Ireland’s only scenthound isn’t a Beagle and has no relationship with a former US senator, but the Kerry Beagle does have a hunting technique that has been described as “particular.” David Blake Knox described this in his book on Irish dogs; a pack will spread out into a circular shape resembling a fan, but will honor the hound who first finds a scent and “informs” the others with a loud bawl. Once the quarry is found, the hounds re-form into their pack and work together as a collective. Individuals typically take the same position in the pack every time they gather to hunt.
The writer, David Hancock, revealed how this effective style was to the detriment of Kerry Beagles imported to Australia to hunt sambar breeds. Laws in Victoria allowed Beagles and Bloodhounds to scent trail Sambar deer that were damaging grounds with their hooves, but a local conservationist/hunter who knew about the breed imported some Kerry Beagles figuring that the dogs would help solve the problem. According to Hancock, legislators suddenly amended the law to stipulate that only breeds recognized by the Australian National Kennel Club could be used in this fashion, and the Kerry Beagle wasn’t one of them. Baffled observers suspected that since size and ability couldn’t have been reasons for outlawing the breed to use on the sambar deer, the change may have been due to disapproval of a style of hunting frowned upon by some animal rights sympathizers in the country. We don’t know what became of the imported hounds, but our sense from reading between the lines of Hancock’s article is that it may not have ended well for them.
These days, Kerry Beagles are mostly engaged in drag hunting (pursuing a prepared scent trail laid by a person dragging a material soaked in aniseed or another strong smelling substance).
On a cheerier note, we came across an interesting factoid when reading about Chris Ryan, a chap whose family has been breeding Kerry Beagles in Scarteen, Co Limerick, for over ten generations (most Kerry Beagles in existence today are said to have descended from the Scarteen Kerrys): Evidently, tradition dictates that young pups in a litter carry the first two letters of their mother’s name making it easy to trace a hound back through their dam’s line.
As for our post title, it comes from an anecdote we found on a breed forum. Many years back, the poster had encountered a chap walking his Kerry Beagles who explained that if he let them off their leads, they would be “off on the jollies for hours.” We found the language too charming not to share.
To learn more about the Kerry Beagle, you might find the following piece interesting.
Image by Cardiff Potter of Kerry Beagles of the Scarteen Hunt in the 1930s; this image was originally posted to Flickr by Cardiff Potter. We found it on Wikimedia Commons and share it under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.