And who shall say that the pleasure is confined to them? Someone has said: “The horses enjoy it, the hounds enjoy it, and no one can say from experience that the fox does not enjoy it as well.” Then comes the M.F.H., with his beauties, all in “the pink” of condition. A moment’s delay for pleasant greetings between all and sundry, and the hounds are quickly thrown in for business; their tails, and little more, wave above the long ling and the tall bracken. The whips gallop to their points of observation. Presently a whimper or two is heard; then the deeper tone of an old hound takes it up; the rest rally about him, and soon the whole pack join in full chorus. A halloo is heard from a ride, as the fox crosses it; a distant hat is held up to show the line he is taking in the cover, and then a more distant shout of “gone away,” and the whole field are off, helter skelter, as though riding for their lives, sauve qui peut. Such are “the pleasures of the chase,” for which we are indebted to the Little Red Rover: “The sport of kings, the image of war, without its guilt.” (Somerville, “The Chase,” Book I.)
The neighbourhood of Woodhall combines lands of a wild unreclaimed nature, such as the Ostler Ground and other moorlands, in the parishes of Thornton, Martin, Roughton, Kirkby and Tattershall, and closely contiguous, and even mixed up with these, lands which are in an advanced state of cultivation. I have already mentioned a tract of waste, boggy ground, lying between the Tower on the Moor and Bracken Wood, formerly the haunt of wild fowl, and still called “The Bogs Neuk.” The origin of this ground was probably the following:—The old antiquary, Leland, writing of “The Tower,” [61] says, “one of the Cromwelles builded a pretty turret, caullid the Tower on the Moore, and
thereby he made a faire greate pond or lake, bricked about. The lake is commonly called the Synkker.” This “lake,” and all trace of it, have entirely disappeared; but it is probable that the decay of its “bricked” walls, or of whatever the environment may really have been, led to the escape of the water, and the creation of the tract of swamp, which remained until recent years. Similarly the Ostler Ground was, within the writer’s recollection, a much wilder tract, and its woods more extensive than at present. Some 300 acres of wood were destroyed by fire, through accident, about the year 1847. This happened at night, and, seen from a distance, it looked like a vast American prairie conflagration, the heavens being tinged with a lurid light far and wide. At that time the plantations opposite the Tower were of Scotch fir, so dense that the rays of the sun could scarcely penetrate. The roads, as I have previously stated, were little more than cart tracts, often shifting; and the whole tract was almost as little frequented, or disturbed, as if it had been in the heart of the Black Forest of Germany. In the centre of this wild were two or three fields belonging to another property, [62a] where roamed a herd of small, shaggy cattle, which, shut out as they were from the rest of the world, became almost wild; and when, on occasions, the foxhounds penetrated to their haunts, they frantically broke through all bounds, and for some days afterwards would be found scattered about the open country around. This tract of wood and moor has been for many years the prettiest bit of wild shooting anywhere in this neighbourhood for many miles round. There is not, at the present time, anything like the amount of game upon it which was to be found only a few years ago; drainage and several very dry seasons, as also two or three accidental fires, having killed much of the ling, and reduced very considerably the amount of cover. Still, to the genuine sportsman who thinks more of a varied bag than of the slaughter of numbers, it affords great attractions, and the writer has enjoyed many a happy day of healthy relaxation, with dog and gun, upon it. [62b] The
variety of birds now, or formerly, to be seen, have been described already. The ground game upon it now, apart from the fox, are the hares and rabbits; of these I shall speak more at length presently. If the Moor ground has afforded fair sport of a wild and varied character, the shooting in the adjoining domain of Kirkstead, in hares and partridges, has been also much superior to the rest of the neighbourhood, with the one exception of Tattershall, which has been nearly as good. On one occasion, being one of a party of five, the writer was stationed at the north-east corner of “The Arbours Wood,” in Kirkstead, to shoot the hares which passed that point, while the rest of the sportsmen walked the wood with the beaters. In the space of about one hour and a quarter, without moving from his position, he shot 56 hares. At one moment he had 16 hares lying dead before him; and he could have shot many more, but that, from the rapid firing, his gun barrels became, at times, so hot that he was afraid to load, and the hares were allowed to pass him, and escape unmolested. [63]
We occasionally find on the Ostler Ground an unusual hybrid between hare and rabbit, a notice of which may be of some interest to the naturalist. As its occurrence has led to a good deal of correspondence, I will give here a summary of the observations made upon it as they were stated by me at a meeting of the Lincolnshire Naturalists’ Union. Among other persons who made enquiry about it was Mr. Walter Heape, of Cambridge, who has made
the subject of hybrids a special study. He asked my reasons for supposing the animal to be such a cross. My reply was as follows:—
(1) The animal is the size of a hare.
(2) Its fur is the rabbit grey.
(3) The head is the shorter, and the ears the more pricked and shorter, of the rabbit.
(4) One which I shot at, and missed in the ling, bolted straight for a hole, as though accustomed to it, and I never knew a hare to go to ground in that ready way.