Night of the long dogs

A rainy and foggy night in the Yorkshire Dales promises little rabbit action but lamping with lurchers proves a success

- Matt Cross

At the end of the beam, Blue turned hard, just inches behind the rabbit. It turned too and again Blue went with it, heeled over like a racing yacht. The rabbit made a last, desperate twist then Blue was trotting steadily back to Jake, the rabbit held firmly in his mouth.

We had met on a damp, rainy night in a small town in the Dales. Jim Nicholson had brought Bo; Jake Taylor, a council animal welfare officer, had Blue; and roofer Andrew Hayes had Molly. Andrew, a keen, all-round country sportsman, found himself briefly famous when a petition he launched to have Chris Packham sacked from the BBC attracted 140,000 signatures.

The three men have worked hard to build up their reputations as honest and effective rabbit controllers. The outcome of their work is that they have permissions across Yorkshire, giving them thousands of acres to shoot and run their dogs and a network of butchers and game dealers keen to take the meat.

Lamping with lurchers has a certain reputation, a rough sport that to some is synonymous with poaching. Leaving the small Yorkshire pub where we had met, someone remarked that we looked as if we were up to no good. “Got some lurchers?” he asked. When Jake answered that we had, he seemed to have found his confirmation: “Definitely up to no good then.”

It’s a shame that the lurcher has this reputation. It is the truest of hunting dogs, an animal bred purely for function, no gilded certificates nor curious abbreviations and no tests or trials other than its ability to catch game. No lurcher will ever be seen in the ring at Crufts, but dogs such as these have a far longer history than most breeds. You will find references to them in the Norman forest laws, woodcuts of them in the 17th century, and deep in Cairngorms there is a tumble of rocks called