Took the Airedale cross pup ferreting

[Casso 1,261]

Maybe its where your running your dogs but i have never found any quarry more difficult on the lamp compared to day time,,

 

Probably right: nothing is ever more than 50 yards from thick cover on most of my permission, but it could also be cos I've got rubbish dogs LOL Hand on heart, I haven't got the line I used to have, and they were better generally speaking, just didn't live as long Got fed up with burying youngish dogs killed in action.

 

 

honest answer,,i,ve found the more dogs i have , the worse they seem to be, years ago when i was starting out with only one dog with plenty of time to invest, the dog turned out to be shit hot,

looking back on it now maybe it wasn,t just the dog itself, but the understanding in the dog that him getting to use his drive , flowed through me,,best of luck with the pups

[dwolf 1]

Daytime foxes in the UK are equally hard to catch if they are in cover/woods etc. Out in the open they aren't fast enough to get away from a decent lurcher. At night they are much more difficult and seem to jink and turn better than any rabbit or hare. Dogs which can regularly take them on the lamp are damn good. I'd imagine the red fox is pretty much the same the world over: the two best lurchers I had for taking day time foxes round cover were 'die hard' hell on legs types, but only about 22-23". The bigger dogs just didn't have the nip and dash quickness round cover. This innocent looking 'pretty' thing is just over 22", but lightening fast and impervious to the knowledge that she'll get bitten: she is over 7 years old now and carrying a few injuries which make her less agile than she used to be, but she still lights up when she finds a fox LOL

 

she's sweet skycat. i like that hard look in her eye.

i've had some of the craziest shiite happen when calling fox at night. Particularly, once, i set up around the bend on top of a rise on an overgrown logging/staging area ( very wide 75yds where they load & stack logs ), what i do ( in whatever state or country it's ok to do ), is run a rope thru their collars so i can just pull it free when they're sent, & we were calling about 15 mins & they got bored, layed down, i was sitting on a stump at the inside edge of the rise, starting to think about other things, looking at the stars, etc, & this reynard was flying around the corner & it nearly landed on the dogs, lol. it must of jumped 6ft high, lol, & the dogs erupted, LOL. i laughed for 10 minutes as they ran thru the brush all sorts of pissed off, lol. it happened in seconds. i love seeing fox. one january snowstorm(when they breed, i saw 6 cross my yard in like 4 hrs. the 1st must have been the vixen. some i've seen look huge too, looong.

in a lot of areas in the east coasts where the coyotes have moved in, they've supposedly hammered the red fox populations, pushing reds into urban areas. i still see them at my bro's who has a coyote pack or 2 that run a massive ridge behind his site, except when he started seeing & hearing the yotes a few yrs ago often, the fox dug a den by his drive way bend near another neighbors house, not usual in this mt area... the yotes are welcomed by a lot of farmers though, they kill off some of our deer. they pack up here in winter in the mts. the deer here are like rabbits & browse our forests down hard. a constant hazard to motorists. doesn't seem to bother some though, lol. I'm looking fwd to how your dogs handle the heat this summer w/that saluki blood.

cheers,

Edited January 6, 2011 by dwolf

[weasle 1,119]

 

She`s a nice type.

Thank you: its a shame I'll never breed from her, but she's too mad for her own good and gets laid up too often: I lost her half sister out coursing, broke her back on a big dyke: only the good die young, but I'm getting too old to accept seeing my dogs kill themselves too often: life seems more precious as my age increases!

In my eyes if a dog not prepared to get hurt catching its quarry,its not that good,but yes i get were your coming from,the airdale cross should suit though,they seem tough,if you dont mind seeing them being straight lined to the hedge.

[skycat 6,173]

I'd like to say that I'll put money on these pups being fast enough not to be straight lined to a hedge, but I'm old and cautious and simply don't know how fast they'll be but I think, had I been a betting sort of critter, then I might have put a quid or two on them: but I'll just have to wait and see!

[dwolf 1]

i'll put $ on it skycat, when they're ready., lol. we can donate the proceeds to thl or a charity that accepts pay pal, given in the name of thl & lurchermen.

it's a fun way to keep it competitive. i.e., i'll put some money up thru paypal to the thl charity acct, saying they won't be straight lined, somebody else pledges a few quid, saying no fn way, etc, etc.

it could be a load of fun & good way to donate a few bucks to charity in the name of dog hunters, imo.

it'll have to be a fair slip, distance, etc. 1 out of 3, maybe. doesn't have to be a lot of money, either, couple buck pots could end up w/nice cheque. ( i would like to see pics of the parents again though, lol. just kidding.)

there is no reason for them to be straightlined if other first x's do it. The question is- is this a daytime bet or lamping?. the more i hear of others, the better i think mine is, speedwise, she is also built like a straight staghound/sighthound though & you'd never guess she's 1/2 airedale, so i think alot depends on the cut too. she's 60lbs, 25-26" & she can take daytime game from flushes too, not slips, so.... .you could also train your lurcher to upland bird hunt to i bet, i did. that would be sweet, a ferret dog, foxer, & bird dog, lol. mine even points, i don't have to worry about her flushing 200 yds out because of that luckyy trick. we did bets like that w/airedales & our national hunt tests club here, everyone showed up & had a ball, boosted membership-& is fun. this could be more about the bet than event obviously. but it would be a fun bet, lol.

 

but i wanted to see what you all thought about this article on lurchers, particularly the 1st x part,

& why is this guy so contravertial,( seperate thread please) but regardless,

 

what's the opinion & experience w/his take on f1's?

-regardless of your opinion of him,please.( or it could be a new thread).

 

cheers,

 

What Ever Happened To The Lurcher Of Old?

 

Taken From The Hunters Yearbook 1982 By D. B. Plummer

 

During my fourteenth year, it seems like an aeon of time ago, a book was published which, if it didn't exactly change my life, certainly reinforced my desire to live the way I pleased and to quote my mother "follow the downward path to ruin." The book was It's my Delight by Brian Vesey Fitzgerald, a pot boiler perhaps, but a compendium of poaching stories, of deliciously unsavoury characters, of work shy villains, and loners who prowled the countryside after dark, dog at heels and mischief afoot. I skipped through the chapters and moochers, of men who specialised in taking partridge and pheasants with nuts and horsehair laced currants, and savoured the lurcher chapter, reading it time and time again until I could almost recite it by heart.

 

Perhaps Brian Vesey Fitzgerald was simply a journalist, a weaver of dreams of poaching dogs of greyhoundy curs with superb sights, with Mensa I.Qs , and a curious sagacity born of generations of being the dog of the disreputable, a sagacity that enabled them to tell friend from foe, gamekeeper from farm worker, and fellow disreputable from gamekeeper. The dogs he described were shifty beasts, beasts capable of coming up on feeding pheasants, crawling on their bellies into the midst of the dim witted birds and striking right left and centre as the birds exploded skywards, laying low on a brace or so before the dim witted game took to the air. These were dogs, which would quietly work a field, catch a rabbit, high tail it for home, and hide the swag in some spot known only to the dog or master. If trouble appeared, they melted into cover to emerge and identify their owner only after danger had passed. During the lean years of the 1920's and the 1930's though God knows few farm labourers have known fat years, such dogs kept breadline families in meat in the form of partridge, pheasant, rabbit, hare and a bit more beside if the truth was known, and scores of farm workers were dismissed from their employment simply because they owned a lurcher.

 

A bit more besides- I'll elaborate on that statement. Some strains of lurchers were exquisitive thieves- I frequently share my dinner with my b###h when the phone rings during a meal. But some lurchers have the sense of knavery to a fine art. In the original Romany dictionary compiled by Sampson there are some fifty-seven words for stealing, the art of theft of quite simply for thieves. One of the words is Kanniechor- or a thief of hens and some Romany dogs had the skill down to a fine art. Forget the notion of an uncontrollable brute dashing into a farmyard, snapping hither and thither at hens, making the place a charnel house of blood and feathery hysteria. A Kanniechor Lurcher was a cracksman amongh chicken thieves, a dog which ignored hens and other farmyard denizens while the farmer was about, but crept back, belly to the ground, using every bush, every cart, every piece of machinery as cover until it could snap up the unwary hen and hightail it for home, hen in mouth. Kanniechors were prized by the Romanies, though Manfri woods in his book In the life of a Romany Gypsy denies that Romanies bred them and refers to them as Pikie (tinker) dogs. Still to watch a Kanneichor work is a joy if one is criminal to enjoy and appreciates such a sight. Which breeds were used to create this versaltile, if dishonest, brew? Well clearly greyhound blood was the base stock on which the type was based.

 

Brian Vesey Fitzgerald believes that these sagacious lurchers were simply greyhounds blended with Bedlington terriers,and indeed the type of lurcher here countered during his travels with the Northern "tinklers" was probably Bedlington bred, but the true lurcher owed its sagacity, its stealth, its suspicious nature, to its collie ancestry, some herding or droving dog perhaps, maybe the semi-legendary Smithfield Collie, a breed on which Ted Walsh or Aubrey Fryer are better qualified to comment than I. Whatever the type of herding dog used the pre-war lurcher was an incredible animal and Vesey Fitzgerald rates it as the equal of the collie in IQ.

 

Why do I use the past tense? What happened to the lurcher of yore. What happened to this incredible animal? Personally I feel the wartime years, or rather the post war prosperity, caused the extinction of this type of dog. For a short while, the farm labourer became relatively well off in the halcyon days following World War II, and the itinerant scrap dealer, the gypsy, the pikie, the tinker, became rich at a time when swords were literally becoming hammered into plough shares. This a dog capable of snatching up a dinner, an intelligent dog capable of providing meat for a breadline family was not required, and just as the cessation of the droving trade brought about the extinction of the leggy droving dogs, so did the post war prosperity sound the toxin for the true lurcher.

 

Of course the itinerants and the farm workers still kept their dogs, but now a dog running best of three hare killing contest was required, and the somewhat slower dinner snatcher became an unwanted thing of the past. To breed these hare killing lurchers, deerhounds, scarcely the most sagacious of dogs, were crossed into the pot filling lurcher strains to breed taller, deeper chested, faster, rough coated elegant dogs and for some incredible reason, I have never been able to fathom, Saluki blood was mixed in to give the coursing dog stamina and further infusions of greyhound blood were added to the now thoroughly brainless mix. The pot filler, the night time skulker, the Kanniechor the all purpose hunting dog became a thing of the past and the lurcher which now wins the coveted Lambourn rosette is a far cry from the dogs which trailed behind the caravans of the Arhigno family of filched chickens and pork chops for the hop picking Kentish Smiths.

 

There is, however, a move to revive the lurcher of old, the collie bred poaching dog. Several classes for collie crosses are now being staged at lurcher shows, but to allow a type to pass into extinction is an easy matter, to revive the type or, more difficult still, to recreate the type is another thing. True collie blood is readily available. Better still more intelligent collies than the 17th and 18th drovers could obtain, and greyhounds capable of making the best of Lord Orford's stock look ridiculous, are available for a song from any greyhound rescue society, but the breeding of this paragon of lurchers is not quite as simple as one might imagine. Most first cross lurchers (greyhound x collie) are bright, easily trainable and almost frantic to please their owners. Few, however, are streamlined enough to be good enough to be good coursing all round hunting dogs. When a lightly built greyhoundy first cross is produced, the result is a world beater among lurchers, capable of practically any feat in the field, from coursing a hare, to retrieving a duck from a pond. Sadly such dogs are very rare and many first cross collie hybrids resemble mastiff chested animals (though curiously many of these are deceptively fast) rather than lurchers.

 

Further addition of greyhound blood by mating a half-bred greyhound collie to a greyhound makes for a faster dog, a more useful hare killer. Indeed many of today's best catching lurchers are three- quarter collie greyhounds, but the addition of greyhound blood to this bright tractable half-bred collie greyhound lurcher does not improve the intelligence and fieldcraft of the collie bred parents. Three-quarter breds are nowhere near as biddable as their half-bred parents though they are streets ahead of the Saluki and deerhound crosses which win so well at today's lurcher shows.

 

Useful lurchers can be bred by mating two half-bred collie lurchers, though the litter wastage produced by this mating is alarming. Many of the puppies resemble rather leggy pure-bred hill collies, of the type seen on Cumberland farms, while others are indistinguishable from greyhounds both in appearance and sadly in tractability. Only a small percentage of the F2 generation, bred by mating two collie greyhounds are satisfactory all round working lurchers. Two years ago I mated Merle, my border collie x greyhound stud dog, to Moses Smith's Steel, a beaded collie X greyhound and produced a litter of eleven puppies. Three were indistinguishable from heavy coated border collies, five were so much like greyhounds that a friend of Moses won with a lurcher b###h at a local greyhound flapping track.

 

Only three became top class lurchers capable of lamping, hunting up coursing hares skilfully and became useful poaching dogs. True, three of the rejects, one collie type and two greyhoundy pups proved useful deer dogs as the recent prosecutions will prove, but there was considerable litter wastage to produce three top class lurchers.

 

Interest in collie lurchers is reviving, however, largely due to the excellent articles of Ted Walsh, and breeders such as David James of Bloxwich, Terry Aherne of Tamworth, Aubrey Fryer of Gloucester and David Hancock of Birmingham are endeavouring to produce pure breeding collie greyhound lurchers with the brains, sagacity and hunting ability of the lurchers of the days twixt the World Wars. It is a commendable feat to attempt such a task, and it is to be hoped that breeders have the stamina of some of the collies they are using for the way ahead is full of pitfalls. The task of producing such a strain as was kept by the Arhigno and the Smiths is long and arduous.

 

Edited January 12, 2011 by dwolf

[dwolf 1]

a few more pics, why not,-

 

 

airedale backing a point, lol.

 

 

Edited January 8, 2011 by dwolf

[skycat 6,173]

There are a lot of people line breeding Collie crosses these days, both working Bearded Collie as well as Border Collie: however, they are, for the most part, people who don't come on the general hunting based internet forums so much.

 

I have 2 friends in particular who have line bred Collie crosses: one keeps Beardie crosses, the other has Border Collie types bred down from Plummer's original lurchers. If you are interested, there is an invitation only forum I can steer you towards which is purely for Collie lurcher enthusiasts.

 

Re your idea of a bet on the Airedale crosses: that's a great idea,, but I don't know if the British mentality would see it in the light it is intended something to do with 'island' mentality? Who knows? Maybe I'm doing people an injustice. Competition of any sort tends to draw out the worst in a lot of people. And would enough people be interested anyway?

 

Re the heat: it has always surprised me how well Dill handles the heat in the summer. I know that we don't generally get quite such hot summers over here compared to the States, and I clip her in summer, plus I only exercise them in the hot months and she spends a lot of time swimming in the lakes and rivers near me so she's never had the chance to over heat.

[weasle 1,119]

I'd like to say that I'll put money on these pups being fast enough not to be straight lined to a hedge, but I'm old and cautious and simply don't know how fast they'll be but I think, had I been a betting sort of critter, then I might have put a quid or two on them: but I'll just have to wait and see!

I am a betting man,but i wouldn't bet yours will lack a gear either .But the one i know dos get straight lined,if she misses her first strike,although her catch rate is still good,she has her angles and strike to a T,Also herding her rabbits,working more like a collie cross i suppose.There again she was the stockiest bitch of the litter,there were racier.The fact remains though she dos lack a gear,and while she still gets the job done,When a rabbit is 200 yards out it seems,such a waste of energy to have to run it back to the hedge before making her catch.Any way just saying it how it is,wasn`t having a dig.

[skycat 6,173]

What way bred was this litter of Airedale crosses? I've seen photos of a Whippet/Airedale cross on another forum: I would imagine it is quite small, and another photo of a dog the same way bred which looked like a small stocky rough coated fawn lurcher. Dill might look like a box of bricks but there's plenty of taller, leaner Airedales in her line. Can't wait for next season!

[weasle 1,119]

What way bred was this litter of Airedale crosses? I've seen photos of a Whippet/Airedale cross on another forum: I would imagine it is quite small, and another photo of a dog the same way bred which looked like a small stocky rough coated fawn lurcher. Dill might look like a box of bricks but there's plenty of taller, leaner Airedales in her line. Can't wait for next season!

GreyhoundXAiredale 12 months at the time

Edited January 9, 2011 by weasle

[skycat 6,173]

Beautiful looking animal: But a good deal thicker set than mine at the moment. I guess mine could thicken up quite a bit, but with all that Saluki in there: who knows.

[Malt 379]

Fantastic thread, thanks to everyone who has made a decent contribution. I've enjoyed the read from the original post to the last one!

 

 

I'd imagine the red fox is pretty much the same the world over..

 

 

Not so.. The red fox considerably varies in size throughout it's whole global range. The red fox populations in the middle east average at about 3 kilos, while the European average is around 10 kilos or over. This depends on various factors, population density, food availability and possibly Bergmans rule, which states that the same species of animal increases in size the further it gets from the equator.

[Born Hunter 17,797]

Fantastic thread, thanks to everyone who has made a decent contribution. I've enjoyed the read from the original post to the last one!

 

 

I'd imagine the red fox is pretty much the same the world over..

 

 

Not so.. The red fox considerably varies in size throughout it's whole global range. The red fox populations in the middle east average at about 3 kilos, while the European average is around 10 kilos or over. This depends on various factors, population density, food availability and possibly Bergmans rule, which states that the same species of animal increases in size the further it gets from the equator.

 

The average european fox is 22lb+!

 

Makes that 26 pounder sound average...

[Malt 379]

Fantastic thread, thanks to everyone who has made a decent contribution. I've enjoyed the read from the original post to the last one!

 

 

I'd imagine the red fox is pretty much the same the world over..

 

 

Not so.. The red fox considerably varies in size throughout it's whole global range. The red fox populations in the middle east average at about 3 kilos, while the European average is around 10 kilos or over. This depends on various factors, population density, food availability and possibly Bergmans rule, which states that the same species of animal increases in size the further it gets from the equator.

 

The average european fox is 22lb+!

 

Makes that 26 pounder sound average...

 

Aye, just checked a book, I should have said they can grow to 22lb or more instead of average.. Just made the post to illustrate the difference in size of the red fox throughout it's range..

[skycat 6,173]

What I meant was that their behaviour is pretty much the same: quick on the turn, crafty, clever survivors. Easy enough to pick up out in the open with most lurchers if they want them, but a different kettle of fish given cover to sneak through.