Coursing

The Hunter, oil on canvas, Alfred Kowalski

Coursing by humans is the pursuit of game or other animals by dogs—chiefly greyhounds and other sighthounds—catching their prey by speed, running by sight, but not by scent. Coursing was a common hunting technique, practised by the nobility, the landed and wealthy, as well as by commoners with sighthounds and lurchers. In its oldest recorded form in the Western world, as described by Arrian—it was a sport practised by all levels of society, and it remained the case until Carolingian period forest law appropriated hunting grounds, or commons, for the king, the nobility, and other landowners. It then became a formalised competition, specifically on hare in Britain, practised under rules, the Laws of the Leash'.[1]

As a zoological term, it refers to predation by running down prey over long distances, as opposed to stalking, in which a stealthy approach is followed by a short burst of sprinting. Humans also employ coursing as a means of hunting, but the term is normally reserved for predation by non-human predators.[2][3]

  1. ^ Johnson, Thomas Burgeland (2023) [1848]. The sportsman's cyclopaedia : comprising a complete elucidation of the science and practice of hunting, shooting, coursing, racing, fishing, hawking, cockfighting, and other sports and pastimes of Great Britain, interspersed with entertaining and illustrative anecdotes [LeatherBound]. p. 193.
  2. ^ Montgomery, Robert A., et al. The hunting modes of human predation and potential nonconsumptive effects on animal populations. Biological Conservation 265, 2022: 109398
  3. ^ MacNulty, D.R., et al. A proposed ethogram of large-carnivore 395 predatory behavior, exemplified by the wolf. Journal of Mammalogy, 88(3) 2007, pp.595-605