They always gave good runs,though like other game they differed much individually in speed.The foxes did not run so well,and whether they were the little swift,or the big red prairie fox,they were speedily snapped up if the dogs had a fair showing.Once our dogs roused a blacktail buck close up out of the brush coulie where the ground was moderately smooth,and after a headlong chase of a mile they ran into him,threw him,and killed him before he could rise.(His stiff-legged bounds sent him along at a tremendous pace at first,but he seemed to tire rather easily.)On two or three occasions we killed whitetail deer,and several times antelope.Usually,however,the antelopes escaped.The bucks sometimes made a good fight,but generally they were seized while running,some dogs catching by the throat,others by the shoulders,and others again by the flank just in front of the hind-leg.Wherever the hold was obtained,if the dog made his spring cleverly,the buck was sure to come down with a crash,and if the other dogs were anywhere near he was probably killed before he could rise,although not infrequently the dogs themselves were more or less scratched in the contests.Some greyhounds,even of high breeding,proved absolutely useless from timidity,being afraid to take hold;but if they got accustomed to the chase,being worked with old dogs,and had any pluck at all,they proved singularly fearless.A big ninety-pound greyhound or Scotch deer-hound is a very formidable fighting dog;I saw one whip a big mastiff in short order,his wonderful agility being of more account than his adversary's superior weight.
The proper way to course,however,is to take the dogs out in a wagon and drive them thus until the game is seen.This prevents their being tired out.In my own hunting,most of the antelope aroused got away,the dogs being jaded when the chase began.But really fine greyhounds,accustomed to work together and to hunt this species of game,will usually render a good account of a prong-buck if two or three are slipped at once,fresh,and within a moderate distance.
Although most Westerners take more kindly to the rifle,now and then one is found who is a devotee of the hound.Such a one was an old Missourian,who may be called Mr.Cowley,whom I knew when he was living on a ranch in North Dakota,west of the Missouri.Mr.Cowley was a primitive person,of much nerve,which he showed not only in the hunting field but in the startling political conventions of the place and period.He was quite well off,but he was above the niceties of personal vanity.His hunting garb was that in which he also paid his rare formal calls--calls throughout which he always preserved the gravity of an Indian,though having a disconcerting way of suddenly tip-toeing across the room to some unfamiliar object,such as a peacock screen or a vase,feeling it gently with one forefinger,and returning with noiseless gait to his chair,unmoved,and making no comment.On the morning of a hunt he would always appear on a stout horse,clad in a long linen duster,a huge club in his hand,and his trousers working half-way up his legs.He hunted everything on all possible occasions;and he never under any circumstances shot an animal that the dogs could kill.Once when a skunk got into his house,with the direful stupidity of its perverse kind,he turned the hounds on it;a manifestation of sporting spirit which roused the ire of even his long-suffering wife.As for his dogs,provided they could run and fight,he cared no more for their looks than for his own;he preferred the animal to be half greyhound,but the other half could be fox-hound,colley,or setter,it mattered nothing to him.They were a wicked,hardbiting crew for all that,and Mr.Cowley,in his flapping linen duster,was a first-class hunter and a good rider.He went almost mad with excitement in every chase.His pack usually hunted coyote,fox,jack-rabbit,and deer;and I have had more than one good run with it.
My own experience is too limited to allow me to pass judgment with certainty as to the relative speed of the different beasts of the chase,especially as there is so much individual variation.I consider the antelope the fleetest of all however;and in this opinion I am sustained by Col.Roger D.Williams,of Lexington,Kentucky,who,more than any other American,is entitled to speak upon coursing,and especially upon coursing large game.Col.Williams,like a true son of Kentucky,has bred his own thoroughbred horses and thoroughbred hounds for many years;and during a series of long hunting trips extending over nearly a quarter of a century he has tried his pack on almost every game animal to be found among the foot-hills of the Rockies and on the great plains.His dogs,both smooth-haired greyhounds and rough-coated deer-hounds,have been bred by him for generations with a special view to the chase of big game--not merely of hares;they are large animals,excelling not only in speed but in strength,endurance,and ferocious courage.The survivors of his old pack are literally seamed all over with the scars of innumerable battles.When several dogs were together they would stop a bull-elk,and fearlessly assail a bear or cougar.This pack scored many a triumph over blacktail,whitetail,and prong-buck.For a few hundred yards the deer were very fast;but in a run of any duration the antelope showed much greater speed,and gave the dogs far more trouble,although always overtaken in the end,if a good start had been obtained.Col.Williams is a firm believer in the power of the thoroughbred horse to outturn any animal that breathes,in a long chase;he has not infrequently run down deer,when they were jumped some miles from cover;and on two or three occasions he ran down uninjured antelope,but in each case only after a desperate ride of miles,which in one instance resulted in the death of his gallant horse.
