HUNTING.
As the whole object of the Manly Exercises is not accomplished in the attainment and practice of them, it was thought convenient that the business of their details should be succeeded by a partial notice of some of those sports of which they form the elementary process, and which may be regarded as their ultimate “end and aim.” It has been well said by my talented friend, Nimrod, that all the writing in the world will not make a sportsman. The pen of Pindar, and the pencil of Grant, indeed, exhibit him in all perfection to our admiration; but, could they both write for the education of the student whose ambition is Olympic fame, they would not insure success. Like the poet, he must be born, in a manner, to his cunning.
The Exercises, upon which Mr. Walker has written, admitted of being inculcated by methodical rules, and acquired by a systematic routine of practice. An acquaintance with them will be found of service to youth, whatever the destination of its manhood may be; while they are essential to the formation of a frame and character fitted for the maturity likely to be devoted to the wear and tear of our hardy Rural Sports. Driving and Yachting, though neither of them strictly coming within the pale of a course of physical exercises, still are not out of place in a practical book devoted to the science of manly recreations, because each is governed by certain rules, which may be taught and acquired. It is not so with the subjects constituting the matter on which we are at present engaged. A man may out-study Zoroaster without being one whit the better qualified for winning a fifty-pound plate, hitting off the line of a fox that has been headed, or bringing down his woodcock in cover; these are arts which, being decimated, leave one part to theory and nine in favour of practice. For this cause I have made my Article on the Turf of a character more suited to the purposes of the general reader than those of the visionary theorist, who may fondly hope to meet, on page traced by mortal hands, a recipe for breeding, training, and managing an embryo winner of Derby or Leger. The Chase, however, admits of a certain code of general maxims: it has, if not limits, at all events courses better defined than those of the Turf, and to the application of them by practical men of modern experience we will at once proceed.
Assuming that a tolerable proficiency in horsemanship has been attained before the young disciple of Diana ventures to show at all with hounds, he will do well to dedicate the first of his novitiate to hare-hunting, whether his future destination be that of a M. F. H., or merely a partaker of the “light from heaven,” dispensed by the “noble science.” As this little treatise addresses itself more particularly to the latter, it will be sufficient to point out what should be his aim in his early lessons. Of these, the most essential to the formation of a good sportsman, and the only one that will enable any man to live to the end of a severe run, is, that he cultivate the faculty of a quick eye to hounds. With harriers he will constantly have practice in this task: the perpetual doubles to which nine hares out of ten, when chased, resort, will soon convince him of the necessity of keeping a wary look out for the line towards which the leading hounds incline. He will have little difficulty in deciding with which portion of the pack, or with which individual of it, the scent is, if he only observe closely when there is any indication of a check. The instant a hound catches the scent, he will see him drop his tail horizontally, and spring to the front, the one who has lost it elevating his, as if engaged in questing. Keeping his look-out always upon the leaders, and leaving the body of the pack to follow a similar system, he turns his horse as he sees the chase lean, and thus is going at his ease inside the circle, around which others can hardly live at the best their nags can accomplish. When a huntsman is coming past with hounds,—particularly at check in a lane or road,—get out of his way all you can; the narrower the pass the greater the necessity that you give room, or hounds must break over the fence, and so run the risk of putting up, or crossing the line of, another hare: moreover, horses on such occasions are apt to strike out at hounds, and it is far from pleasant to be constituted by such a casualty “the observed of all observers.”
In the matter of riding at fences, with harriers you will be more enabled to suit your practice to the individual case than when you come to ride alongside fox-hounds. With the former, when any thing very cramp crosses your line, you may “look before you leap,” and this is no bad maxim, whoever may choose to sneer at it. Let this too be an axiom from which you never depart, as far as regards the hounds: when you are out with the jolly dogs, “hear and see, and say nothing”—so shall you earn golden opinions from the field in general, and prevent much out-pouring of wrath from the officials in particular. It will serve you to bear in mind that in almost every difficulty of ground a horse can serve himself better than you can assist him. I do not mean to say that in heavy, deep galloping you should not hold him together, and if there be a furrow or path at hand, that you should not give him the advantage of it. But in woodlands, for instance, where young timber has been felled, and the surface is covered with live stubs, give him his head: let him pick his own way; never touch his mouth with the bridle to guide him, and you will find how rarely he will give a chance away. Thus in a rabbit warren the difficulty is doubled by the nervous man who attempts to steer his horse. The biped is looking at one hole, the quadruped at another, and being diverted from the spot where he intended to place his foot, puts it in where it was meant that he should not. Still, however, you may attempt it: never charge ground of this nature without using the precaution of slacking your pace. I remember a well-known bruising rider, who thought it impossible that he could be hurt, once trying the experiment over a warren in the neighbourhood of Whitchurch, in Shropshire, and being assured of the affirmative in the first hundred yards by the fracture of his collar-bone, and the dislocation of a shoulder.
With the common run of fences, where the grip is from you, go faster at them than when it lies on the side you take off from. When they consist of live thorns and quicks newly laid down, take them, whenever the chance presents itself, aslant, rising where the top of the thorn is laid, as being the least capable of holding your horse’s knees, should they catch in rising at it. In your noviciate it is hardly necessary to offer you any advice as to water. As a general rule, however, it may as well be said here as elsewhere that, in brook-jumping, pace comes first and then judgment. With a powerful impetus you get over; should your horse blunder, somehow—if with a fall at the other side, no matter: less speed enables you to pick your ground better, but it throws all the odds on the side of a cold-bath, should the span be wider than you calculated on, or the bank be soft, and let you in. Never take hold of your horse’s head till you feel that he is safely landed; if there is a scramble for it, and you pull at him but an ounce, it may turn the beam of his equipoise, and in you go together.
Young hands are prone to think that it is necessary to the acquisition of the reputation of a sportsman that they show in front throughout a run. Indeed I might have said this idea seems to hold with many who ought to be wiser. The sooner the youthful Nimrod discards this fallacy the better. The chances are so multiplied and various against a good run that it is next to a miracle how a real clipper ever occurs. From foil, to which ground is every where exposed, down to an infant of three years old that heads your quarry, on every side you are beset with risk, even with a scent. Without it your difficulty becomes almost an impossibility, and that is the time when over-riding, more fatal than all other obstacles put together, is to be seen in its superlative degree. There is your hard-rider, par excellence, who will be first: the leader pulls up at a check—the nuisance passes him, even with hounds at fault, without a moment’s care for the mischief he must do the chase, or what he may do himself. Let such as this teach you that which you should avoid: acquire in youth the way you should go, and in your maturity you will not depart from it.
We now come to the matriculation of the “noble science,” and consider the quondam novice entered to fox-hunting. It would be bootless here to offer any eulogy upon a sport admitted, by authorities allowing no question, to be, in a political as well as a social view, a powerful moral engine. In a letter now before me, which I lately received from a gallant general, himself a master of fox-hounds, he ascribes to a taste for the chase that characteristic manly daring which distinguishes the officers of our service from those of any other. Of all field sports its claims are the most general upon the properties of manhood. The tiger-hunts of the East may appeal more directly to the courage, but with activity and physical endurance they have little or nothing to do. But see the qualities that must combine to form the accomplished fox-hunter. He must be bold, ready, decisive, capable of commanding and sustaining great bodily exertion: he must join unity of purpose to promptness of action; capability of foreseeing events, that he may best turn them to advantage, with a frame and a spirit alike competent to meet and oppose undauntedly difficulties and dangers, how and when they may assail him. I would not have it supposed that I claim for the chase a higher station for enterprise than any other of the adventurous occupations in which we find mankind employed. It would be absurd for an instant, for example, to compare it with that most exciting and magnificent of all the daring offices to which man has ever addressed himself—the South Sea fishing. But as a sport,—an act to which pleasure alone induces him, fox-hunting has nothing at all bearing comparison with it in modern days. To the present fashion of its details we will now turn our consideration.
I do not think it necessary here to enter into any foreign matter, such as the nature and economy of the establishment with which the field may be taken with reference to the country hunted, or the number of days weekly to be devoted to its business. We will suppose our young Nimrod has completed all such arrangements in a convenient fashion, and proceed to the res gestæ for which he has made preparation. In this hard-riding era, it is regarded as a dashing style of going to cover, by your aspiring tyro, to approach it as the crow would fly. If he must go thither across country, let him, at all events, avoid passing through, or riding too near any of the covers likely to be drawn during the day. If they hold a good fox, it is sure notice for him to quit, for he is ever on the qui vive. The result is, should the hounds be thrown in, they come upon a scent some hours old—crawl upon it over probably the cream of the country, never come on terms with him; and a capital day’s sport is lost to a whole field by a selfish half-hour’s lark. Arrived at the place of meeting, he should not address himself to the master, if he hunt his own hounds; or, in the other case, to the huntsman, notwithstanding he may be on familiar terms with them, beyond the mere exchange of a passing civility. Even then, a man, bent upon showing a good day’s sport, has his mind sufficiently engaged on the business before him. He is consulting temporary causes, by which to be directed as to the particular cover to begin with, and how it is to be drawn. The point of wind, the nature of the day, the weather of the preceding week,—all must be weighed, and brought to assist his judgment. A fox well found is always the most likely to be well accounted for.
But if conversation with the master or huntsman be inconvenient before hounds are thrown off, afterwards it becomes a positive impertinence. It is no excuse for doing so that they are not actually engaged at the moment. A huntsman, having drawn without a find, is probably waiting for some of his hounds; at the same time he is debating with himself what cover he shall next try, and how to get to it, as the wind may affect the best lying in it for his fox. He has also observed how his hounds have behaved, and has orders to give to a whip as to the conduct of some one prone to riot; or that a particular corner of the cover about being drawn shall be carefully watched. In short, success or failure are dependent on his management; and how can he deliberate if he is to stand a general catechism?
If it be a large cover, keep within hearing of the hounds and huntsman. This can only be effected by being down wind, and should be done without any reference to the distance round, which it may impose. Of course, it is not intended that a man should take any thing he can avoid out of his horse by galloping round a cover, but let him keep on steadily opposite the hounds, taking heed that he does not get so far forward as to endanger heading back the fox, and so spoiling his own and his neighbours’ sport. This I only recommend where covers are very large, and even then it may not be the best system. In all cases where it is practicable, I never throw a chance away by losing sight of hounds. I remember, some years ago, meeting Sir Richard Puleston at Cresford village, whence we trotted to a wood that skirts the high road to Chester. As we jogged forward, a friend overtook me, accosting me with, “You need not hurry yourself, for they’ll find nothing where they’re going: it has been beaten within an hour by a party of coursers, who have left nothing alive on four legs within it, you may rely.” In ten minutes, the pack and field were streaming, best pace, after a fox found in that same coppice, away for Shavington, over a country like the cream of Leicestershire or Northampton.
In fox-hunting, depend solely upon yourself, and keep with the pack. Even in going from cover to cover, be with them. Circumstances frequently arise which induce a huntsman to abandon trying a place upon which he may have previously fixed; and how often has a fox jumped out of a hedge-row in the centre of a pack trotting industriously away to look for a chance probably half a dozen miles off! In windy weather, when hounds are in cover, unless you draw it with them, it is two to one you never get away at all, and ten to one against a good start. I have had some experience of horses in my day, and have ever found, that, of all ways of beating them, the surest is that of trying to catch hounds. Laying aside the excitement and energy produced by the music, alongside of which they go sailing away in wild delight, it must be remembered that the pace of fox-hounds with a scent is equal to the best, if not superior, that any first-class hunter possesses. What sort of a nag then is it, that you can expect to catch them with ten minutes’ law? In calm weather, also, the danger of losing sight of hounds is by no means to be disregarded. There are some days (those which invariably carry the best scent) when hounds will find, and fly away like magic, not one in the pack attempting to throw tongue. Here, if the cover be large, unless you have them in your eye, the odds are you never get away; and see what you lose—the excellence of the scent has stopped the cry: the faster hounds go, the less they say about it.
When in a large cover, with hounds unavoidably out of sight, depend upon your ear much rather than upon the movements of others. You will constantly find men riding straight on end, merely because the hounds were running so when they entered, while very probably the fox has turned short, and is already away, with the pack at his brush, in an opposite direction. With a little patience and attention, your ear will soon come to the knack of detecting the line of hounds in cover: it is well worth your while to take pains to acquire this art. When you have learnt it, you will speedily find out the advantage it will confer upon your horse, and yourself too. It is by no means easy to lay down rules for that which so mainly depends upon circumstances; but it may be convenient to offer a few examples, upon which you may found a system for general application. Suppose, for instance, you have had a burst with your fox, and he has reached a large cover, in which there are strong earths, or beyond which lies a country too open for a blown fox to set his head for. If the earths are open, in he goes, and there is an end of him; if stopped, he turns, or leans to the right or left. During this time, brief as it maybe, you have eased your horse; he gets his wind (a minute, in many cases, will put him right after a very quick thing), and you are fresh, while your hard rider has been going best pace beyond the hounds, and comes toiling after you in vain. These points of practice, however, require good judgment, and great promptness of action. You must know well how to distinguish between a cry that grows faint and fainter, as a failing scent leads to a final check, and one that, from a crash, at once becomes almost wholly lost, as the pack flies to their fox with a view, or a scent breast-high.
You will, no doubt, at the commencement of your career, hear a great deal about the influence the wind has upon the line of chase. Do not take all such theory for gospel. I have tried my hand at a few systems of the kind, but only found one that admitted general adoption. When a fox, on being found, takes up wind at first, do not ride, though the pace be first-rate, so as to take much out of your horse. Foxes constantly, after going a mile or so up wind, turn and head back. This will let you in with a good start, and a fresh nag; and even should the chase hold on up wind, you run little risk of being thrown out, as you will have the cry to guide you, and the puff in, to enable you to get to them when the first brush is over.
One good effect of the hard riding of modern days is, that hounds are much less meddled with by strangers than they used to be when first I remember fox-hunting. Indeed, I am not sure that too much etiquette does not now exist upon that point. The total disappearance of the thong to the hunting-whip seems like carrying a good thing rather too far. A fox breaks probably under your horse’s nose: out comes the pack, none of the servants are at hand, and they run a field or two from the cover before any one stops them, or their own mettle allows them to turn: one crack of your whip would have saved all that. One thing you can do without your thong, but you should be very careful how you do it. I allude to hallooing a fox away. Never attempt to lift up your voice till he is evidently bent on going, and then give him at least a field’s law, or the odds are, back he goes, perhaps into the hounds’ mouths. When he is gone, then clap your hand behind your ear, and give the “Tally-ho—away!” to the best of the lungs that are in you. Should he merely show for a moment outside, and then pop in again, give a “Tally-ho—back!” that it maybe known where he was seen, as well as that he is not away. Another service in this latter halloo is, that all the points where it is likely he will try to break will be left clear for him. If a fox is seen crossing a ride or path, in cover, in front of you, pull up; and if hounds are at check, tally him, as it will serve as a guide to the huntsman.
In drawing a cover you may give this signal, should any fox cross you, but if you have run him in, be awake not to tally any but the hunted one, or you will have few thanks for your trouble. A little experience will easily teach you the difference between one just unkennelled and that which has stood any time before hounds. Not only will the former be sleek and unstained, but the method of going be very dissimilar. A fresh fox bounds off, throwing his hind legs clear from him, and his whole frame, from the tip of his nose to that of his brush, as straight as an arrow; if hunted, and at all blown or beaten, his action is laboured, like that of a rocking-horse, his back is curved, his brush drooping, and the ears thrown back, all the fire for which when found his eye is so remarkable, quenched, and exchanged for an air of cunning and subdued resolution. I am far from any design of counselling you to interfere with the business of a pack of fox-hounds that you may be either in the habit of hunting with, or one that you may merely meet by accident occasionally. Still there are instances in which to withhold all assistance would be to put the chance of sport in jeopardy, and in which the true lover of the chase ought to act first and think afterwards. Should any casualty, for example, so find you that, with hounds at fault, you catch a halloo that the huntsman does not or cannot hear, contrive so to place yourself between the halloo and the hounds that you may be heard by huntsman or pack, and so lead them on the line that the halloo proceeds from. I repeat, however, that these and similar aids must be offered with due discretion. The halloo may be a false one—true, but had you gone to make inquiries, you, too, would have been out of hearing—the points of fox-hunting require temporary and local adaptation, and a headpiece to direct all. Mere physical endowments will never make an accomplished fox-hunter—combined with judgment they are very excellent subsidiaries: for him who would shine in the chase
“Orandum est, ut sit mens sana in corpore sano.”
In riding to hounds it will essentially serve you if you bear in mind what ninety-nine out of a hundred seem never to give a thought to, namely, that the pack only acts pro tanto upon the line of country which a fox is likely to take. Independent of the point which it is assumed he will make for, he has a hundred other things to avoid, as well as the enemies baying on his trail. He settles his point, but he must also get to it unseen. Unless beaten and all but run into, he will give a wide berth to any thing like the habitation of man as well as man himself. Thus, by keeping your eye well before you, there is a chance that the turn hounds will take may be so far anticipated, that you avoid riding outside of their circle. It has been well said that when hounds are running, a man ought to consider what, under the circumstances in which things happen to be, be would do were he the fox. I cannot offer you better counsel. By adopting such a principle you will be enabled to foresee a check should you detect any thing in the line that the chase is taking, however far ahead—and if you have a knowledge of the country, you will calculate such chances almost to a certainty. In a district with which you are acquainted, the line a fox takes when found, will enable you to judge whether he has been before hunted, and if he has, the odds are he runs the same again. Even in cover you may fairly assume that he is accustomed to be stirred by the ring he takes, the points he tries, the gaps he uses in the fences, and similar observations, which should be the business on which you are intent from the moment the hounds are thrown in.
More than once it has been my good fortune to secure a clipping run for a sporting field by keeping a clear look-out upon the matter at issue, and nothing else, when a long series of covers drawn blank, and such dampers, have sent one-half of the morning’s muster home, while the other had taken to the dernier ressort of cigars and gossip. As an instance of this, several years ago, with the Shropshire, when Mr. Cresset Pelham had them, we had been at it from the hour of meeting till past three, in November too, and no luck. Having trotted on to our last hope for the day, it was tried, and pronounced—blank! Already twilight had commenced, the huntsman outside the cover was blowing his horn, the pack mustered, and home was the order of march. I had watched the gathering with care; and, as we were already trotting from the side of the spinny, it struck me that an old and favourite bitch was missing. I called the huntsman’s attention to it. There was a pause—a faint wimple was heard in the still valley—anon it opened into a cry, “Hark to it!”—the pack flew to the challenge—there was a mighty crash: in a minute a fox broke away in sight of every man who had had the patience to await the last throw on the dice. A burst of twenty minutes was the result, without a pull from best pace; and we turned him up in the open just as the parish lantern gave us notice to look out for squalls.
There exists, in some masters of hounds, a disposition to keep back such men as, when hounds are in chase, follow them through the covers they take in their line. It is not my desire to inculcate disobedience to the powers that be; but certainly I cannot second that principle, either with reference to those who adopt it, or those to whom it is intended to apply. When a hunted fox has reached a cover, not only is it the best way to cheer hounds to him, that they should not feel themselves alone, but also the noise made by men following them is the most likely way to make a fresh fox break, without any of the stragglers getting on him. I have seen a fox crawl into cover dead beat, and already in the mouths of the pack. The huntsman and a whip followed them—the “whoo-whoop” was given—the master and the rest of the field waited on the outside. They remained in patience till ten minutes had elapsed. “Surely,” said an old hand at last, “they are doing more than baying him with all that cry. Hark! it has got to the opposite side of the wood:—by heavens! they’re away with a fresh fox.” And so they were; and they killed him at the end of forty minutes without a check, and without a sight of them ever being caught, save by the servants, who had followed to lift the fox that had crawled dead beat into the cover.
I have thus attempted to sketch, for the young disciple of the “noble science,” a slight code of maxims of general application. For the principles of practice to direct him in the constantly occurring cases, which admit of no rule save that arising out of individual circumstances, he must rely upon himself. Under this general head of Hunting, I have not thought it necessary to enter upon any varieties of the chase, save those of the fox and the hare. Stag-hunting, as a rural sport, is limited to a very few districts; and for its pursuit requires only a knowledge of horsemanship, and a quick eye to a country. Fox-hunting and hare-hunting I have treated with reference only to the points of practice which apply to the convenience of those who select them as appliances of recreation. This work, in its nature, is rudimentary, it professes to deal with the elements of our manly exercises, and so far to treat of our national sports of Racing, Hunting, and Shooting. Its office is to instruct the beginner, leaving the higher classes to volumes of more pretension. With this view of its purpose, I have brought the subject of the Chase to the limit which I designed for it. It is a truly manly—a noble sport. Long may it be cherished and fostered in our land! The qualities which it calls into action are those which confer honour on manhood,—courage, promptness, activity, and decision. Surely these are rare properties in which to exercise a youth, and these the Chase will engender and nourish: while to such as require that a moral attach to every occupation of life, it has this to recommend it, that, in riding to hounds, this great truth is hourly inculcated—“Honesty is the best policy.”
