shemozzle mania this Saturday as the town celebrates 25 years of its most iconic race for shepherds.
The 25th anniversary of the Hunterville Huntaway Festival is its biggest year yet: all life members are going to be in attendance.
There’ll be an anniversary cake and a 40-square-metre TV will be used to live-stream drone footage from the races.
“It’s going to be huge,” organiser Christine Whinn said.
There are 625 competitors across the various races, with 3000-5000 people expected to gather in Hunterville.
People travel from Hamilton and Gisborne to attend, and last year a group of shepherds from the South Island travelled up.
Whinn said the junior races sold out in a single day this year, and there were going to be double the number of stalls.
The festival has a jam-packed schedule, beginning with a dog trial showcasing huntaways herding sheep and races by age category before finishing with a speed shearing competition.
The main event, the Shepherds’ Shemozzle, has 125 people and their mainstay huntaways enrolled to race — a mixture of female and male entrants.
It’s very impressive witnessing 125 dogs all tied up on the street ready to race, Whinn said. “People love it, they’ve never seen anything like it.
Local shepherd Angus McKelvie, who has won the Shepherds’ Shemozzle five years in a row, said huntaways were very loyal and most dogs were good at following.
“They tend to stick right beside their owners, but when you throw them into a town environment with thousands of people, it can be quite overwhelming.
“We get lots of dogs waiting at the finish line for their owners.”
In past years, shepherds have eaten raw eggs, whole chilis and raw milk with tuna chunks and squid oil as part of the race.
Whinn said she thought it was amazing how the community had kept the event going for 25 years, and that it was only getting bigger and better.
“It all started off with a couple of local old fellas in the pub having a few too many lemonades [when they] came up with the idea.
“I don’t think there was much health and safety back then, and you were probably lucky if there were 20 or maybe 30 people running in it.”