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2. Hare Coursing

1. Between 1988 and 1990 we investigated the effects of hare coursing on hare populations. This was undertaken against an earlier background of a declining hare population nationally during the period 1960-1980. ¹
2. By hare coursing we refer to organised events carried out by coursing clubs which take place on land with permission of the land-owner. They are usually knock-out competitions between pairs of greyhounds where the winning dog is chosen by a judge on horseback who awards points to each dog on the basis of how well they perform in relation to each other and the hare. The competitions we visited were run under rules laid down by the National Coursing Club ².
3. The events we looked at did not constitute poaching. Illegal coursing is commonly practised using lurchers (hybrid greyhounds) and other "long-dogs", and is carried out without the land-owner’s permission. These activities do not apparently follow coursing club rules and the object of such exercises may be to kill the hare. Some authors (notably Hutchings and Harris³) choose to lump both types of coursing together (legal and illegal) when discussing the issue.
4. One of the areas we looked at was the Altcar Estate in Lancashire and the venue for the Waterloo Cup, the premier event of the coursing calendar. We had visited Altcar during the winters of 1981-82 as part of an earlier study on the effects of farming on hares⁴.
5. Game Conservancy Trust studies on the brown have been funded principally by the Natural Environment Research Council and The British Field Sports Society (now the Countryside Alliance).

1. Our approach was to count hare numbers at coursing localities before and after coursing events. These events were not staged for the research but were part of the planned calendar of activities by coursing clubs.
2. Hares cannot be counted exactly at any locality. They are nocturnal animals and so they are most easily seen at night with binoculars and a spotlight. They also have to be counted in winter when crops are absent or very short so the hares are visible. However, there will always be a proportion of ground on any farm where hares can hide unseen. So counts are made by sampling the ground that is visible (usually at least 30% of the total area) and a total population for the farm calculated from the sampled ground. Such estimates of population are subject to some error and we have expressed our population estimates as upper and lower 95% confidence limits around a mean. Our methods are very similar to those used by other population biologists in Europe on brown hares and a description and validation of our methods can be found in Barnes and Tapper⁵ and Stoate and Tapper⁶.
3. Each year we carried out the population counts in February before the coursing and early March a few days after the event. However, it must be remembered that the numbers of hares on a farm can fluctuate as hares move to feed on different crops as they grow. Movements of more than a kilometre are normal distances for hares foraging between crops⁴. Thus recorded changes in a local hare population may reflect temporary movements on and off the farm as well as real population changes associated with birth and death.
4. We investigated the hare populations on two coursing estates. Altcar in Lancashire was an arable estate of 1,127 hectares comprising a low lying flat landscape with small fields separated by ditches and larger dykes. The estate management is primarily for game and there is a gamekeeper to control foxes and to prevent poaching. During our earlier studies in 1981 and 1982, we calculated the average density of hares on the estate as 28 hares per 100 hectares.
5. In the three years, 1988, 1989 and 1990 we visited the estate before and after the Waterloo Cup in late winter each year. During these three years habitat condition for hares on the estate had improved considerably for hares primarily due to the introduction of winter cereal crops which replaced the bare plough evident over much of the area in 1981 and 1982.

1. Results of our counts are summarised below (see Table). Hare numbers are shown both as densities (number of hares per 100 hectares of ground) and as population estimates for the whole estate. Population changes are the differences in number between the two counts. The numbers of hares killed are those reported to us as killed during the Waterloo Cup. The percentage killed is this latter number expressed as a percentage of the initial population.

2. The proportion of the hare population that was reported killed during the coursing competitions was low (between 5 and 6%). However, the population reductions recorded after the Waterloo Cup were slightly greater (15% in 1989 and 10% in 1990). 1988 is anomalous in this instance as the coursing club released 128 hares onto estate between the two counts. Thus the population change associated with the Waterloo Cup we have concluded is a maximum 15% with only 6% being definitely attributed to mortality during coursing. The other 9% could represent hares moving off the estate between the two counts – possibly caused by coursing or temporary disturbance during a large public event. However, it could also be other mortality associated with coursing but not recorded as killed by the event organisers.
3. The second coursing locality we looked at was the Chippenham Estate near Newmarket where coursing events were organised by the East of England Coursing Club. Coursing events are smaller here (36 courses in 1989) compared with Altcar (112 courses run in the same year). The property is a mixed arable farmland of some 759 hectares with a gamekeeper. Hare numbers were substantially lower than at Altcar – about half the population density - but the proportion killed during coursing was lower than at the Waterloo Cup. In addition there was no evidence of a measurable population reduction after coursing (Table).

1. We found that on these two coursing estates hare numbers were retained at relatively high densities compared with the countryside in general. Hutchings and Harris found that arable districts on average supported 7.1 hares per 100 hectares³ which compares unfavourably with on average 30.4 hares per 100 hectares at Altcar and 13.8 hares per 100 hectares at Chippenham.
2. We found the direct mortality associated with coursing to be very low compared with the overall mortality that might be expected in hare populations. Continental studies of brown hares in several countries have found the annual mortality of between 42% and 66%⁷. In the UK, work in the 1970s on populations that were shot annually suggest that between 59% and 73% of any hare population is less than one year old and only 1% or less are older than three years⁷. Nevertheless occasional animals can live to seven years or more⁷.
3. In addition we noticed, though did not quantify, that some coursing estates had made or retained habitat features to benefit hares. At Altcar areas of grass were retained as coursing grounds which would otherwise have been ploughed up for cereals and some root crops (carrots) were planted as winter feed for hares.
4. We were also aware that the organised shooting of hares was generally absent from coursing estates, and that an interest in coursing encouraged farmers to tolerate higher levels of agricultural damage than would otherwise be the case.

Date uploaded to site: 29 February 2000