[ Sporting Magazine ]
The Sporting Magazine (1792 - 1870) is considered the first general sporting magazine, though in its later decades it gave considerable emphasis to fox hunting. But it published all manner of sporting-related material, from news stories to poetry to calendars of upcoming sporting events. The subtitle of this magazine was "Monthly Calendar of the Transactions of the Turf, the Chace, and every other Diversion interesting to the Man of Pleasure, Enterprize and Spirit." [more at Wikipedia]
The May, 1855, issue featured a story (which the author, identified only as "Linton," calls a "trifling incident of real life") about an otter hunt, though one conducted surreptitiously by two young boys in a somewhat unusual way: they sneak out on a Sunday morning with only a terrier and a Newfoundland. This seems like a perfectly reasonable idea to them, as one of the boys explains:
There is old Gyp, as thoroughbred a Newfoundlander as ever was pupped: water's his element, you know, the same as an otter. And then there's your own terrier, Quiz, what Master gave you last Christmas — I should like to know what dog of his size and weight, in all England, can match him, either in a fair stand-up fight (though that's not to my taste), or for drawing a badger or entering an earth, and this time to-morrow you may add, for killing an otter?
Alas, the hunt does not go as well as envisioned: the terrier attacks the otter only to be dragged under water by it
while Gyp [the Newfoundland] swam round and round the still-bubbling water, ready to receive them, and avenge his little companion. But, alas, they were doomed to rise no more, save in death! .... Tim ran down the stream; but nothing could be seen but the bright and sparkling waters, from which, here and there, a trout occasionally rose; when back he came, with a countenance of alarm, to the spot where dog and otter had disappeared, and without uttering a word to me, calling the attention of the Newfoundland dog, he said, "Seek him, Gyp! Seek him, good Gyp!" The words were scarcely uttered ere the noble animal dived, rose again to the surface of the water, swam a few yards down the stream, and dived again; when, behold! he appeared with the dead carcass of the otter firmly fixed between his teeth, while those of my favourite Quiz were equally firmly fixed in death, in the otter — an animal that weighed heavier than himself. (350 - 353)