Beagling: the connoisseur's field sport?

If you haven’t been beagling, you should go, says Matthew Higgs. With none of the expense of keeping a horse, these superb little hounds offer links to the foundations of country sports

- Matthew Higgs

“THEY keep running on with joy and spirit, investigating the trail through every turn, now in circles, now straightforward, now obliquely, through thick and thin, places known and unknown, passing each other by turns, moving their tails, throwing back their ears and their eyes darting fire.”

The above lines were written not by a contemporary enthusiast of the active, happy little beagle nor even by an Edwardian or Victorian commentator, but by Xenophon, the Athenian military leader, historian and philosopher in his Cynegeticus, a treatise on hunting, in around 400BC.

To me, a 21st-century beagler, there is a tremendous magic in the knowledge that our handling of hounds in the kennel and field would be familiar to huntsmen through the centuries, and so much that was relevant then remains so today. Hunting was once described to me as the last of the medieval mysteries and continues to fascinate.

It is one of many reasons why beagling, pre-ban, the pursuit of hares with small hounds followed on foot, remains even now an integral part of my life.

Historians may argue as to the exact origin of the beagle as a breed, but agree it is peculiar to Britain, their name perhaps originating from the Celtic word “beag” meaning “small”.

There were four principal types – the fleeter northern variation (originating in the Talbot breed); a rough-coated Celtic variation; a much heavier, often blue-mottled, low-scenting southern hound with roots in the Gascon breed, brought over by the Normans; and the pocket beagle.