Dr. Larry Marchinton emerges from a thicket with a cottontail in hand, thanks to the good work of his "deer-proof" beagles. Photo courtesy of Dr. Larry Marchinton.

A funny thing happened to Dr. Larry Marchinton on the way to his position as one of the pre-eminent white-tailed deer biologists in the country. Almost without realizing it was happening -- to hear his recounting -- he found himself hooked on "hound music."

Today, any rabbit hunter interested in learning more about this fascinating sport could do a lot worse than talk to this acclaimed deer biologist about cottontails and the dogs that serenade hunters while on the trail.

Dr. Marchinton, now retired, pioneered the use of radio collars in researching deer movements and behavior. His work, however, wasn't limited to putting radio collars on deer.

"I started out in Florida with deerhounds," he recalled. "When I came to the University of Georgia, I continued doing deer-dog research -- putting radio collars on whitetails then tracking them with dogs. I accumulated a number of foxhounds that would run deer, and I turned to hunting foxes with them in the late 1960s and early '70s."

Urban sprawl was in its infancy then, but it continued. Soon enough, Dr. Marchinton started encountering "city folk" who'd moved out of town.

"They didn't take to the idea of big packs of foxhounds running across their property in the middle of the night," he said. "And I couldn't keep them off the deer. This was more than 20 years ago, around 1985, and I decided to sell the foxhounds -- but I was already shopping for beagles."

He admits to "backsliding" to foxhounds a couple of times, but the reality of no good places to run them brought him back to beagles for good.

"At that point, I decided to work on better beagles," he said. For Dr. Marchinton, "better beagles" require a mix of consistent training and an approach to breeding that keys on certain elements of beagles, more behavioral than physical.

"I wanted to own dogs that would get on a rabbit and make it sound right," he said.

As his beagle education continued, one thing became paramount in his process. "The No. 1 thing, to me, was that I have dogs that showed a lack of interest in deer," Dr. Marchinton said. By the 1990s -- and continuing to today -- deer populations exploded. It's virtually impossible to hunt rabbits in areas that don't have deer.

And when you hear Dr. Marchinton describe the kinds of places he hunts at this time of year, it becomes immediately obvious that non-interest in deer is a vitally important virtue for any dogs in the packs he hunts.

"My No. 1 kind of area to hunt is one that has been recently clear cut and is coming back into new growth," he explained. Those that generally are 3 to 4 years old are the best, and they'll remain good until 10 or 12 years after the clear-cutting -- sometimes up to 15 years."

Dr. Marchinton pointed out that more recent cuts may produce much earlier, but the resident rabbits are at a decided disadvantage.

"Until you get new growth that is tall enough to begin providing some shade and cover, rabbits are very vulnerable to avian predators like owls and hawks," he explained. "You'll find rabbits to hunt before then, but my experience has shown that their numbers improve once the new growth gets high enough to provide some overhead cover."

Dr. Marchinton looks for habitat like that when he's checking out a place to hunt, and he looks for specific ground cover, too.

"I want to see briars . . . blackberry briars primarily, but you'll also see some multiflora rose," he said. "It can get really thick though, sometimes too thick to be able to hunt effectively. But the rabbits sure like it."

He also looks for adjacent food sources, and the current explosion of interest in deer management -- especially on the nutrition side -- has helped tremendously. It's not uncommon to find food plots fairly near areas of good cover, which also provide excellent natural forage for deer -- along with the good rabbit habitat.

"I also look for fields with old broomsedge because you'll usually find a mat of herbaceous matter -- maybe 1/4 inch tall or so -- very close to the ground," he explained. "These green forbs are a good food source for rabbits."

Think about those last few paragraphs -- or re-read them with the eye of a deer hunter. Can you see how the kinds of places Dr. Marchinton hunts are the same kinds of places many folks consider to be "deer magnets?" And can you see why he finds it so important to breed and train beagles with no interest in running deer?