Coursing

Coursing by humans is the pursuit and capture of game or other animals by dogs—chiefly greyhounds and other sighthounds—that outrun their prey, tracking it by sight rather than scent. Coursing was once a common hunting technique, practised by the nobility, the landed, and the 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 so 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. As a zoological term, coursing refers to predation by the running down of prey over long distances, as opposed to stalking, in which a stealthy approach is followed by a short burst of sprinting, or ambush, the sudden capture by surprise of unsuspecting prey. Though humans still course prey, the term is normally reserved for predation by non-human predators.