Eric A. Eliason 
To See Them Run [EPUB ebook] 
Great Plains Coyote Coursing

To See Them Run explores how and why Great Plains hunters have chased coyotes with greyhounds and other sight hounds since before George Armstrong Custer. Though a well-developed, long-lived, widespread, and undeniably enthralling tradition, the practice remains little known, even to those living in Oklahoma, Nebraska, and South Dakota, where the tradition is common. Coyote coursing, hunting with greyhounds launched from specially made pickup rigs, is a hobby by locals, for locals, and it has remained a quintessentially vernacular enterprise occupying a rung below the Plains’ prestige forms of animal training and interaction—namely with horses and cattle. The coyote coursing tradition provides an ideal setting for exploring the relationship between animals and the study of folklore.


The book examines the artistry, thrills, values, camaraderie, economy, and controversies of this uncommercialized and never-before-studied vernacular tradition. Through ethnographic photographs and authentic collected commentary from participants, this book uncovers how hunting dogs and coyotes both have shaped and been shaped by human aesthetic sensibilities in ongoing folkloric and biological processes. Author Eric A. Eliason and photographer Scott Squire discover deep and sophisticated local knowledge in a unique interaction with the natural ecologies of the great North American prairie.

About the author

Scott Squire is a documentary photographer and filmmaker. He is a principal in Non Fiction Media, the production company responsible for the 2015 Sundance-supported feature documentary Drawing the Tiger. He is photographer for The Island of Lace: Drawn Threadwork on Saba in The Dutch Caribbean, Black Velvet Art, and To See Them Run: Great Plains Coyote Coursing, all published by University Press of Mississippi.