The American Beagler Forum

That Dub Evans book is quite a collectors item. Do you have “Meet Mr Grizzly” by Montague Stevens? It tells stories about hunting down the last grizzlies in the southwest. Quite a story and shows what a dangerous and rough life those people and their animals and hounds lived. I had a neighbor years ...

Sounds like a great farm. Those kind of places are harder and harder to find. I did some scouting this week and found a new (to me) area of public land that looks great for rabbits. I will be there with the pack in the very near future. Rabbits are starting to run big. The Walhampton pack was probab...

Sounds like a bit of a mix. They nickname those French bassets the "fuzzies". There was a whole pack of Griffon Vendeen bassets for many years outside Philadelphia. Owner was James Scarnberg. His pack was all imported from France. When you looked at pedigrees, unless you knew French, you could not r...

Oh yes, Upper Bay. Thanks Dana. I missed them when looking at the list last night because one of the owners (Masters) lives in Pennsylvania. But now I see the person you met is Richard Askins from Greenback, TN. Very interesting that you know him! There are only about a dozen formal basset packs in ...

Shady: All I can say was you didn’t see the Nantucket-Treweryn in 1981. They were fast to me. More importantly, they functioned as a group - a well oiled team. Mr Sharp rode a little white pony to stay with them. He was very tall, and I remember his legs nearly dragging the ground. I have been to th...

Sad to read your post, warddog. I have seen so many people come and go through the years, for various reasons. It takes work to keep a line of hounds going, and a little luck. As far as places to run rabbits, if not for public areas, many of us would struggle to have a place to go. Most private grou...

I’m the opposite, Dana. I could not be happy without a goodly number of hounds running. A well-matched (large) pack that is used to working together is a rare thing of beauty, and something you’ll remember if you ever see it. And it’s not easy to achieve. You won’t see it at hare trials because thos...

Sounds like great fun, if you could find rabbits like in past. I can’t imagine coyotes have wiped them out since we all have tons of coyotes and still have rabbits where there is good cover. But maybe the flooding? How long does it take your hounds to get used to scenting through the pools of water?

I believe to have a serious breeding program you must have numbers for selection. Because of this and my love of hound pack running, I keep enough that I can hunt 12-18 each time out. I constantly experiment with different combinations to get the best running, but I find a lot of that depends on the...

Mink will sometimes kill and stash, but so many seems unusual. They seem to have an easier time catching rabbits in snow for some reason. Usually bite through the spinal cord at base of neck.

But, are you possibly in a state with the new rabbit hemorrhage virus? (west of Mississippi River)

Agree with all Dana said. I have spent so many years breeding for deer proof hounds that I’m not sure mine would be very easy to train for deer running. Don’t plan to find out. And I would never tolerate a hound that left a rabbit chase to run a deer (as mentioned earlier), nor would I tolerate one ...

Very interesting. I understand what you want better after reading that, but don’t know where to send you for a hound like that. Perhaps try the Turbo line, as Dana suggested, or try to find someone in the south who has bred Beagles for deer hunting. Maybe check out the Sourhern Hound Hunting magazin...

It will be tough to find any of those old bloodlines. Most everyone with that type of hound has switched to or crossed onto Branko bloodlines by now. Maybe you could try some of the modern hare bloodlines. Why not use Walker hounds? The field trial Walkers are nearly impossible to keep off deer, I h...

How did the Mid-South Association form? Is it a branch off from the Mid-West? Did it start with Mid-West clubs? Just curious why there are two Associations instead of one? Is there anything different from one to the other? Thanks

Even more important than watching the hound is knowing the family behind him, since that will affect what he produces more than he will. We are all products (good or bad) of what we came from. Bernard was an interesting fellow. I remember him telling me at a trial that he “liked deer because they ma...