Surely you guys don't advocate shooting the dog. He's only doing what he was trained to do. (Now the owner that puts them out next to somebody else's land is another story 
) If a dog comes on our land with no collar its fair game,but I would never shoot someones pet or deer dog that was wearing a collar.
Most serious beaglers, coon hunters, and bird hunters view running "off game" a serious flaw. One of the problems is that during the period when there were few deer (after say 1930) the AKC rule book was revised and states that a beagle is a multi purpose hound and cannot be ordered up for running game other than rabbit. Now, however, there are more deer than rabbits. There is nothing more miserable for a hounds owner than to see the hounds take off on a fox, deer, etc. This disrupts the rabbit hunt and now it turns into a dog hunt.....trust me, if a hound can smell a rabbit and run without loss, they can light up a deer and be out of hearing range in less than a minute! I've gotten one hound back 25 miles from where I turned him loose! A deer will usually make a fairly short circle, then leave the country if it hasn't shook the hounds.........5 miles is nothing on a deer chase especially if several hounds are involved. This problem has changed the type of dog and the way the dog are bread to hunt. With so many deer, I like my hounds to hunt very close to me. I also like a slower hound than what I had before the deer became so prolific. I also cast fewer dogs than in the past, with 4 hounds being the norm........Years ago, myself and friends would cast 20 to 25 hard driving tall hounds and push a rabbit very quickly to the gun........Well, if 25 hard driving fast hounds get after a deer, their gone in 60 seconds.
I've owned hounds I'd bet wouldn't run deer.....then, several years later, for no apparent reason, the hound decided the deer smelled to good not to chase.....this usually happens when rabbits are hard to come by and after a long time of looking the dogs are much more likely to run off game...Lots of us dual field trialer/hunters, have asked the AKC to make this a serious flaw that deserves immediate elimination.......and something that shouldn't be bread to without this being known. Most of us are trying to breed this out of our hounds, but have only meet with limited success......
Some of these fellows have spent huge amounts of money and time on their dogs........I myself, after having lost dogs on deer, have bought "electronic training devices" to be politically correct in order to try and correct the problem. I can't make the hounds not run "off game", but I can sure make them wish they hadn't.
Several years ago, just after the beginning of the modern AKC small pack option gun dog movement, a very rare Field Champion was shot by a bow hunter. The dog was never know to run deer and was rumored to have sold to the current owner for $10,000. That dog was rumored to have bread over 500 bitches and brought a high stud fee........
I guess what I'm asking is that you think before pulling the trigger on a hound.........He just might be very valuable to someone.........
