Take early meets with a pack hunting three and four days a week. It is only possible to have early meets in the hottest part of the year—say middle of June to end of August in our North Country, and a rather longer period with South and West Country packs. Say hounds meet at five a.m. on four days in the week. Hounds may have to take anything from one to two hours to get from kennels to the meet. The men are in kennel at least an hour before the hunting pack turns out, so we know that hounds get no rest after that hour, which is probably shortly after two a.m. Hounds would normally be back in kennel after a day of this sort within an hour or two of midday. For the rest of that day, apart from the disturbance—to hounds—of ordinary kennel routine, they are unable to get genuine rest on a hot summer's afternoon. The result is that after a fortnight, or even a week of such work—and I have many instances in my old hunting diaries of both—you get a jaded pack, a tired staff, and a weary Master. And I have been unfortunate enough myself to have never seen even a hunt before eight a.m.
If anyone will guarantee to put hounds on to the line of a travelling dog otter on a given day I would be there with hounds every time. But otherwise, no thank you.
As to otterhounds versus foxhounds, I am convinced that finance, or rather the lack of it, is the only reason why draft foxhounds are preferred to otterhounds. Otter-hunting is a poor man's sport, and few people realise what it costs to run a pack and country. If you get a Master to take a country he has very often spent enough out of his own pocket when he has paid the difference between the subscription list and the hunting expenses. And breeding hounds on a big scale adds enormously to expenses. The result is that in nine cases out of ten the pack is made up of draft dog foxhounds, and a very few rough-coated otterhounds. An attempt may be made to breed a litter or two a year from the rough otterhound bitches. Five or six puppies may be got out to walk, and three or four left in kennel. As many of these as survive—possibly two and a half or three couple—are brought on the following season, and unless they are hopeless physical wrecks they are put into the pack to keep up the theory that they are a pack of otterhounds. And good or bad workers they are often kept on for this same purpose only. Under these circumstances, and they are far from uncommon, no wonder the average member of an otter-hunting field prefers the foxhound. Any M.O.H. can get draft foxhounds, and frequently get them as a gift—hounds that have been the best of fox-hunters and fox-catchers, but have got too slow or for any of a dozen other reasons are unable to run up to the pace of a modern foxhound pack. These draft hounds know all about hunting, and only want entering to their new quarry to make most excellent otter-hunting hounds at a minimum of expense and trouble.
But if an M.O.H. breeds otterhounds on the same lines that foxhounds are bred, breeds by selection, breeds each year enough puppies to get a big enough young entry the following year—big enough not only to be able to put down immediately any physical crock that may come in, but big enough to allow for drafting a certain number—during and at the end of their first season you can have, in my humble opinion, a pack of pure-bred otterhounds, not only not inferior to, but superior to any pack of draft foxhounds. I may appear too enthusiastic on this point—I am certainly rather disappointed. I bought my first otterhounds in 1903. I started breeding in 1905. In July, 1914, having for two or three years prior to that date put over fifty puppies out to walk each year, I had just over forty couple of pure-breed otterhounds in kennel. And I was hoping to prove that before many more years passed my confidence in the otterhound was not misplaced. But in 1919 I was reduced to under ten couple, and circumstances have since prevented me continuing my experiment to anything like the same extent. And I must say that I have never found the otterhound quarrelsome either in kennel or out.
I hope you will forgive my keen advocacy on behalf of the pure-bred otterhound. I am sure we should both dislike to see him entirely eliminated from the hunting-field, and only to be found as a weird and useless animal on the show bench.
May your book have the great success that it deserves. That it will give great pleasure to all who know anything about the otter and the hunting of it, I am sure. That it will be the means of attracting many new converts I devoutly hope. And if I may add a wish with a yet more personal note, may I meet yourself and all my other good otter-hunting friends at many another good hunt, whether the meet be late or early, the hounds otterhounds or foxhounds.
Yours very sincerely,
W. Thompson.