Scent and its vagaries will no doubt always be a mysterious problem. How often have we seen hounds able to hunt quite well amongst the undergrowth, yet when they reached an open expanse of sand where the seal of an otter was plainly visible, they have crossed it without a single hound speaking. An instance of this comes to mind during the season of 1921, when hounds ran well across country, whereas on a sand-bank, literally padded flat with otter tracks, never a hound opened.
Although hounds may sometimes travel a long way up-stream without touching a drag, that does not always signify that you will not find. An instance of this comes to mind when we were hunting a small hill-stream. Hounds had covered some miles of water without a sign of a drag, and the field was becoming rather discouraged, when suddenly the pack opened in no uncertain manner, and began tearing at a holt on the bank. While hounds were thus occupied, the otter bolted and went downstream, and after a short hunt was accounted for. Until reaching the spot where hounds marked, there was little or no lying ground, and seeing that there was also no up-stream drag it pointed to the fact that our otter had travelled over a neighbouring watershed, and had entered the holt on his journey downstream. It is always well to remember that an otter may be found anywhere, and because there happens to be no drag up-stream that does not mean to say that you may not find when you reach the head waters.
Regarding the agility and jumping powers of otters we remember hounds finding an otter lying rough, which, after a certain amount of dusting up and down stream, jumped a wall into a road, passed under a motor car standing there, and went over another wall into the field beyond. Leaving the field it scaled a third wall before returning to the water. Eventually it took to some extensive coverts, and after running a ring through them, it was bowled over by hounds in the open as it was making its way back to the river. That an otter knows every inch of ground over which he has once travelled is made quite apparent to those who do much otter-hunting.
We have, in a previous chapter, told of an otter which travelled ten miles overland from one stream to another, going straight to the various smoots through the walls which barred its passage. In an emergency, too, an otter makes up his mind pretty quickly. On one occasion the terriers got to their otter in a drain, and after opening the latter, the otter backed out. The drain lay parallel to a hedge, and like a flash the otter darted through this, ran down behind it, and was into another underground retreat before anyone had time to realise his game.
As a rule, if two otters are put down together, the one which is not being hunted will promptly make itself scarce. We remember on one occasion, however, when hounds were hunting a bitch otter, the dog hung about in plain sight under a bridge, and remained there until the bitch was accounted for, after which he himself suffered the same fate.
Otter-hunting is the least artificial of our British field sports. The otter is a wild animal, living the same free life that he has done for generations, and we have yet to learn a good deal concerning him. Being a great wanderer, he is here to-day and gone to-morrow, and his hunting provides more "glorious uncertainty" than the chase of any other beast. Before you can hunt him you must find him, but whereas with deer, fox, and hare, the finding is often the easiest part of the business, in the case of the otter it is the most difficult. In a previous chapter we have made brief mention of otter-hunting dress. In these days blue is the popular colour for Hunt livery, the material most favoured being woollen serge. We wonder how modern otter-hunters would like to wear the dress mentioned by Blaine, i.e., a green dress turned up with red, fur cap with gold band, and waterproof hip-boots decorated with red or gold tassels.
It was Somervile in The Chase who coined the phrase "sly goose-footed prowler," and gave to the world one of the best accounts of an otter-hunt ever penned. Otter-hunting seems to have been little catered for in the matter of songs pertaining to the sport. No doubt there are many purely local ditties concerning the doings of various packs, but few songs of real worth have made their appearance. In "The Poetry of Sport" by Hedley Peek, we find one or two, and in the "Otter-hunting Diary" of Mr James Lomax there are a couple of Lancashire otter-hunting songs. One of these songs is in dialect, and we take the liberty of quoting a verse or two for to anyone who understands broad Lancashire they convey a lively description of the sport. The song is entitled "The Hunt in the Hodder." In the first verse the narrator goes to the meet:
"Old Squire Lomax's dags I'd oft heerd um tell,
I bethought me one morning I'd see um mysell,
So I donn'd me, and reet off for Mytton dud trig,
Un I landed me just as they loosed under th' Brig.