Be kind to your whippers-in; do not try and slip them. When you turn back drawing a covert always let them know by a good loud “Yooi over, try back!” They will work all the better for you if you help them in their little ways. 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. I have often been laughed at for doing it and told to trust my hounds; but even if they are running hard, and I come across a man who has seen the fox, I do not think a few seconds are thrown away in finding out which way the fox’s head was. As my father used to say, take every advantage you can of your fox. He will take every one he possibly can of you.
Look out along a road. It is a curious thing, but hounds hardly ever turn out of one exactly where the fox has gone. They either go too far or more commonly not far enough. If you can manage to get half the pack in the road and the other half in two lots on each of it, you are in a capital position; and when those in the road throw up you can press on without fear of overrunning the scent. Do not hurry the hounds in a road, and beware how you encourage one that is always making a hit under these circumstances. If you make too much of him you will turn him into a rogue. Always acknowledge to your master when you have lost the fox, and do not go dragging on, and slip the hounds into a covert and count the fresh fox you find as the one you have been hunting. Your master may wish the covert drawn in a different way. Be cheery in drawing woods; make plenty of noise, so that the hounds may know where you are. If they are very fond of you, they will be listening about for you if you go on the silent system. Hounds that habitually hang back in covert should be drafted, but after you have drawn one blank you will only make these offenders worse by standing and blowing. Move on, and they will catch you up. Once more, but it cannot be too often repeated, never interfere with your hounds at checks till they have made their own casts first. To quote Lord Henry Bentinck once more, hounds that are repeatedly messed about and cast will in a short time become demoralised so that they will do nothing to help themselves.
III
TO WHIPPERS-IN
III. TO WHIPPERS-IN
SUMMER EXERCISE AND BREAKING YOUNG HOUNDS
Of course, during the first few weeks of horse exercise, no young hound should be allowed to break away at all, or the whole entry will soon become wild and demoralised.
Later on, if a hare gets up, or any other temptation to riot arises, the hounds should be allowed a good look at the cause of it without anyone saying a word. The steady hounds, when they see what it is, will do nothing, but if one of the wilder customers wants to have his fling, let him go for at least two hundred yards, as long as he gets through no fence over which you cannot follow him, and then ride quietly and quickly to his head, and let him have it as hot as you can. When he has felt the lash then, and not till then, rate him soundly and frighten him back to the huntsman.