by Graham Cox-2-
Draghunting is essentially an exercise in simulation and it is important, therefore, to appreciate its scope and limitations. For whilst it may well be perfectly possible to organise the sport in such a way that mounted followers have as gratifying a run as they could wish for from a laid line the constraints on hound work may be significant: how significant will depend on a whole range of factors, many of which cannot be controlled. But that fact underlines why any discussion of the practicalities of developing the sport must be preceded by an account of, and understood in the context of, our understandings of scent and its importance. We must concern ourselves, in short, with the science of venery.
Scent is something that dominates everything those who work dogs try to do yet they are powerless to do anything about it. We think we know some things about it. But often the best insights that the rigour of modern science can deliver (Burton, 1976) do little to elaborate the careful observations and conclusions drawn by a gifted eighteenth century huntsman (Beckford, 1781). A fascination with it's capricious mysteries unites those who hunt hounds, work gundogs or speculate on the influence of pheromones (Le Guerer, 1996) on piscatorial record setting. As is evident from an extensive literature, that fascination, and the uncertainties it entails, unites field sportsmen and women across the centuries.
The earliest codifications of hunting lore exemplify the point. The fabulously illustrated French text of The Hunting Book of Gaston Phebus, written between 1387 and 1389 and available in facsimile reproduction (1998), shows the author enthusing about running hounds above all others. In a treatise which discusses every kind of hunting Phebus, who possessed 1600 hounds himself, talks of the great joy of working the hounds which follow game by scent untiringly through the day and who 'talk in their own language and berate the game they want to take'. The particular fascination with scent, in short, seems to be as old as working with hounds.
And yet we have no direct access to it. Humans tend to go about with their noses stuck up in the air, so scent is a means of communication of which they are seldom aware. What they do think they know they have to infer from close observation of - especially - canine performance and associated circumstances; drawing tentative conclusions and hedging them about - if they have any sense - with careful qualification; keeping an open mind the while so that they can recognise when their best guesses are being confounded. Those who work dogs can't just leave it to them because the resolution of their handling dilemmas as huntsmen depends on their reading of their dog's actions, whether singly or as a pack, and their assessment of the situation.
Although we know that our senses operate in chorus, research has demonstrated that there is a very definite hierarchy amongst them. Given the option humans rely primarily on eyesight above all other sources of information. Indeed, fully 90% of our attention is to visual input and that is so dominant that the extent to which our senses work together tends to be obscured. Dogs clearly depend on a range of senses as well. But canine scenting capacities are so extraordinarily refined that it is quite reasonable to say that the mind of a dog is its sense of smell.
A normal dog can smell a variety of substances at concentrations 1,000 to one million times lower than humans. Its olfactory membrane covers an area equivalent to a large pocket handkerchief whereas a man's is barely the size of two postage stamps. Furthermore, the internal shape of a dog's nose is better equipped to analyse the information received. But where the work of hounds is concerned it is what a dog does about what its nose is telling it that really matters. Nasal sensitivity, brains and experience are more than complementary: they depend on each other. All are necessary. None alone, or in combination with any one other, is sufficient.