Anthony Crommelin Crossley

“ Beckford says: “You will find nothing so essential to your sport as that your hounds should run well together; nor can this end be better attained than by confining yourself, as near as you can, to those of the same sort, viz. size and shape. A great excellence in a pack of hounds is the head they carry; and that pack be said to go the fastest that can run 10 miles with the fewest checks. As a good level pack at a check should spread like a rocket, what can be finer than a pack like the horses of the sun, ‘all abreast’?” ”

“ Let us linger for a moment by the gate, where hounds are clustered round their huntsman, some jumping up at him, and others making an unprofessional use of their tuneful voices, a transgression which, however, elicits but a faint-hearted rate, for our huntsman loves his hounds intensely, and feels almost inclined to encourage a breach of etiquette which only enhances his already keen sense of enjoyment. ”

“ Besides hunting, coursing, or shooting, various illegitimate methods are employed in capturing hares, most commonly that known as “wiring,” to my mind detestable in every sense of the word. A person well skilled in setting a hare wire can make pretty certain of success. It is, however, a practice usually confined to the poaching fraternity, who are far more skilful in the use of a wire than keepers. An experienced eye can very readily detect the difference between a poacher’s and a keeper’s wire, whether it is set for hares or rabbits. ”

“ But let us describe a day’s sport with beagles, starting with the supposition that the master is sufficiently energetic to be up and at it by six o’clock on a beautiful October morning; for not only are hares scarce in the district over which he proposes to hunt, the consequence being that he will have a better chance of a find by getting on the trail, but he also desires to give his young entry the lesson for which running a hare’s trail up to her form is so admirably adapted. ”

“ I have been asked to contribute some remarks on the humanitarian aspect of hare hunting, much having been written to the Press on its cruelty, especially in reference to the E.C.H.—a hunt that has been singled out for opprobrium by people to whom must no doubt be attributed well-meaning and humanitarian feelings, but who it seems to me fail to recognise natural laws or to take a broad-minded or unbiased view of sport in general or to realise that they have not the monopoly of humane feelings. ”

“ The huntsman maintains a masterly inactivity, merely rating any hound which shows an inclination to dwell on the line. Now they are running quite merrily across the heather, but come to a stop where the hare has taken to one of the paths which abound hereabouts. She has run the path for quite eighty yards, and only the older hounds can carry the line along it, the body of the pack casting about, and showing a slight inclination to run heel. The huntsman, however, holds them forward, walking quietly along the path, well in rear of those hounds who are carrying the line. ”

“ Hounds, then often disappointed, required blooding with a bagged hare or rabbit, neither ever giving a decent run; and I disliked the job all the more because Sussex had shown me a better way of using beagles for rabbits; and I thought of the hours spent with my gun in a ride while real beagles hustled rabbits round and round a big wood. Tiring perhaps of these ‘bags’ we yield to a suggestion, made I think by Joby Minor, that a badger would give us more fun, certainly more scent, and would always live to fight beagles another day. ”

“ I believe all the joy of beagling, and its value as a sport, is to watch the hounds work, and with a good pack the less the Master interferes the better, and then only when the hounds seem to look to him for help. ”

“ However, it must be remembered that having no paddock adjoining the kennels was a terrible drawback, and made the task of keeping hounds fit and the kennels clean infinitely harder than it would otherwise have been.
Lock must have been an extraordinary character. He used to say to the whips as they walked along the road: “Pop your whip, Sir; pop your whip,” every other minute without any reason whatever. Another habit he had was that of accusing any rustic he met at the end of any sort of a hunt of “picking up the hare.” ”

“ Our best sport was in the country between Taplow and Slough, but the railway was always a source of great anxiety to the whips, and there were miraculous escapes of the whole pack being cut to pieces. Lock and his son used to take hounds on to the meet—there was no hound van in those days. We used to exercise on non-hunting days in the Playing Fields, and I can remember some wonderful fast bursts after a cur dog which we often coursed from Upper Club across Sixpenny to the Fives Courts, when he used to get to ground in old Joby’s shop. ”

“ When a Master is hunting his own hounds it is very advisable to have either a joint Master, or a field Master, whose business it is to keep the field well away from huntsman and hounds when they come to a check. The field should remember that to press hounds at a check is most disastrous to sport, and they should keep well away and wait till hounds hit off the line, and certainly not follow the huntsman about when he is making a cast. In hare hunting this is most essential, as a hare will often run back on its own line or squat ”

“ It may be said at once that the management of beagles should be on precisely the same lines as that of any other hounds; and the best way of learning to build up and maintain a good pack of beagles is without doubt to study closely the methods which obtain in any of the first class foxhound kennels. The only differences to bear in mind, apart from the obvious one of size, are that beagles are more delicate and are more apt to be nervous. The latter point needs especially to be remembered in dealing with brood bitches and young entry. ”

“ The game is well-nigh won; but unfortunately the hounds’ heads are up, and, a fresh hare rising in their very midst, away goes the whole pack, running the stranger in view. Really well under control as they are, no amount of rating or horn-blowing will stop them unless someone can get round them. Get round them! Alas, anyone who has run with beagles knows the impossibility of this until hounds check! It is, moreover, quite likely that they will run without checking for at least twenty minutes, and then what prospect will there be of recovering the line of the hunted hare? ”

“ They never get away wounded, and their end when killed by hounds is as quick as it is certain. I imagine there are more things mortally wounded in a big day’s covert shoot than any one pack of hounds kills in a season, and I venture to think that taking the country as a whole there are more wounded in one day’s shooting than all the packs in the kingdom kill in a whole season.
I recall an incident when hunting in Lanarkshire which illustrates the often mistaken ideas of humanitarians. I had a beaten hare in front of me that took to the roads. ”

“ That is the breeding of hounds at Eton. Far too little breeding seems to have taken place always. It is much more interesting and better to breed your own hounds from approved working strains than to be compelled to buy hounds whose hunting qualifications and those of their sires and dams are usually unknown. There is naturally no great incentive for a Master, who can only look forward to hunting hounds one season, to breed a lot of puppies when he may never see them hunt a hare. ”

“ May I venture to express the opinion that hunting the hare on foot with 15-inch beagles is real hunting, and real sport, and that the hare has a very good chance of escaping, especially after Christmas? As I dare say you know, a hare is a much more tricky animal to hunt than a fox. ”

“ During the summer hounds must be kept exercised, and it is a good thing to let them stand about in grass fields, when it will be found that they will eat a quantity of grass and of earth, both of which are admirable for their digestion. As the hunting season approaches, exercise must be increased up to twenty miles a day. Ponies or bicycles are useful for this, but the pace should not exceed seven miles an hour, except for sharp bursts of a few hundred yards to open the hounds’ pipes. ”

“ Nature herself is cruel, beasts and birds of prey being the worst offenders. Who that has seen a cat with a mouse but is not moved with pity and made to wonder why things have been so ordained?
Venery has been in vogue since the days of primitive man, when he hunted for the means of subsistence; and nowadays, when it is practised as a manly pastime for exercise, health, and pleasure, every true sportsman who indulges in it makes it his endeavour to minimise the sufferings of his quarry, and will always give it a fair chance for its life. ”

“ It may well be said that the direction a lost hare has taken will most surely be the one which appears to be the least likely. It is the constant “doubling” which renders hare-hunting so difficult. The best pack of harriers I ever saw at work was one belonging to a Mr. Jeffreys. In colour they were black and tan, owing to a strong infusion of the blood-hound cross. These hounds, which were notorious, were exceedingly well handled by their owner, who contrived to account for an incredible number of hares in the course of the season. ”

“ If hare hunting or hunting of any form is to be stopped, I am sure Eton will be the last to give in. Its advantages are so many and so well known that it would be a waste of time to quote them, but I feel that the ‘kill-sports’ think they have an easy prey in attacking College and School packs, while they practically ignore the many other hundreds of packs of hounds in the United Kingdom. ”

“ All the same, now the War is over, it is suggested, say for two or three seasons, that every good hunting bitch be bred from, and good stud dogs in other packs used, providing of course there are not good stud dogs within the kennel. Fresh blood is always good, and I know the temptation of using your own best stallion hound too much. There must be many keen subscribers to the E.C.H. who would be only too pleased to walk puppies, and it will add to their keenness immensely to see their own ‘walks’ hunting, and to follow their career as long as they are at Eton. ”

“ As everyone is aware, a hare is capable of giving a pack of hounds infinitely more trouble to kill than a fox. It is the exception for a hare to run straight away from hounds for any great distance, though occasionally it will take a line as straight as that of a fox. ”

“ Well, if she is a leveret her bolt must be nearly shot, but if she is an old hare—and she is big enough!—she will lead the pack a merry dance for another good half-hour before giving in. So is the fight fought between poor puss and her enemies the beagles. Sometimes a circle; sometimes a straight bolt and then as a rule clapping till hounds are over her, and getting up behind them, making her way home again; sometimes, though not often, making a long point and dying some five miles from home. ”

“ No matter what the weather or the country might be, they could pick up a scent where other hounds could not own a yard, and even in the driest road or fallow in March.
Hare-shooting is but poor sport, and to my view, even under the best circumstances, vastly inferior to good rabbit shooting. To miss a hare within easy distance in the open is inexcusable, and to shoot at one at a doubtful range still more so. ”

“ We have therefore one other arrangement to propose, which, if duly carried out, will complete the bond of unity and harmony between us, and will also, we have no doubt, give universal satisfaction, viz. the amalgamation of the Oppidans’ and the Collegers’ packs. Its advantages, we think, must be apparent to all; and we defy its most strenuous and determined opponents, if indeed any such exist, to find any good grounds for defence. We should have all the advantages of a far larger extent of country to hunt over ”

“ It is with a certain feeling of bitterness that one realises that all we give in return to these farmers, who offer their crops to trample and hedges to break, is a brace of pheasants and a hare if they are lucky. ”

“ Champion married in 1903, and the family besides himself are his wife, than who no kinder or more courteous woman ever existed, his son George, who with the blood of so many huntsmen in his veins is certain to prove his worth, and who is already showing that he is inheriting his father’s knowledge and love of hounds, and his five-year-old daughter Marjory, to whom the hounds are always ready to lend their backs for a ride. ”

“ The size of the hounds at Eton has always been a great source of discussion. You have only, say, two and a half hours on a short winter afternoon to find, hunt and kill your hare, and while 16 and 17-inch hounds do not allow many people to see them hunting, a 14-inch hound is a little too small to give the Master a fair chance to handle his hare in a short time with a large eager field behind him and maybe a moderate scent.
“I would advocate a 15-inch hound as a standard size for the E.C.H. My father gave me leave to start a small pack at home in 1908. ”

“ The disadvantages on the side of College, inasmuch as the subscription being so much heavier than the present one, none will care to join who do not try to ‘run to hounds,’ and in all probability none, Colleger or Oppidan, who cannot ‘run to hounds’ will be allowed to join. The great amusement of the Easter Half will be snatched away from College, and we fear loafing will increase in a double proportion. ”

“ The infliction of pain need not necessarily constitute cruelty, else many things besides sport must be condemned. The infliction of unnecessary pain is where cruelty begins, and this is reprehensible and inexcusable. I think the subject must be approached with a sense of proportion, and must be treated comparatively. All animals have to meet their death, and those that are used for human food an untimely death at the hand of man, and the chief object to be kept in view is the avoidance of inflicting unnecessary pain. ”

“ It may here be remarked that it is comparatively easy to stop beagles from rabbits in the open. The pack the writer has in mind would always stop if rated when a rabbit got up in an open field; but in covert, where one could not easily get at them, the case was very different, and you might holloa yourself hoarse without producing much effect. Master Bunny, however, only caused a momentary diversion, and hounds, having struck the line in the bottom corner of the fence, are once more chiming away merrily over the heather in the direction of puss’s original form. ”

“ A poacher is well aware of the value of an old wire, always provided it is sound and good, preferring it to a new one. The general effect of such a wire when set appears clumsy to an inexperienced eye, but a closer inspection will show the care and skill with which it has been laid. Keepers, as a rule, set wires to catch rabbits or hares for their employers, whereas poachers do so for themselves. On one occasion, when shooting with a friend, we took up some thirty or forty rabbit wires which had been set by a poacher ”