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Making of a Beagler

by William Scott :: Featured: August, 2002

It started out one Friday night. I stopped and made plans with my friend Rick to take him and two of his teen sons out rabbit hunting. Rick Jr. was 15 and Matt was 14 It was the first time for both hunting rabbits with a dog.

I was up to their place about 6:30 am. Rick and I had a coffee and talked, that's when Rick asked, "Is it alright if I bring my camcorder instead of my shotgun so I can get the boys on their first rabbit hunt?". Well, that sounded good, so we started out. We drove to a woods and bramble patch where we had good luck before. It wasn't long before my beagle Freakles had one going. It didn't make it past my son. We spent about an hour at that patch and left with 4 rabbits in the bag; unfortunately the boys hadn't had a shot yet. We then drove to an old abandoned farm. We had just reached the backyard and Freckles was on one; chasing it around some old sheds. You could see the rabbit, then you couldn't. All of a sudden it broke out from the sheds and was running flat out , in the open with my dog about 10 yards behind. My son took the first shot and just turned it, so it ran in a different direction. I had it my sight and didn't notice that Matt had it in his sight. Well I pulled my trigger, and Matt pulled his and at the same time -- my son took another shot, poor rabbit got hit by three shots at nearly the same time. It looked like a fur-ball explosion. Needless to say there was nothing left of that rabbit , except a good laugh for all of us. We all hate to see that happen, but that's part of hunting. We were all excited when Rick said he got it all on film. He began to rewind the film and play it back for us to all see. We were standing watching the little screen when Rick says, "Darn, I forgot to press record!".

Well the only images we have are the ones in our own memories. The best memory I have is the very next season those boys talked their Dad into getting two Beagles and now they're really hooked on it. In my book that's the best you can hope for -- to pass it on to the next generation.