Malcolm Dykes: Hail to the Small Beagle

With the statewide popular deer season now history and deer hunters a little sad, another season took its place for a couple more weeks, rabbit hunting.

It too ended at the end of the month, Feb. 28.

Maybe not so much as in former times, it was and remains a fun sporting event allowed by our MS Game and Fish Commission. And what makes the sport most fun and complete is a small type hound, the beagle.

The beagle is a breed of small scent hounds, similar in appearance to the much larger foxhound. The beagle was developed primarily for hunting rabbits, known as beagling. 

Possessing a great sense of smell and superior tracking instincts, the beagle is the primary breed used in present times as a detection dog for prohibited narcotics and agricultural imports and foodstuffs in quarantine around the world. They are a common sight with Homeland Security agents patrolling airports and entry points of the country. 

The beagle is a popular pet due to its size, good temperment, and a lack of inherited health problems. The modern breed was developed in Great Britain around the 1830s and has been depicted in literature and paintings and more recently in films, television, and comic books.

With all that being said, my association to the little guys goes back into the 70s and 80s when I joined fellow hunters to pursue the cottontail and swamp rabbits so abundantly found here in south MS. Especially the Yellow Creek variety, considered to be one of the best for hunting hares.

Some of my fondest memories this time of the year was getting permission from landowners to open the dog box situated on the truck of the late Tommy Wallace of Columbia MS and watch those small frame dogs go scurrying about with their nose to the ground in search of a bunny. His was always the Yellow Creek ones and they were good and obedient to Tommy's call.

These crisp cool February mornings were ideal for going into briar patches and cut over land with second growth and we hunters spread out and listened for the familiar long yelp of a strike beagle that was first to smell its prey. It wasn't long until a chorus of yelps would ring out from the others as the chase was on to all our delight. You had to be swift and agile with your shot when the pack headed your way and that brown blur went passed in front of you in the thicket. For one's beagles to be strictly trained to run rabbits and not deer was a plus and Tommy's always stayed the course.

I remember one bitter cold morning Tommy took a bunch of us hunters over into Glascock Island off the Mississippi River, considered at the time the prime rabbit hunting grounds to be found in the state. (Now days, it's revered for being a prime deer hunting tract,) It was a 3 hour drive so we loaded up and headed out around 3;00 am. Somewhere along the way out in the middle of nowhere, we saw in the distance what looked like the world was on fire.

As we got near we saw a car on the shoulder of the road with the hood up and a man standing out in the middle of a brush fire he had ignited to keep from freezing to death. But the fire had spread to be a huge wildfire. Help was summoned and we kept on going and it turned out to be a limited-out day at Glascock with some of the biggest swamp rabbits I had ever seen.

Our crew killed rabbits until the ground was not level, as the old saying goes. Like deer meat, rabbit meat is considered by health experts to be some of the safest meat there is to eat and Tommy being a gourmet cook always could make the hunts on going with a meal of fried rabbit a night or two later. Tommy has departed for a better world and his pack of Yellow Creek are history as well but the pleasantries of those bygone mornings rabbit hunting will never fade.

To those who still pursue the sport my hat is off to you. As well as those yelping smaller hounds who made some mighty good memories. Hail to the little beagle.

God bless you and God bless America.