SCENT PACKING...Circular journeys bring beagles, bunnies back to hunters
By Dick Ellis
Reader Note: The following “Dick’s Trip” column took place in 2004 near Whitewater with three rabbit hunters and their beagles. Like all columns from the archives, make sure of current regulations if you try the journeys yourself.
John Hansen took one more step along the brambles marking the lip of the meandering ravine on public land just outside of Whitewater, and the rabbit bolted. Not a horse-shoe’s pitch from the hunter, the cottontail stretched across the dirt road for the safety of the switch grass, but the 20-gauge scattergun cradled in his arms never moved.
Hansen’s first “shot” was a verbal barrage aimed solely at rallying the troops, Buddy, Oscar and Bud, methodically searching the other side of ravine on this early Sunday morning with Bill Barton of Racine and his 12-year old son, William.“Tally-Ho, Tally-Ho, Tally-Ho…,” Hansen’s voice reached out and tumbled down the ditch to pull the beagles toward the first reward hanging fresh on the snow of a cold January morning.
John Hanson works the brush near Whitewater, looking to start another rabbit chase with beagles Bud, Buddy and Oscar. Nine rabbits would find the pot last Sunday, and many more would slip the beagle’s steadfast pursuit during numerous chases on public property.
“We won’t take a rabbit unless the dogs have brought them around at least once,” said the Union Grove hunter as Buddy hit the hot scent first and opened up in the ageless song of the tracking beagle. “Hopefully that rabbit will do a full circle and end up right where he broke cover. We’ll be spread out along here waiting to see if it happens.”
Beagle, boy, and bunny. William Barton, 12, of Racine and Oscar, one of eight Barton family beagles, with the first of nine rabbits to be taken on a Sunday in January near Whitewater.
The chase, and all others taken by this team each weekend day on public and private lands from Princeton in the north to Monroe in the south, was really born 15 years ago in the mind of Bill Barton. Already a hunter’s son in Racine, the thought of the beagle chase called him, and he contacted the American Kennel Club to learn just where and how to begin.
“I didn’t know much about any of it then,” said Barton. “There are hunting type beagles and show beagles. Brace beagles were a hunting dog developed for line control, and Small Pack Option beagles developed a faster working trial and hunting dog.”
Brace beagles, he said, defines the development of a line of hunting beagle through breeding over generations emphasizing painstakingly slow line control. The “line” is the scent path a rabbit leaves on the run. Brace beagles may take 15 minutes to travel on line 50 feet, and Barton said, will literally never take a step unless they smell the rabbit.
Bill Barton of Racine has hunted rabbits for 15 years with beagles. This rabbit circled back to the hunter’s gun under steady pressure from three beagles last week near Whitewater. Nine rabbits would fall to the hunters on this Sunday.
Small Pack Option beagles Maggie and Ben became the foundation in the late 1980s for a Barton passion that would eventually see the number of dogs under his ownership grows as high as 23 beagles. Following his initial purchase, Barton had to also learn how to train a beagle already armed with the instincts to run a rabbit.
Initially, he joined an Illinois based beagle club where his preference began to be honed for “medium speed dogs that run the lines straight without losing the lines often.” Clubs in Wisconsin, he said, including organizations located near Alma, Anston, Ashippun, Dale, Hebron, Hurley, Kewaskum, Lancaster, Manitowoc, Oconto, Phillips, Plymouth, and Wisconsin Rapids can hand the world of beagle hunting even to a beginner.
“A club is good place to learn everything about beagles and a good way to compare your dog with other dogs,” he said. “And they can show you how to start a dog, which is not easy.”
According to Barton, “starting” a dog refers to the first time a beagle begins to instinctively bark when on the line of a rabbit. To achieve that milestone at a club, he said, at approximately six months of age a beagle is often released in an acre or 1.5 acre enclosure holding 30 to 50 rabbits.
Prior to achieving its start in the pens, a young dogs will often root the rabbit out from its holding spot, for example in a brush pile, and “sight chase” its prey. The transition from initial pen release to sight chasing to the beagle actually placing its nose on the ground to follow a line will commonly span one month’s time. Even for veteran dogs though, tracking conditions vary greatly and often dictate the success or failure of the field chase.
“You can never tell with scent,” he said. “Dry leaves are hard on the dogs, moisture is better, light fluffy snow can be hard too and crusty snow can also be difficult. Yesterday the dogs couldn’t stay on the rabbits for the first several hours. But by the end of the day scenting conditions improved and we had nine rabbits.”
The possibility of poor tracking conditions hits home again when Bud, Oscar, and Buddy lose the first rabbit of the morning not far from the lip of the ravine. And several subsequent chases also end in the rabbit’s freedom. A change is in the air, though, marked by better scenting conditions. Nine rabbits will also fall on this afternoon. Each chase is marked by the mournful song of three beagles in distant chorus, and ends with a single shotgun report.
Bud, Oscar and Buddy stay hot on the trail of a rabbit near Whitewater last week. Ultimately, this rabbit would circle back to the hunters, one of nine cottontails destined for the pot on this Sunday morning hunting public land in three southern Wisconsin counties.
‘Just about everyone we hunt with let’s the rabbit circle before shooting,” Barton said. “It’s our belief that this sport is for the dogs to bring them around. When a beagle’s nose goes to the ground, everything else shuts down. Other dogs hunt to please their masters. A beagle hunts for themselves. We just happen to be along. Some question their intelligence, but they sure are intelligent when it comes to figuring out just which way that rabbit went."
“As for the rabbit, if they get away that’s fine. There’s always another day. If we’re chasing a really smart rabbit we’ll even take the dogs off of him and find another. That one deserved its freedom.”