“This hind must have had about enough,” remarks the Master; but she is not, in fact, near the end of her resources as yet. As soon as hounds touch the line she leaves the water, and runs along the cover on the wooded slopes above us. Suddenly we see the leading hounds turn, for a hind has as many turns and twists as a hare. Now comes an exciting time for us. Hounds are running in an inaccessible bottom, and we have to ride a path about two feet wide on the side of a hill, with tangled cover and brushwood. A branch bashes in one’s hat, another almost sweeps a rider out of the saddle; but the notes of the hounds coming up fitfully and always further on beckon us forward. The going may be bad, but we must get forward. What a relief to find one self on the open heather once more! The horse is not done yet, and we work our way back to hounds, which have a long start.
But now a deep, dark wood swallows them up, and we follow the Master on trust. How he knows or divines which way hounds are going it is hard to say; but it is all right, and we find hounds running over a grass field, and then comes a stretch of most appalling ground. Frozen turf, an outcrop of slippery rock, a hillside broken up as though a number of small earthquakes had taken place; somehow we scramble down. But the hind is really beaten at last. We have been hunting since 11 a.m., and it is now long past three.
This is a good, but not an unusual example of a hind-hunt in the winter or spring, on a day when the weather is fairly favourable. When the weather is bad on the moors it is very bad. For example, the hind has gone up on to the moor, but the hounds have changed in the coverts. The Master and one follower are sitting with a couple or so of hounds for half an hour waiting for the whippers-in to bring on the hounds, while pitiless rain-, hail- and sleet-storms sweep over the exposed hillside. At last the hounds come, and what is wonderful, they can still hunt, though a storm has swept over the moor and their deer is three-quarters of an hour in front. We ride to them a short distance, plunge into a deep valley, and failing to hit the right path where the hind turns up, lose hounds altogether for the day.
Again, sometimes the hind never runs at all, but dodges and turns and twists until at last she fairly beats off her pursuers. These erratic courses of the hind are, so far as we can tell, governed by two motives. The first is to lead hounds away from her calf—the red-deer calves run with the mother till they are nearly as big as she is—and having shaken off pursuit, to return to the place she started from. There is no device to this end she will not try. Sometimes she lies down in the open, and so well concealed is she that it is impossible to distinguish her from the heather. Again, she will work her way down the middle of a stream for a long distance, so that the winter flood may carry away the scent, or she will run backwards and forwards in a covert till the line is foiled. Worst of all she will join a herd. If a hunted stag endeavours to join a band of stags, the others will butt him out of their company. They are not going to be compromised by the presence of an unlucky relative. But a bevy of hinds seem to try to shelter a distressed one, and by running on with her in a bunch to puzzle the hounds. Thus hind-hunting stands very high in the estimation of lovers of hound work. Hind-hunting brings out many latent hereditary qualities of the foxhound. We are reminded that the foxhound’s ancestors hunted stag before they hunted fox. There are, unluckily, very few foxes in the west of England, but there are still some, though mange, traps and fox-sellers or stealers have worked great havoc. Yet hounds seldom run fox when once entered to deer. These staghounds soon develop a considerable aptitude for distinguishing the scent of the hunted animal, so that amidst a multiplicity of lines they hold to the line of the hunted deer. A hound named Tradesman, belonging to Mr. E. A. V. Stanley’s pack, ran a hind from Lype Common to Cloutsham, right round Dunkery, never changing and never losing the line. When the pack were astray, he held on by himself. When they were with him he led them, and was, no doubt, the cause of the death of a stout hind after a long chase. This is a trait which is greatly valued in France, but has been almost lost in most foxhound packs in England, since the huntsman is as ready to change his fox as the hounds are apt to run more eagerly on a fresh line than a stale one. Then the foxhound often recalls his bloodhound forbears, or at least those stately white Talbots, so much favoured by our ancestors, by his steady tracking of the hunted deer.
Like bloodhounds, the staghound runs silently, speaking for a find, for the recovery of the scent after a check, and in covert, in order no doubt that the pack may keep together, but when working over the heather the pack string out in a resolute, silent and rather blood-thirsty fashion, for a staghound means and expects to have blood, and there is quite a different note in his voice as the chase begins to draw to its finish. In most cases in the last stages of a hunt the hounds are close to their quarry, and they know what it means. A curious trait about a hunted hind is that while pursued by hounds she seems almost devoid of fear of horses and men. It seems as if the red deer, from having been a hunted animal for so many ages, was able to distinguish between a real and imaginary danger. A hind has the reputation of being a timid animal, but if you try to ride one off from a point she is bent on making you will soon find that she cares nothing for you, but will hold on obstinately, or perhaps stop short and dodge behind your horse and so make her point.
So, too, I have seen a hind spring up almost in the middle of the pack and endeavour to bother the hounds by running in among the horses. Not the least remarkable thing is the unconcern with which stags look on in the hind-hunting season. I had heard of this, but never saw so flagrant an instance as during the winter of 1905. There was a bevy of hinds on the side of a hill. They were moved by the tufters, which also disturbed a big stag that was lying in the heather. He sprang up and trotted at his leisure up the hill and watched the proceedings. As soon as he understood that hinds, not stags, were the quarry of the day, he strolled quietly back to his lair and laid down again in the place from which he had been disturbed. In the same way bevies of hinds will wheel round, apparently not the least alarmed by the passing of a stag-hunt. Most hind-hunts are long and devious, but every now and then a hind goes right away in a straight line. This, I think, depends a good deal on the cry of the hounds. The red deer, like the fox, regulates its pace by the waxing or waning of the clamour of the pack. As a rule I do not think that Exmoor carries a very good scent in the winter, and the surrounding cultivation is chiefly poor scenting ground. The Brendon Hills, too, do not favour hounds, so that they do not speak much. It is only the sweet scent and enduring foil of a red deer that enables hounds to hunt as well as they do. Of course here as elsewhere there are days when scent is good. With the hind, as with the fox, a strong scent makes a straight-necked quarry, and hounds will drive a hind right away and kill her in an hour and a half or so, which for a hind-hunt is quite a moderate run. It is a very fine form of hunting, especially if you treat it more as a foxhunt than a stag-hunt. The latter is to most people a series of passing pictures of the chase, with a glorious background of wild and magnificent scenery. It is a holiday recreation, rather than a serious business like our winter fox-hunting. But few people make a serious attempt to ride to hounds when hunting on Exmoor. When first I went out hind-hunting I did the same. But I reflected that if one had two horses that it ought to be as possible to see most of the hunt as for the master and the huntsman. Even they cannot go everywhere. Parts of the country are actually impracticable, but they manage in the main to be with hounds. Men who know the country manage with one horse, but the stranger naturally goes further and works his horse harder.
How do you get your second horse? If you send him with the master’s second horse, he is pretty sure to come up with you sooner or later. Of course you can see a great deal with one, but it is unsatisfactory not to be able to see hounds hunt. To enjoy hind-hunting, one ought to see enough to have a general idea of the working of the pack during the whole hunt. Some idea of the way hounds work may be useful, and if, as not unusually happens, the rider finds himself alone with three or four couple of hounds, he can be of use by stopping them; or, if that is not always possible, at all events by keeping the leading hounds in sight, so that when the pack check he may be able to give useful information.
After their second season staghounds generally run mute, or nearly so. Thus they are particularly liable to slip away unseen or unheard. Unfortunately, these are the more experienced members of the pack, which are able to hold to the line of the hunted hind amidst the many temptations to change which will meet them in the course of a winter’s day on the moor. Yet so staunch do the older hounds become, that I have known four couple of hounds to carry the line through Lord Lovelace’s coverts from Culbone Stables (one of the most hind-haunted places in Exmoor) and kill the hunted hind after all in one of the deep-cut combes many miles away. These hounds hunted themselves, but I had the luck to pick them up. Coming over some grass fields only one spoke at all; the same hound with a peculiar shrill note spoke again in the covert when they came out on the moor. The leading hound wasted no breath on talking, but just scoured away. The others whimpered eagerly, but none actually spoke till we touched the wooded side of the hill. In the valley where runs the stream to which two-thirds of the stags and hinds come to die, strangely enough hounds would not speak, though they were on moist grass and the hind was close in front. The leading hound plodded on, always on the line, solemn, intent, resolute, until we actually came up with the hind cowering under the bank by the bridge. She was crouched into so small a space that she was scarcely visible, and her coat harmonised with the brown stream, the dead foliage on the banks, but with the spirit of her race directly a hound bayed her she stood up and faced him as proudly as any stag could have done. The odd thing was how difficult it was to get the hounds to see her, and the old hound that had done all the work seemed to take very little interest in the subsequent proceedings. The rest of the work was done by a large black, tan and white hound, who bayed the hind, hunted her down the water, and was in at the death. The others may have done more, but the silence of staghounds inclines one to give them less than their due credit. The hound, like the man who talks much and loudly, gets the most credit, and in the case of the dog with justice.
If any one wishes to see this fine but little-known sport he cannot do better than go to Minehead, and find a judicious pilot; for it takes an apprenticeship to learn how to ride over the moor in winter. The main principles which experience has taught one, is that heather is reasonably safe going, and to be made the most of, and that in this as in other forms of hunting, the nearer you can keep to hounds the happier you will be.
A friend of mine who came down asked me once for advice, and the answer was: “never lose sight of the hounds if you can help it, and if you do, get back to them again as soon as you can.” A year later he told me, “I have done my best to carry out your advice, and have never seen reason to regret it.” The other matter to be borne in mind is that somehow or another you must go at a fair pace down hill, which to the new-comer looks a great deal more alarming than it really is when you become accustomed to the process. There is another point of view which may be touched on here, and that is that it is not an expensive form of hunting; three stout horses (any will do that are well bred, temperate, and have good shoulders) would afford four and a half days a week. Thus two would go out hind hunting on Tuesday and Friday. One would do a couple of days with foxhounds and harriers, and in most weeks one of the two hind-hunters would put in half a day with the harriers besides. The early spring, March and April, are good months, when the mild western climate will be appreciated. Hunting is slack at home, and we want something new. Well, you have heard of autumn stag-hunting, now try hind-hunting in the early spring.