Fox hunt

“ Even when the dogs are after him he often sticks to his known trail and the hunters take advantage of this, waiting along his known route and shooting him as he lopes by, easily outrunning the dogs and as likely as not grinning over his shoulder at their lumbering eagerness. It is all a game to him and if man would keep out of it the fox would always win. The way to see a fox in the woods is to figure out his accustomed route and sit cosily by it. He likes best to hunt in the dim beginnings of dawn and again at the evening twilight or by the light of the moon. ”

“ Till the end of the seventeenth century fox-hunting can scarcely be said to have existed as a sport in England, the stag, the buck, and the hare taking the precedence with our forefathers as objects of the chase, which in a still earlier period had included [330] the wolf and the boar. And yet I have over my hall fireplace, in the carved oak chimney-piece, a representation of a fox-hunt that certainly belongs to the reign of Elizabeth. The hunters are armed with pitchforks, or something much like them; one is holding back a greyhound by a leash ”

“ The dalesman loves a fox-hunt dearly. He is tireless in the pursuit. Miles of open country glide beneath his feet. On the rough crags and moraines his dexterity is marvellous. The hunt is in full cry on the hillside. The hounds are going at a great pace; the men are every moment further and further in the rear. A107 quick eye might even catch the tiny brown form of the fox running for its very life. For some minutes we watch them sweep along, at first parallel to the dale, then gradually turning up and up the mountainside to its crest. ”

“ Red Fox was destined, not for a brilliant “zoo,” where he would be a prisoner, indeed, but pampered and admired, but for the depleted coverts of a Hunt Club in one of the great States farther south, where his strength and cunning might be expected to give phenomenal sport before the hounds should finally tear him to pieces. The backwoodsman as well as the Boy had a kind of primitive horror of the formal sport of fox-hunting, which seemed to them a regulated and long-drawn cruelty. ”

“ What chiefly contributes to make fox-hunting so very far superior to other sports is the wildness of the animal you hunt, and the difficulty in catching him. It is rather extraordinary, but nevertheless a well-known fact, that a pack of hounds, which are in sport and blood, will not eat a bag-fox. ”

“ Similarly, when your fox is beat, and you see him before hounds, hold your tongue, and by no means take them off their noses unless you are perfectly certain you can give them a view. If the fox pops through a hedge and they do not see him, you will have lost a lot of time, as the hounds will not hunt for a few minutes, but will stand staring about, expecting to see the fox. The only time it is allowable to lift them after a beaten fox is when they are running for a head of open earth or a covert full of fresh foxes. But never, under any circumstances, go and ride the fox, leaving your hounds. ”

“ It is pretty hunting, but almost all in covert. The advantages are that you can hunt him all through the winter as you do the fox, and also that you can draw for him without any bother of “tufting,” as you never find more than a brace, or at most three together. When the latter is the case, it is a family party—buck, doe, and kid. The latter would stand but a poor chance were it not for its squatting, when the hounds dash away and settle to the moving scent. When roe are carefully preserved the woods will be full of them, as the young trees will soon tell you. ”

“ When this happens, the dog often gets badly marked, until another terrier can get behind the fox and force him to change his ground. When run to ground even in a big earth, a hunted fox sometimes elects to bolt very quickly. I remember on one occasion watching a fox enter a very strong earth, and before hounds could get to the spot, it bolted, went to ground again a few yards further on, and finally bolted and made straight away, to afford a good hunt. ”

“ The foxhound is about two feet in height, and 120 of them would be considered an ample number for a quiet little fox hunt. Some hunters think this number inadequate, but unless the fox be unusually skittish and crawl under the barn, 120 foxhounds ought to be enough. The trouble generally is that hunters make too much noise, thus scaring the fox so that he [Pg 48] tries to get away from them. This necessitates hard riding and great activity on the part of the whippers-in. ”

“ There is also always the chance [x] of having selected a spot from which a good view of the hunt may be obtained, when the fox can be seen crossing the breast of the opposite hill with the hounds stringing out far behind, the anxiety whether he means to come this way or cross the opposite skyline. If all turns out luckily the music of the pack grows gradually fortissimo, the fox slips quietly past, but is rolled over in full view. ”

“ Nothing can be more annoying than to be compelled [Pg 225] to go to the pound and redeem a fox, when a party is mounted and waiting to hunt him.
I do not care so much for the gait of a fox, whether he lopes, trots or paces, so that his feet are sound and his wind good. I bought a light-red fox two years ago that had given perfect satisfaction the previous year, but when we got ready to hunt him he went lame in the off hind foot and crawled under a hen house back of my estate, where he remained till the hunt was over. ”

“ It was almost the same as if they were puppies again, frisking before the old burrow. They wrestled and rolled and whirled around after their tails. Then away to their silent hunting!
When the snow fell and the cold winds blew life was harder for the foxes. Through the day generally they slept in their dens, with their tails curled over their noses and fore-paws. Out they crept at sundown to hunt for [Pg 133] a rabbit or unwary squirrel, to trap a partridge, or snatch a squeaking mouse at the edge of a stone.
Many a night some young fox went home hungry. ”

“ We shall then close the old earth, and thus endeavour to get the foxes to run the good country. Much may be done to show sport by using a little strategy of this kind. Many a good stretch of grass country is lost to the hunt because the earths are badly distributed. It must be remembered that a fox when first found will usually go straight to his earth; finding that closed, he will make for the next earths he is in the habit of using.
The other day, while ferreting in the coverts previous to rabbit-shooting, the keeper bolted a huge fox out of one burrow and a cat out of the other. ”

“ Fox-hunting is a great sport, but it is as foolish to make a fetish of it as it is to decry it. The fox is hunted merely because there is no larger game to follow. As long as wolves, deer, or antelope remain in the land, and in a country where hounds and horsemen can work, no one could think of following the fox. It is pursued because the bigger beasts of the chase have been killed out. ”

“ The sequel to this incident is not so amusing. The fox was so perished by his adventure in the pond that he died the same night in spite of attempts to revive him with brandy before the kitchen fire of a farmhouse.
“Wednesday, 16th March. Met at Cuckoo Weir. Had a capital run with the big fox to Slough, where he ran to ground on the railway line about 1⁄4 mile from the station. We could not get him out of the pipe he had run up, and two bull terriers and several navvies were at work more than four hours digging him out. We found a leveret and ran and killed it there. ”

“ Fox-hunting at its best is a wild sport; the wilder the better. Where coverts are many miles apart, where the animal must travel for its food, where agriculture is conducted on primitive principles that do not necessitate the huntsman’s horror, “a man in every field,” the fox retains all his savage nature, and is prepared to run any distance, face every obstacle, rather than succumb to his relentless enemy, the hound. ”

“ It is not really the hunting proper which is the point of fox-hunting. It is the horsemanship, the galloping and jumping, and the being out in the open air. Very naturally, however, men who have passed their lives as fox-hunters grow to regard the chase and the object of it alike with superstitious veneration. They attribute almost mythical characters to the animal. I know some of my good Virginian friends, for instance, who seriously believe that the Virginia red fox is a beast quite unparalleled for speed and endurance no less than for cunning. ”

“ When you have made up your mind to go to a holloa, take your hounds off their noses and travel along. Do not, if you can help it, let them hunt again till you have found out from the man who holloaed exactly which way the fox really went. He very likely turned him, and the hounds may take it heel way: it is poor consolation to be told by a grinning rustic, after the hounds have settled with a good cry, “They be a running back scent.” It is easier to strike the line heel way than people think. Casting you may get on the heel line of another fox which has left the covert since you did. ”

“ In the North the red fox is often killed in somewhat the same manner, being followed by a slow hound and shot at as he circles before the dog. Although this kind of fox hunting is inferior to hunting on horseback, it nevertheless has its merits, as the man must walk and run well, shoot with some accuracy, and show considerable knowledge both of the country and of the habits of the game. ”

“ Amid the glitter, the show, the dash, the swagger of modern fox-hunting, Englishmen who are not masters of hounds or huntsmen are apt to lose sight of the original ends and aims, the craft, and the science of the sport. It seems to me that fox-hunting nowadays, with the vast mass of its devotees, is simply steeplechasing over an unknown course. This is unquestionably a manly and a fine amusement, and far be it from me to breathe a word against it. I only wish to anticipate the sneers of your sporting stock-broker if he were to catch sight of the doctor and his hounds upon a hunting morning. ”

“ To-day, outside the hunt areas, the killing of a Fox is considered a meritorious act, particularly in the northern mountain districts; in Cornwall, we have seen a loafer carrying a dead Fox around the villages and receiving pence from the grateful owners of domestic poultry. ”

“ As a result, the fox was, if caught, torn to pieces by the hounds, and the brush and head were infrequently saved.
Under the traditions of English fox-hunting—traditions the strictness of which can hardly be exaggerated—"hilltopping" is a more than doubtful sport, and, since organized fox-hunting in the United States is taken entirely from the English idea, the practice is tabooed on first-class hunting regions. ”

“ The young she, however, kept her eyes and wits about her, keen for the hunt and apparently indifferent to her conquest. Here she pounced [96] upon an unwary foraging mouse. Here she captured a maimed snowbird, as it was hopping in panic fear toward the covert of a juniper thicket. And at last, creeping with indescribable stealth around the roots of a huge beech-tree, she seized a drowsing rabbit which her skilful nose had discovered to her. Her skill and prowess delighted Red Fox beyond measure ”

“ Though beaten, the big beast was not killed; and Red Fox had no desire to hazard a final mix-up with those desperate hooves. In this novel chase there had been no thought of hunting, but only of wiping out an affront. At last, though with a certain hesitation of manner, Red Fox got up, licked his lips, took a last triumphant look at his discomfited enemy, and trotted away through the underbrush to hunt for a mouse or a rabbit. The buck stared after him for a half a minute, then lay down in his tracks to recover. ”

“ Since fox hunting first commenced, however, the system of the sport has been much changed. In our great-grandfathers’ time the hounds met early, and found the fox by the drag, that is, by the line he took to his kennel on his return from a foraging expedition. Hunting the drag was doubtless a great test of nose, but many good runs must have been lost thereby, for the fox must often have heard the hounds upwind, and have moved off before they could get on good terms with him. ”

“ Foxes live in holes of their own making, generally in the loamy soil of a side hill, says an old Fox hunter, and the she-Fox bears four or five cubs at a litter. When a fox-hole is discovered by the Farmers they assemble and proceed to dig out the inmates who have lately, very likely, been making havoc among the hen-roosts. An amusing incident, he relates, which came under his observation a few years ago will bear relating. A farmer discovered the lair of an old dog Fox by means of his hound, who trailed the animal to his hole. ”

“ Everything is there—hounds, huntsmen, whips, red coats, tops, splendidly mounted hard-riding ladies and gentlemen, sherry-flasks, sandwich-boxes, etc., etc.,—everything, in short, but the fox. So far, however, as I can learn, such an omission is of no great importance under the modern conception of hunting. That wouldn’t be the doctor’s way of thinking at all, though; for I must here remark, that that worthy sportsman’s love of hunting is entirely on hereditary principles and of native growth. Fox-hunting for two centuries has been the natural pastime of the Virginia gentry. ”

“ The next hare was killed on the golf course after 1 hour 15 minutes. Very pretty hunting, and a third was also accounted for after a short hunt.
“The other two bits of the country I liked best were Dorney (Village and Gate) and Remenham. There was generally a fox at Dorney beyond the village, and we killed one there in 1913, but without much of a run.
“I think trying to catch a fox with beagles (unless it is a very bad fox or a cripple, both of which should be killed) is an unsatisfactory game, as hounds always take some time to settle down again to a hare. ”