Thomas Smith

“ So good is the scent there that, if it were not for the drains, which are now so general in the cultivated parts, the hounds, at the awful pace they go, would in a very short time kill nearly every one of us. Then the huntsmen are not to be despised; on the contrary, we have to contend with one who, with the following qualifications, is near perfection,—the eye of an eagle, fine temper, boldness, enterprise, coolness, perseverance, intelligence, and, above all, decision. This is the rare man with whom, and with whose pack, we have to contend. ”

“ I recollect hearing, as I lay that day in a piece of thick gorse, the following proof of the patience and good temper of Sawyer, the whipper-in. The hounds had followed a fox into a wood close by, having hunted him some time in close pursuit, when a jovial sort of person, who constantly rode after these hounds, saw a fresh fox—being no other than myself—and began hallooing to the full extent of his voice. ”

“ The scent in the vale is always so much greater than on the hills from which they had hunted me, that I must have fallen a prey to this pack. Although we are endowed with so large a share of wisdom, it is not all-sufficient; or else we should be aware that when pursued by hounds and nearly beaten by them, it must be all but certain death to us to run from a bad scenting country into a good one. ”

“ Having once got a taste for such food, it is not surprising that they will take a lamb, or attack an old one which has fallen through illness or neglect. Anxious as I am to protect my own race, I cannot blame the shepherds for waging war against the transgressors; as it is known that when once a fox has taken to such a habit, he seldom gives it up but with his life. ”

“ I may flatter myself that a hundred witnesses are ready to pronounce it as clever an escape as was ever effected by a fox in similar circumstances. For the future they will not say that a fox cannot run, and condemn him to be given to the hounds, merely for running into an earth. ”

“ Such, my Lord, is the justice of historic fame in this world, wherein thousands of men have written; whilst I alone of my tribe have been endowed with the power of thus using the quills of that excellent bird, which has been for centuries the favourite object of pursuit amongst the brave and skilful of my race. ”

“ At length, when I had been prowling about near a farmyard in which poultry were kept, one night that I had not met with other food, I pounced on a hen which was sitting in a hedge, but the state she was in gave such an unpleasant taste to her flesh, that after eating a little I left it, and have never since touched a bird of any sort when sitting. She has at that time, indeed, but little flesh on her bones, and I believe that no old fox will take one for his own eating, although a female may sometimes carry one off, when hard pressed for food for her young. ”

“ I have had the good luck to escape from several packs of hounds which have hunted my country, and am now arrived at a venerable age; indeed, so far advanced in my teens that I began to believe myself to be the oldest fox in the country, until I saw one who is fastened up by a chain in the back-yard of the Peacock Inn, at Kettering. Having been there ever since he was a cub, he is known to be eighteen years old, and he is now full one-fourth shorter than when in his prime of life. It is not likely that foxes often attain to such an age, as before that they become infirm ”

“ If the artificial earth is securely stopped late at night, and skilfully opened at the right moment in a morning’s Cub-hunting, when the Cubs are beginning to wonder what to do, they are sure to creep into the earth, and the eating of one or more vi of them is reduced to a certainty. For this reason the counting of noses is not in these days a supreme test of the capacity of the Huntsman and the Hounds, unless all noses are written off and not allowed to count until after November 1st, when there is not so much opportunity for digging. ”

“ A faithful history of the life even of a Fox may be not without its interest, for, to the wise, nothing in nature is mean, and truth is never insignificant. I was prompted to write this account of myself by overhearing one day, as I lay in a covert by the roadside, the following remarks by one of a party who were passing by on their return home from hunting a fox, which, as it appeared, the hounds had failed to kill. ”

“ I hoped to be there as far as possible from danger, and thought myself secure, as the outside covert was kept quiet, and scarcely disturbed even by the hounds of the Duke in whose hunt it is retained. It is suspected that the keeper kills all of us foxes that he can in that part, because no hounds hunt it enough. He says that all the foxes in Lord Elcho’s country come there to be quiet. Be that as it may, the last time the hounds found me there they had before drawn all the other woods, and only found one fox, and that a mangy one. ”

“ Night is more dear to us than day, and the tempest suits our plans; for man is then disposed to keep quiet, and we venture more boldly to approach his dwellings in search of stray poultry, which are to be found abroad, not having been driven into the hen-roost, owing to the neglect of their owners. ”

“ Thus Nature goes on to care for us. I had two brothers and two sisters, and we all throve and grew rapidly with the nourishment of our mother’s milk alone, until we were six weeks old, when she began to supply us with other food, such as rabbits, and rats and mice, which she tore to pieces and divided amongst us in equal shares, not however so much to our satisfaction as to prevent our snarling and quarrelling with each other thus early over our meals. ”

“ But the probability is, that while some Hounds may have keener noses than others the vast majority have sufficiently serviceable noses provided they are encouraged, or even allowed, to use them. There is no doubt whatever that where the Fox scores against the Hounds is by gaining time when he turns. It is the turn that tells. If all Foxes that were found went straight ahead, many more would be killed. The proof of this is that even on a day when scent is poor, Hounds always run fast when the Fox goes straight to an earth or drain. ”

“ As far as I was concerned, I regretted that more noise was not made, as it would have assisted me, and not the hounds. The silent system is, at all events, a most dangerous one for the fox before he is found. I have had some narrow escapes from these very hounds being brought to a small covert or bog in this forest so silently that they surrounded me before I was aware, and I have with difficulty got away from them. Indeed, many female foxes have thus been killed heavy with cub, and in that state incapable of great exertion. ”

“ It often occurs that the fox which is hunted and frightened forces his way beyond the fresh one, and there remains during the operation of digging, and when the huntsmen come by, the fresh fox is drawn out and given to the hounds. Such was the case now, and so I escaped, for luckily it was getting late, and the hounds were taken away immediately without their discovering that I was left behind. I had time to remark that only one man, who was addressed as his Grace, was with the hounds at the finish, or indeed for a long time during the run, nearly all having left at the time of slow-hunting. ”

“ Adopting a more simple, straightforward course, and one more worthy of my name, for few foxes have run more straight, I will candidly inform your Lordship that the love I bear you is much the same as that borne to myself by the most venerable hen now cackling in your farmyard, whose half-fledged brood I have often thinned. ”

“ In the first place, the country is overrun with drains, of which there are thousands unknown to the hunters, but known to us. When severely pressed by the hounds, I have often got into one of them, and it frequently happened to be in the middle of an open field, when hounds in chase of me have run over it, and owing to their mettle and to their being pressed by hard riders, they have been urged on beyond it, then held on forward in every way by the huntsman; and if, after this, the drain has been discovered, the scent, owing to the time lost, has been nearly gone. ”

“ It is true that I was often induced to move and to quit the wood in which I lay, owing to my being disturbed by the hounds; but as they never followed me far, and were stopped by the whipper-in when I left the covert, it was evident they came on purpose to hunt young cubs; I therefore took care to retire to a gorse-covert near Sutton Common, where none were bred, much to the regret of the owner, a Rev. Baronet, who is one of our greatest friends, as no keeper of his would dare to destroy a fox without pain of losing his place. ”

“ The collie dog is taught by man what to do, whilst the old fox-hound teaches his master. Had it not been for the sagacity of the hound, I should have been spared many a perilous run. The shepherds pretend that the breed of the mountain fox is of a different kind from our own, and that the head of the male is larger. For my own part, I believe the animals to be of the same kind as ourselves, and to be merely larger altogether ”

“ I was born and bred in a wild part of Devonshire, and when a year old fell into the possession of a keeper. To state exactly how such a thing happened might sometimes be inconvenient, as in hunting countries a man scarcely dares to confess the crime of capturing a fox, for lucre at least. ”

“ Learning that many of my friends had been killed by them, I was induced to move into Roxburghshire, the country hunted by the Duke of Buccleuch’s hounds, and adjoining the two hunts before described to you. There I had not been long before I was found in a small covert by the Duke’s pack, as Williamson the huntsman [8] calls it, though he seems to do just what he likes with it. Be that as it may, he knew pretty well where to find me, and it was done in a few minutes. The hills form a part of the country that he surpasses most men in riding across ”

“ Of late, the pack has been thought to be of least consideration; and it would seem by the system adopted, that a fox is to be run down by men who can ride fast, and that whippers-in are nearly all that is wanted. For instance, when I have been pursued by the hounds, if I have run towards or through any covert, I have frequently been astonished, after passing through it, and almost before the hounds had arrived at it, to see one of the whippers-in riding beyond it, in order to see me go away, which he rarely or never could do ”

“ Rabbits are too often the perquisites of the gamekeeper, and the iron traps which he sets with the pretence of catching them are the destruction of hundreds of us. This might be prevented if the master would only insist on these traps not being employed at all, and compel the use of the wire snare, and of ferrets to get the rabbits out of their burrows.
Having by this time learnt from my mother all that she could teach me, I followed her example in many things. Amongst them I remarked, that on a wet and windy night she almost always chose, for various reasons, to lie in a gorse-covert. ”

“ Why, the Duke pays more money to the farmers in one week than all the poultry in the hunt would sell for in a twelvemonth; to say nothing of all that is spent in it by the gentlemen who hunt. If there were no foxes there would be no hounds. ”

“ If a pack of Hounds were literally left entirely to themselves day after day they might gradually lose the faculty of trying for themselves unless there was a good holding scent. Hounds take a very great deal from the mere presence and moral support of their Huntsman, and a certain point arrives when they need his actual guidance after they have done trying for themselves. The Huntsman who can accurately fix this point is the Huntsman they want. ”

“ Nothing conduces to that welfare more than brilliant sport afforded by a pack of hounds; as it leads others, as well as those who own estates, to become residents in the country. Noblemen and gentlemen have now lost their good old English feelings, and instead of inviting their friends for the sport, they let their shooting, or sell their game in the market. It frequently happens that the persons to whom the shooting is let are men who are engaged in business and reside in large towns. ”

“ Within three or four weeks from that day of the year every fox of us in this country is probably brought forth; and it seems especially designed that the female should thus produce her only litter in the year at a season when our favourite food, young rabbits, are most abundant. The spot in which I first drew breath was a breeding-earth, carefully chosen by my mother, in a well-known covert, called Park Coppice, situated in the centre of the Hampshire Hunt. ”

“ They all took much care to hide themselves when any man came in. As soon as he who had brought me there had left the place, they all came round me. I soon learnt for what purpose I was brought hither, for it appeared that each of them had been separately hunted by this gentleman’s hounds, which he had brought under such command, that they scarcely ever killed the fox they hunted; for when hunting up to him, if a rider was near enough to make his voice heard, and he rated or spoke to them, they would only bay at him till he was again captured, placed in a bag, and carried home again. ”

“ During the tumult which ensued amongst the gentlemen who had been hunting, an honest farmer, whose land surrounded the covert, came up and stated that a short time before he had found in a field close by a large trap exactly of the same sort, which had in it two of a fox’s toes. ”

“ Some day in December I was lying in Windsor Forest about three o’clock in the afternoon, when I was disturbed by the voice of Sir J. Cope’s huntsman, Shirley, who was taking the hounds through the forest to find a fox. Though so late, he was most persevering, and appeared determined to learn whether or not within the purlieus of the forest there was a fox left alive by the keepers. Seeing this, I lost no time; but when stealing away was viewed by some of the hunters. The hounds soon followed me, and though it was a bad scenting day, I narrowly 98 escaped. ”