Good day

Tavo Cruz called us yesterday to meet him and other dog- in- laws and coursing friends for lunch at the Owl bar and a run down by White Sands missile range, where hares seem to thrive even in droughty years. I am gratified that old farts like me and Dutch Salmon are still walking, and …

Read more

One Good Hound

Not all New Mexico hounds are tazi types; more are longdogs (locally more often called “staghounds”), deliberate and intelligently- bred crosses of various sighthound breeds. I have been hoping, and still am, that Clint Chisler would elaborate on the voluntary partnership between Lucy and a free falcon, but meanwhile here is his celebration of a …

Read more

Running Dogs

Herb Wells of Alpaugh CA takes the most amazing photos of coursing dogs I have ever seen- probably that anyone has. A couple of sets here. The first three pics demonstrate the incredible and totally normal hyperextension and flexing of a running dog’s first joints (third is also one of out own breeding, Daniela’s Shunkar). …

Read more

BEST Coursing photos

Herb Wells of Alpaugh CA, for all California’s problems still the field HQ of coursing, is perhaps the best photographer of running dogs EVER. A small sampler.The second reminds me of an old coursing print.

Xigou

Sir Terence Clark has just returned from China. He writes: “I was in Shaanxi Province of China in October 2010 with the Xigou (pronounced See-gow) hunters, one of whom had previously asked me whether I thought his hound was a Saluki. After examining a whole range of these hounds, I can only say that superficially …

Read more

Weekend Hunt

We– Terence Wright, Karen Wetherill, their lurcher Loki (grandson of our Plummer and Lashyn), gyr- prairie tiercel Cog, Daniela and her smooth saluki pup Blaze, English master falconer and author of Game Hawk Ray Turner, Libby and Ataika and I– spent January 16- 17 hiking and hawking, first on high La Jencia Plain, on Lee’s …

Read more

Some “Country” Music Videos: Nostalgia and Chills…

Not all “country” music is unsophisticated or even American. Here I give you a bunch of stuff I have been working through and following. Let us start with Tom Russell’s classic “US Steel”— a straight- up traditional country lament complete with sweet pedal steel, but set in Pennsylvania rather than on the border or even …

Read more

Old Plummer

Our thirteen- year- old English lurcher from David Hancock, once one of the best single- hand hare hounds in the southwest, father and grandfather of other great dogs, mostly content to dream on the couch. Unless he sees a hare…

Pakistan

Ali Hasnain hunts in a slightly grander and very traditional way– on a friend’s estate, with beaters! (His rookie of the year, Sonya, is listening alertly for them in the pic). This hunt took place in a watery oasis in desert country. We hope to get more reports from him including on falconry if he …

Read more