Have a lurcher who wants to hunt and chase

He's 2 next month and I had hoped to be able to work him in another way because I'm not sure that the chance to work him on rabbits is going to be easy to come by, by as his second birthday approaches it's becoming more apparent that in order to keep him happy and stop him running off after illegal quarry (his favourite is deer at the moment, we'd had to radically alture where we walk him and how much time he spends onlead and obviously it's not ideal). My hope at the moment is that by working him on rabbit it will help satisfy his desire to hunt and chase.

The problem is that I have never worked a dog like this. We've done a little bit of other forms of bringing rabbit home for dinner, but not with a dog. I figured that we needed to improve his responces to commands, get a retrieve going and work at his distance responces. We've been working on these. Not 100% yet, but working on it. He found a bit of pig's ear he left out on one of his walks the other day, brought it to me, I asked to see it, he jogged off but returned when I gave him the retrieve command I use, I consider it progress for a dog who just wasn't interested in bringing anything he considered of value.

But what's my next move? Where do I go from here?
If anyone is reading this who doesn't like the idea of me using my dog to catch fluffy bunnies I hope you can at accept that at least we'll be bringing them home to use as food, rather than the current situation on many farms around me where the bunnies get shot and left in the fields because the farmers don't want them.

Hi

it's never too late to start a lurcher working. Do you know what cross he is? How tall is he? Basically you need his training to be 100%. Especially recall and retrieving. Is he ok with livestock? If so get him interested in rabbits, this time of year, theres plenty of babies about, so easy catches to get his confidence going. When he does catch 1 for the first time he may well 'play' with it before bringing it back, which is totally acceptable and hopefully in the end the penny will drop. He should bring them back to you alive, for you to dispatch humanely, also bringing the rabbit back alive will not bruise the meat. Hope this helps.

Regarding the deer, i don't think you will be able to stop him going after them, alot of people with lurchers caught them before the ban, it's natural.

I'm very very very proud. He's caught his first and how he went about it makes me very proud. Not least because he was on our land and went about it a bit like a pro by all accounts, including being a bit of an earth dog and digging up the nest (thankfully all the youngsters were old enough to have open eyes and be able to run around, in fact two got away easily because they ran through the half gone hedge and onto neighbour's land). We're continuing with his training but this has brought a few things into focus for him.