A question that has to be faced is, what to do with the hare when your little hounds have caught her, and my advice is to let hounds break her up themselves without any fuss, as the Badminton hounds do their foxes.
And now to turn to the interesting topic of the experience in kennel and field of our present lady M.H.'s, and all will doubtless like to know something of the methods in which each of these pioneer sportswomen has built up her pack.
In South Wales, where Mrs. Pryse-Rice has her kennels, the conditions of sport are very different to what they are in the southern counties of England. In the first place, the spare little black-backed mountain hares of Wales, have a turn of speed beyond the powers of their better fed English fellows, and are very hard to kill. Instead, too, of circling round and round when before hounds, they will generally go straight away and will often give a five mile point as bravely as any fox. The reason of this fitness is to be found in the fact that they are constantly being coursed by the farmers' cross-bred greyhounds and collie dogs, which are often scantily fed and badly in want of a dinner, and they have far to go themselves for food, as they have no nice fields of roots at hand like the more luxurious lowland hares.
It is evident then that the hounds to follow these speedy little hares must be quick in getting away and have plenty of drive, and I cannot do better than quote Mrs. Pryse-Rice's own words on the subject, as to how she has succeeded in building up such a pack.
"I started my harriers in 1894, being much helped in the first instance by gifts of hounds from my father-in-law, Mr. Vaughan Pryse, who hunted his harriers for forty seasons, and is one of the oldest Masters in the kingdom. To these I added a few couple of the Woodnorton pack when it was given up by the Comtesse de Paris, and some small foxhounds chosen from my husband's pack, which he had given up the season before.[2] The first year I ran a small pack of twelve couple, and though the hounds were perhaps not a very level lot, they gave us a very good season's sport. Now after four years of breeding, buying and drafting, they run up well together, and are a Stud-book pack of twenty couple of 19-20 inch hounds.
[2] Mr. Pryse-Rice was Master of the Tivyside Foxhounds.—Editor.
Elliott and Fry. 55, Baker Street.
MRS. PRYSE-RICE AND HER HARRIERS.
(MR. PRYSE-RICE AND A. MANDEVILLE, K.H.)