A historical question: really carefully formulated LOL

[stav11 32]

there are mass fox population where i live with allotments at 1 side of me to a great big hospital the other and then there is people throwing scrap food out for them, it was only the other week me and the mrs where sat watching tele when the dog hurtled at the window trying to get out, when i looked out there was to mooching through the green, there everywhere now.

[morton 5,368]

Id have thought the original fox killing lurchers,probably Deerhoundy type,came down from Scotland with the Tod hunters,these travelling pest controllers only got paid by the brush,a missed fox was a lost dollar,so it seems safe to assume that a fox killing lurcher would have been only second to a good terrier in their pack.Some of these Tod hunting familys can be traced back centuries,i remember seeing old photos,in an old fell hunting book?,depicting one of these travelling familys with a few raggy terriers and a very Deerhoundy looking lurcher.

[birddog 1,354]

when i started there seemed to be a clear demarcation between terrier guys who hunted reynard and had a pal with a lurcher or two who tagged along and guys like me who chased (and sometimes caught) hares, rabbits and deer being secondary but our bags were generally anything edible. we never saw many daytime foxes probably because we wern't looking for them. our dogs did take the odd one especially on the lamp, but I / we didn't see the sense in risking a good potfiller getting cut up catching something we couldn't eat. maybe if curried fox or the like was a delicacy we'd have had a different kind of dog and attitude.

[nasher1 258]

I think in the late 70's early 's pelts were worth about £15 so if you had a good dog at it you could make a few quid also the transistion was being made from hunting for the pot to hunting for a bit of profit, knocking deer and fox over put more shillings in the pocket than the humble coney

[wirral countryman 2,110]

I think in the late 70's early 's pelts were worth about £15 so if you had a good dog at it you could make a few quid also the transistion was being made from hunting for the pot to hunting for a bit of profit, knocking deer and fox over put more shillings in the pocket than the humble coney

Nasher,I hunted fox as my main quarry 70's and 's,the most we ever got paid for a skin was 35 pound by "COBBLEDICK" the fur trader,we killed more than 100 a season and that only lasted about 12weeks when they were hard skins,they had to be skinned in one of 2 ways and placed meat side down on newspaper,rolled up and placed in the freezer untill you had enough to send in one parcel,a week later your check arrived,the least we got was a couple of pounds but the average was 10-20 pounds per skin,so they were well worth hunting on a daily basis,we mainly bolted into nets and always used the lurcher for any multiple bolts when the nets were full,our lurchers were expected to hold them till we could despatch them,bloody or damaged pelts were worth less than clean hard pelts,now heres the thing,most were caught either in gardens,parks,edges of housing estates,canal and railway banks,under poultry sheds,pigeon sheds,etc,only a few were ever caught in open countryside,foxes were very well fed in towns with the old tin bins that they could tip over and eat the scraps from, however with the inception of wheelie bins being twice the weight and size their population was halved overnight,there are not the amount of foxes in our towns now due to this one act,plenty of food means plenty of vermin,as for lurchers,mine and my friends were all expected to catch anything put in front of them and they did not dissappoint,game ,feather and vermin and no bull in any of them,atb,WM

[littlefish 574]

Posed this question to my old fella who is 73 and has kept lurchers and terriers his whole life ... He told me that for as long as he has been hunting he expected his lurchers to kill any fox they came across ... As he said the dogs were not out and out fox dogs his main quarry was rabbit and deer as the sale of these beasts supplemented his shit miners wage ... BUT if a farmer wanted a pest gone be it badger or fox then if you didn't oblige you would be soon off the land and somebody else would be in who could do the job ... He did however tell me that if the weather was to bad for ferreting or if he was bored he would load a few terriers and a lurcher and walk the mountain looking for earths to bolt foxes for the lurchers .... So I suppose we can go back to the 1950's and say they were being used then for fox control of a sort .............

 

What type of dogs would your old man have kept all those years ago? What types were popular in his area?

[beast 1,884]

afew points spring to mind. at one time, before stud books etc the greyhound was the name for any running dog/lurcher/deerhound etc. and before the normans came over with their scent hounds the saxons were using longdogs for a very different hunting to the slow noisy french type, the saxons were coursing with their dogs. hell, before the saxons the celts were breeding wolfhounds, deerhounds, whatever you call them theyhad big tough running dogs that would take wolf and deer. i bet they would run foxes to protect their livestock, especially when you think that all the primitive sheep they had then were very small like soays hebridean ronaldsay etc. so there you have it the lurcher-type has been hunting foxes since the earliest times. i suspect that the norman kings hunting laws stopped the working man keeping greys and even the victorian poachers who sometimes used lurchers wouldnt risk a trip to van diemens land for a fox, nope much rather something which they could feed a poor family or sell. i think the recent surge in foxing was 70s

[patterdale666 1,620]

Excellent topic

[s.e.s.k.u 1,893]

Excellent topic

agree , its nice to read proper informative discussion and opinions . good thread

[juckler123 707]

Good thread can only go back to the late sixties and there was terrier lads who had lurchers for drawing and running but only daytime in fact there wasnt a great number of foxes local to me then wed get the odd one following when lamping but we never bothered them.

In the next ten years the amount soon doubled then tripled we were seeing them waiting to come into the town as we were on our way out of it funny i thought at the time.

It was that time that merle was written that everyone had a crack at them on the lamp more often than not just to say the dog could take them.

[socks 32,253]

Posed this question to my old fella who is 73 and has kept lurchers and terriers his whole life ... He told me that for as long as he has been hunting he expected his lurchers to kill any fox they came across ... As he said the dogs were not out and out fox dogs his main quarry was rabbit and deer as the sale of these beasts supplemented his shit miners wage ... BUT if a farmer wanted a pest gone be it badger or fox then if you didn't oblige you would be soon off the land and somebody else would be in who could do the job ... He did however tell me that if the weather was to bad for ferreting or if he was bored he would load a few terriers and a lurcher and walk the mountain looking for earths to bolt foxes for the lurchers .... So I suppose we can go back to the 1950's and say they were being used then for fox control of a sort .............

 

What type of dogs would your old man have kept all those years ago? What types were popular in his area?

 

He ran mostly collie crosses and deerhound crosses strangely though he only ever kept big dogs ... He did have a beast of a dog that had Irish wolfhound in its make up I can just about remember it as I was very young And this thing was huge compared to me ..........

[wirral countryman 2,110]

Skycat,in the 70's and 's we ran mainly mixes of collie/deerhound/saluki/greyhound crosses,we tried to stick to dogs with a bit of coat that never showed up the marks from foxing on a daily basis,and they were the days when you could walk down the road with a spade,dead fox and a dog or two without waiting for a tug off the old bill,farmers were glad to see the back of "CHARLIE" in those days,I agree with what walsh said regarding lurchers catching foxes easilly,all the lurchers we owned back then were expected to take rabbit and fox as a given,the hard part was consistantly having a dog that would catch the hares as well,remember a fox like the hare can turn in its own body length at full speed where as a lurcher that is too heavy like a lot of the bull crosses are these days cannot,only good dogs were mated together back then and only to replace an older dog coming up to retirement unlike now were any old dog thats hardly caught anything are put together,the terrier and lurcher shows were the ruination of genuine working dogs for me,whilst they were meant to be a bit of fun or fundraisers for the likes of the fell and moorland and put on for the right reasons I might add they also became our achilles heel,women and children kept them as pets just for showing, without any real work and before long dogs were being bred without any test of their working ability or stamina,fieldcraft etc, and being bred from to produce very poor dogs that had only seen a show ring or a plastic bag.I could walk down the road and nobody knew what a lurcher was but now people ask what cross is that ??is it a rescue dog ??everyone seems to know what they are and look to keep one as a pet without little thought of how much excercise is required to keep them fit and healthy,by the way Penny I respect you as a dogwomen and this is in no way a dig at you or any woman that gets out there and runs live quarry but I'm sure you realise you are in the minority and not the normal show lurcher owner.I only ever kept traditional working type lurchers with a bit of coat and still do,a lurcher does not have to weigh 85lb and be a mass of muscle to be of any use in todays modern times when all we can legally take is rabbits,all I can say to you lads that have struggled to get on terms with fox where or when it was still legal is get a better lurcher or change the way your hunting them as a good dog does not miss many,atb,WM

[J.DOG 1,355]

This is a cracking thread

[Carraghs Gem 1,675]

This is a cracking thread

Agreed

[skycat 6,173]

.......................lurcher does not have to weigh 85lb and be a mass of muscle to be of any use in todays modern times when all we can legally take is rabbits,all I can say to you lads that have struggled to get on terms with fox where or when it was still legal is get a better lurcher or change the way your hunting them as a good dog does not miss many,atb,WM

 

I've had a few small lurchers which took fox regularly, and I agree........any lurcher should be able to take them on open ground. The only time mine missed is when the fox was going through really thick cover: doubling back on itself in brambles etc. I have a very good day time lurcher which wouldn't take them on the lamp, but bust cover and guts to get them by day: strange bitch!