COURSING.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume IX, Issue 421, 18 August 1898, Page 11

COURSING.

[By

Dicken.]

The last meeting of the season at Avondale will be held on next Wednesday and the following Saturday, and at present there is good evidence that the gathering will be a successful one. Owners should not forget that nominations for the Collar and Recovery Stakes close on Friday, August 19, at 9 p.m. The entry for the Collar Stakes will be better than was at first expected. Walter Glew is coming from Hawke’s Bay with a couple. W. W. Naughton, American correspondent for the Sydney Referee, and an old New Zealander, writes to his paper thus : — Coursing has become a veritable craze in San Francisco. There are two finely-equipped parks here, and at each of them- every Sunday from sixty to eighty dogs take after the elusive hare. They begin weeding out the stakes on Saturday, the first round being run down. On the following day the good dogs gets together, and betting is in full swing. The average Sunday attendance at each park is three thousand.

The pool system of betting is the most popular. It is simply a case of making a bet with a bystander, and getting the pool-seller to hold the stakes. He charges something like 4 per cent, for acting as financial go-between. Every course is wageredjon, so that there is some jingling of silver throughout, the afternoon. It is said that about 50,000d0l changes hands every Saturday and Sunday at the two Parks. The parks give good stakes — from 600dol to 80 'dol a week at once. The entrance money, 2.50d0l per dog, is split up among the hounds winning from one to six courses. The winner of a stake seldom gets less than 200dol, the runner-; up 100, and so on down to the dog that wins but one course. His (or her) share is odol. ■ Hounds have advanced in value until (fancy prices are now asked for anything that looks as if it might be able to head off a rabbit. Two hundred dollars is a common figure for a dog of fair quality, and the real good ones cannot be. looked at for less than 500dol, whilst lOOQdol is sometimes paid over before a dog changes hands. ' ■ Al' • . : ’.*■ I. r.\ ‘KOf

The Union Park, which opened in February last, gave 13,4Crd0l in purses in the first three months, and the Ingleside Park has given about the same amount. There are a few Australian dogs here at present, but they are now on the shelf almost. ' It is said of their stock, however, that they are equal, if not superior, to anything bred here. There are halt-a dozen Australian spotting men who follow the game up to the handle, and to one or two of tho e is due the boom in coursing. J. R. Dizon is one and R. P. Lopez an ther. A Mr Jerome, who arrived 1 ere recently, has invented a sectional “sluice,” or elongated box, for letting hares away, one at a time, and it has been pronounced a praiseworthy innovation by - the park ma> agers. The hares are driven into the sluice through a funnel or fan-shaped opening, and slats are dropped until each bunny has a quiet little cell of his own. When puss 1a finally liberated for the race of its life, it is as fresh as paint and gives the dogs a harderrun than it did under the old order of things. L The Mr Jerome here referred to is probably our own “ Jerry,” who pas.-ed through Auckland en route to America a few weeks ago. The invention mentioned is evidently that < f Jimmy Ferguson’s, used with mnch success at the Avondale Plumpton.] Several dogs have been imported here from England. They are mostly high class animals. One that arrived here ab >ut three months ago > from Fawcett’s kennels, near Liverpool, is the daddy of them all. His t ame is For Fre dom, and nothing here can get within ten lengths of him. He has star ed in five stakes, and has won them all with ridiculous ease He is a Brindle and white, weighing about 571 b, and is by Sir Sankey out of Flitting Far, He is now two years old, and his owner, J. H. Rosetter, refused 3,000d0l for him a few days ago. Mr Fawcett, of Liverpool, who bred him, is the owner of Fabulous Fortune. A great number of the owners east of the Rockies are heading for California. - The climate of the Eastern States does not rermit of coursing for more than six or eight weeks dunngthe year. Here at this end the sport goes merrily on from January to December. There are now from three hui dred to four hundred dogs in training in this State, and it is prophesied there will be as many more before another six months go by.