DEFAULT
;—a term in hunting, which custom has reduced to an abbreviation, and is in general called FAULT. The hounds, during a chase of any kind, when losing the scent, throwing up their noses, seeming at a loss, and dashing different ways, in anxious and earnest hope of recovery, are then said to be at "a fault." This is the very moment when the judgment of the huntsman is most required, and the soonest to be observed. Different opinions have been formed, and decisions made, respecting the proper mode of proceeding at so critical a juncture, whether to try forward, or to try back: here a great deal depends upon the GAME you are hunting of, and the country you are hunting in, which circumstances at the time can only determine. However opinions may vary upon some particular points, all seem to coincide upon others; that the ground should invariably be made good forward, previous to trying back; that a general silence should prevail, and not an unnecessary aspiration be heard, that can tend to attract the attention of a single hound from the earnest endeavours he is so busily engaged in; by which means nineteen faults are hit off out of twenty, without greater delay, suspense, or disappointment.
If HOUNDS, in pursuit of deer or fox, throw up on a fallow or highway, they cannot be got forward too soon; certain it is they have neither of them stopt there: not so with the hare, who is likely to have thrown herself out by the side of one, or squatted in a land (or furrow) of the other. Faults with the two former, are much more easily and expeditiously hit off than with the latter, with whom they are sometimes tediously incessant, particularly with a young or a hard-hunted hare: it should therefore, be a fixed rule, never to abandon a fault, if possible, without recovery; it being as likely, at least, to bring the lost hare to a view, as to find a fresh one.