HOW TO TRAIN A BEAGLE. 



Rockford, 111. 



Editor Recreation: A reader of Rec- 

 reation at Hillsboro Bridge, N. H., has a 

 hound pup 4 months old and wishes to 

 know how to teach him to run rabbits. The 

 dog is young to work with confidence, 

 though I have seen beagles of 7 months do 

 good work. 



In the first place, you must let the dog 

 know what you wish to hunt. To do this, 

 kill a rabbit and while it is warm draw the 

 entrails and feed the liver and heart to the 

 dog. He may refuse to touch them. If so 

 throw some of the fresh blood on his front 

 legs and breast. You may have to do this 

 2 or 3 times before he will take the meat 

 when offered him. Game is always better 

 if drawn immediately after killing, and if 

 you feed the liver and heart each time to the 

 dog he will soon expect it. He will depend 

 on it and will do his share to help secure the 

 game. 



A good hound will never leave a fresh 

 trail and for this reason after you have 

 killed the game allow it to lie where it 

 dropped until the dog comes up. He will 

 then know it is dead and will not go back 

 on the trail to try to pick it up again. Many 

 a good dog has been spoiled by not observ- 

 ing this rule. The hunter says his dog is 

 getting old and will not follow a trail as he 

 once did. Ten to one the dog has become 

 discouraged. He is out all day and never 

 sees the rabbit he is tracking. He finds the 

 trail cut short and thinks Mr. Rabbit has 

 played him a trick. He has done this many 

 times before, so the dog works back on the 

 old track, then makes a circuit, but can not 

 find a smell. Once more he returns to the 

 old trail and follows it to where the rabbit 

 was killed. Here he lingers a moment and 

 then repeats his former manoeuvre, finally 

 to be abused and kicked for not attending 

 to business. He is attending to business but 

 cannot understand where that rabbit has 

 gone unless he has taken wings and left the 

 earth. Such treatment will soon discour- 

 age the best dog. He soon begins to run 

 almost entirely by sight. 



I am hunting now with a hound that is 

 14 years old and he is better this winter 

 than ever before. Have used him on deer, 

 with good results, and when once he un- 

 derstands what he is expected to hunt it is 

 impossible to get him from the trail until 

 the game is down. I have known him to 

 run a deer all night and fearing he would 

 die of exhaustion I have been forced to kill 



the deer, though I did not need more veni- 

 son at that time. Some of my friends have 

 asked to use him on rabbits and if he does 

 not find bunnie dead at the end of the trail 

 he is sure to come home and desert the 

 hunters. I have repeatedly told the boys 

 how to treat him; but they have seemed 

 to think it unnecessary. They have several 

 times had reason to regret the haste. It 

 only takes a few minutes to let the dog 

 come up and have his portion. 



Rabbits always run in a circle and if the 

 hunter will station himself somewhere 

 about the place where the rabbit started, 

 and keep still, he is sure of game, provided 

 the dog does not run too fast and hole the 

 rabbit. 



It is shameful the way the rabbits are 

 being slaughtered by some inhuman hogs. 

 There is nothing sportsmanlike about put- 

 ting a ferret in a hole and bagging the rab- 

 bit as he comes out. This is being done 

 every day around us. It is only a question 

 of time when the rabbit will be a curiosity 

 and the ferret will run in and out of empty 

 holes. I should like to see Recreation 

 create a distrust against any hunter who 

 will use a ferret. Give the rabbit a show for 

 his life. Nature provided him with long 

 ears, that he might hear his enemy ap- 

 proach, with long legs, that he might put 

 distance between himself and his destroyer. 

 Nature at one time provided cover that he 

 might hide but since that has been taken 

 the rabbit has found it necessary to burrow 

 in the ground. The would-be-hunter (the 

 hog) goes out with a dog, a gun, a ferret 

 and a bag. The dog starts the rabbit and if 

 he is not shot he is run to a hole where the 

 dog stays till the hog comes up. If there 

 are more holes than one, and material to 

 stuff them up, it is done. Then the ferret 

 is turned loose in the hole, the bag held, 

 mouth down, over the hole. The innocent 

 little rabbit is bagged and killed without a 

 chance of escape. Thousands of rabbits are 

 killed in this unsportsmanlike way every 

 year and it is time the slaughter stopped. 

 It cannot last much longer but for the sake 

 of humanity let Recreation start a move- 

 ment toward the final destruction of the fer- 

 ret rather than the rabbit. 



W. L. Blinn. 



No one but a game hog, of the most pro- 

 nounced type, would ever use a ferret. The 

 laws of several states prohibit their use, and 

 such laws should be speedily enacted in all 

 the other states. — Editor. 



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