Editing Coursing (section)

{{Short description|Hunting method and dog sport}}
{{more footnotes needed|date=July 2009}}
[[File:Alfred Wierusz-Kowalski - Myśliwi.jpg|thumb|right|250px|''The Hunter'', oil on canvas, [[Alfred Kowalski]]]]
'''Coursing''' by humans is the pursuit of [[Game (food)|game]] or other animals by [[dog]]s—chiefly [[greyhound]]s and other [[sighthound]]s—catching their prey by speed, running by sight, but not by scent. Coursing was a common hunting technique, practised by the nobility, the landed and wealthy, as well as by commoners with sighthounds and [[lurcher]]s. 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 the case until [[Carolingian]] period [[Royal forest|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'.<ref name="Burgeland">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rL4UAAAAYAAJ&dq=%22Laws+of+the+Leash%22&pg=PA193 |page=193 |title=The sportsman's cyclopaedia : comprising a complete elucidation of the science and practice of hunting, shooting, coursing, racing, fishing, hawking, cockfighting, and other sports and pastimes of Great Britain, interspersed with entertaining and illustrative anecdotes [LeatherBound] |last1=Johnson |first1=Thomas Burgeland |orig-date=1848 |year=2023}}</ref>

As a zoological term, it refers to predation by running down prey over long distances, as opposed to stalking, in which a stealthy approach is followed by a short burst of sprinting. Humans also employ coursing as a means of hunting, but the term is normally reserved for predation by non-human predators.<ref>Montgomery, Robert A., et al. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S000632072100450X The hunting modes of human predation and potential nonconsumptive effects on animal populations]. ''Biological Conservation'' 265, 2022: 109398</ref><ref>MacNulty, D.R., et al. [https://academic.oup.com/jmammal/article/88/3/595/1065104?login=false A proposed ethogram of large-carnivore 395 predatory behavior, exemplified by the wolf]. ''Journal of Mammalogy'', 88(3) 2007, pp.595-605</ref>