Lurchers on Teesside

My truck chugged its way up and down the dale until we met the tarmac of the motorway and on to the venue, the reason for it all. Basking in the sunshine, a Jurassic rock moorland framed its impeccably managed landscape, teeming with a rich and diverse collection of flora, fauna and wildlife, including rabbits. The reason for being 300 miles away was simple: it was an opportunity to have a good old-fashioned rake about the moor with old friends and our dogs.
Craig “Macca” McMillan has been wearing his boots out on this heather moorland for decades, usually accompanied by a brace of lurchers and his son, Craig McCann-McMillan. Young Craig, 21, is a talented lad. This was obvious because when he was 10 years old, he was doing things with a camera that were beyond his tender years. This was when he got his first DLSR, a Canon 300D. Years later, he has taken many shots, honing his eye and the knack for instinctively taking a photograph that will forever capture a tiny moment of history. He started taking photographs to catalogue his life with his father and dogs.
Macca’s gift for producing lurchers consistently over 40 years has enabled him to work them in a different environment than most. When rabbiting, he uses no nets, just a brace of lurchers and, if he’s unlucky, a ferret. These fit and athletic dogs are also used on the beating lines of local grouse shoots throughout the season until the pheasants take over, then it’s on to the pheasant shoots.