The American Beagler Forum

I've hunted cottontails and swampers, I know cottontails have alot of tricks but I have seen a swamper swim down the middle of a creek with just his nose out the water. Just wanted some other opinions.

You forgot to include the fast running Snowshoe hare, and the jacks? I have run them all except for the swampers.....

I havnt ran anything else but snowshoes. In the spring they are very hard to run. Almost all of them seemed to go on long fast straight shots. Hardly any circled. And the gaps between there leaps were unreal. I hung up the gun this year after the start of march. Im thinking about trying right now and seeing how they run. Maybe do a night hunt.

I can't speak for the "swampers", never run one. However I hear they are similar to snoeshoe hare, and I know most dogs after a long weekend of running hare, usually look pretty stupid on cottontail for days if not weeks! Guys tell you to just solo them for two weeks on cottontail to settle them down again! So I'd say a cottontail would be harder to run! Smaller = less sent. Plus more twist and turns on the line.

Rimfire, I have the same thing happen in the spring running swampers. They may not run as far as a hare but they will go a long way and not come back, sometimes the dogs will be out of hearing and when I get to them they will be running the swamper. I think it is a buck out of his teritory having a spring fling..

I was told that they were Buck rabbits as well. This is supposedley because the does lose theyre scent in the spring to hide from predators while they are raising young. So supposedly the dogs wont pick up the does?

A dead one! ;~)

rimfirematt wrote:I was told that they were Buck rabbits as well. This is supposedley because the does lose theyre scent in the spring to hide from predators while they are raising young. So supposedly the dogs wont pick up the does?

Never believe anything you are told and only half of what you see.

Bucks will come from at least a half mile when a doe is in heat in order to breed. If they don't smell them how do they know they are in heat. Judging from watching San Juans, a Buck knows when a doe is about to give birth because they will follow them around a day or so before they give birth. They breed immediately after birthing.

You should try a jack rabbit from south Texas. Take off like a rocket and don't stop or make turns. A straight line out of the county.

Gus, I have seen what I'm talking about. If my dogs jump a doe rabbit in the spring or summer they have to gear down and realy work to run it, the doe will also stay close to the area where you jump it, if they jump a buck its hell bent ,good long runs that sometimes end up away from where it was jumped.

I'm talking about swamp rabbits not SAN JUANS.

Laal there is no disagreement here. The key is the pattern they run. You said " the doe will also stay close to the area where you jump it". They just run around and back track much like a rabbit that is tired. It is much easier for most dogs to run rabbits that run in straight lines and big circles. You also said, "if they jump a buck its hell bent ,good long runs that sometimes end up away from where it was jumped"
That has been my experience also.

the hardest has to to be the cottontail tiwsit and turn rerun its same track every thing u can imagine it will do..swampers r my 2nd choice they run in some bad swamps and stuff but dont twist near as much .. never run hare or jack but they sounds similair from what yall say.long hard runns no break down sounds like easy running to me. !

A good hound can make a great chase on almost any rabbit or hare. I loaned my FTCH McBride's Lucky Jade to John Dobson a couple of years ago (John finished FTCH Branko's Dutch Weifke, FTCH Dobson's Pet and a few others) to gun with (he was going to hunt cottontail with her). I told him "she'd never seen a cottontail before and had only been run on hare." He called me a short while later to say "he'd shot 23 cottontail ahead of her during the first several days, and then hung up his gun and took her out to show all his hunting buddies how a hare hound could rattle a cottontail around. He said "she was the best gundog he'd ever seen." If you breed hare hounds for nose and line control, you won't have a problem running cottontail. When we used to run our hare hounds in small pack cottontail trials in Ontario, we used to pray that we were drawn in a pack that would run later in the day. The scent was simply too good in the early going and the hare hounds would drive the rabbit too hard. When conditions got tougher, the hare hounds could bear down and outnose the brace and small pack hounds we'd compete with. My FTCH Winterbourne Boomerang won the first CKC Small Pack on cottontail trial ever held in Canada against a field of mostly brace and small pack hounds. The last brace he was in kept one cottontail going for 2 hrs and 28 min. till the judges finally agreed on a winner.

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