While walking through the woods listening to Brent Smith’s beagles running rabbits, I wondered if they ever actually caught one before a hunter got a shot on it.
“Your beagles can catch them, but it doesn’t happen a whole lot,” Smith said. “The reason coyotes and foxes are so able to catch rabbits is because they aren’t barking, where your beagles are constantly barking as they run behind the rabbit.”
A coyote has just as good of a nose or probably a better nose than a beagle, so as it’s trailing a rabbit, a coyote has stealth on its side.
“The rabbit runs ahead of the dogs because it can hear the dogs behind it,” Smith said. “And just like you know the area where you live, these rabbits live in the woods. If that rabbit is going through the woods, and he hears those dogs barking, he knows that’s where he was at and that they’re still behind him.”
Since neither coyotes nor foxes bark while trailing a rabbit, Smith explained that a rabbit would just sit there and squat in place. This allows either animal to sneak up on the rabbit and get into a sight chase where they can see him, run him down and catch him.
