The American Beagler Forum

So I ended up getting this nice little 6 month old female about a month ago from a buddy of mine. Nice looking little girl and desire up the ying yang.......at least in the pen. Well finding a rabbit has been tough the last month or so and with a vacation and a surprise funeral to attend in Florida plus work I hadn't had much time to get her out and when I did the rabbits just weren't out playing.

Now yesterday we finally managed a couple of runs at a newer spot I picked up this year. I took her along with my 2 1/2 year old female Crystal, Jake's male Rufus and Ed's female Ruby. They did a pretty nice job on the first bunny. We called them off of the second one cause we were sure it had crossed the road but Crystal went back with Rufus and it had squatted right before the road and they rejumped it and ran it back to the gun. I took the first rabbit and Ed got the second one and the cool part was her first real pack session we got a chance to take a couple of rabbits with her.

Overall I thought she did a fair job, leading the race a couple of times and getting a couple of checks in on the older dogs too. She hunted pretty fair but didn't seem as intense as she did when she was in the pen.........is that normal? She went and hunted, don't get me wrong, but I'm not sure if the intensity level was down because of the new place, her first pack session, the new dogs, just being a puppy, I don't know?? Overall I was quite impressed and I think I'm gonna take her out again tonight. So far she is the best pup I've owned........we'll have to wait and see how she pans out cause only time will tell.

Never run in a pen myself but I would guess they are stocked pretty well with rabbits, scent is probably everywhere to some degree and the dogs or your pup knows it.
In the wild it can be a different story. The hound has to go find the hare or rabbit.
It's easy to get carried away thinking a dog has hunt when they are up to there stifles in rabbits.
In my opinion you will really only find out if your dog has the desire to hunt when there aren't any rabbits around

Feed the pup tracks and remember that it is a puppy. You can't expect a high schooler to play basketball like Michael Jordan, it takes time and practice. I know 2 of your pups littermates are doing a real nice job on track and I would expect them to progress if they are supplied with the right opportunity.

blitzen4, it's actually quite impressive to watch..........at least it is for me. There was one point during our last short run that I was ready to call foul and say she just overran the end because she got too excited but it turned out she was right. The dogs jumped a rabbit in a gully and took it up to the top where the rabbit turned. Crystal was in front to the top and at the check Trix (the pup) got the check and took it across the ridge and they hit another very short check about 45 yards down the ridge and the whole time I'm trying to get up top so I can see what's going on cause Trix is doing the lion's share of the barking at this point. She hit that check and went halfway across what I thought was just a pretty open matted down weed field (it our first time running here) and then just kinda quit. I finally get up to the top and honestly figured she just got over excited and blew the end of the line and carried the other dogs with her because I expected that rabbit to take a right and come back down to the thicket in the gully. Well low and behold on the other side of this little knoll in the middle of the field there was a briar patch about the size of 2-3 semi trailers and all the dog tracks led right to a hole dead in the middle of it.

Now these other dogs we ran with are by no means barn burners, they run a pretty flat medium speed but that's why I took her because I figured she get her chance to do some work. She is by far the most impressive pup I've had to date so I'm really looking forward to seeing how she comes around with time and tracks.