THE DOG FAMILY 



87 



President Theodore Roosevelt gives an interesting account of wolf-coursing in Russia, in an 

 article contributed to " The Encyclopaedia of Sport " (Lawrence & Bullen). " In Russia the sport 

 is a science," he writes. " The princes and great landowners who take part in it have their 

 hunting-equipages equipped perfectly to the smallest detail. Not only do they follow wolves in 

 the open, but they capture them and let them out before dogs, like hares in a closed coursing- 

 meeting. The huntsman follows his hounds on horseback. (These hounds are the Borzoi, 

 white giant greyhounds, now often seen in England.) Those in Russia show signs of reversion 

 to the type of the Irish wolf-hound, dogs weighing something like 100 Ibs., of remarkable power, 

 and of reckless and savage temper. Now three or four dogs are run together. They are not 

 expected to kill the wolf, but merely to hold him. . . . The Borzois can readily overtake 



Fhoti bj Ottomar Antchufx,~\ 



"THE WOLF WITH PRIVY PAW" 



The photograph shows admirably the slinking gate and long stride of the ivolf 



[Btrtin 



and master partly grown wolves, but a full-grown dog-wolf, in good trim, will usually gallop away 

 from them." 



A number of these Borzoi dogs have been imported into America, and are used to course 

 wolves in the Western States. But there professional wolf-hunters are employed to kill off the 

 creatures near the ranches. One such hunter lives near President Roosevelt's ranch on the 

 Little Missouri. His pack of large dogs will tear in pieces the biggest wolf without aid from 

 the hunter. Of his own efforts in wolf-coursing he writes : " We generally started for the 

 hunting-ground very early, riding across the open country in a widely spread line of dogs and 

 men. If we put up a wolf, we simply went at him as hard as we knew how. Young wolves, or 

 those which had not attained their full strength, were readily overtaken, and the pack would 

 handle a she-wolf quite readily. A big dog-wolf, or even a full-grown and powerful she-wolf, 



