Modern Hunting.—The term “hunting” has come to be applied specially to the pursuit of such quarries as the stag or fox, or to following an artificially laid scent, with horse and hound. It thus corresponds to the Fr. chasse au courre, as distinguished from chasse au tir, à l’oiseau, &c., and to the Ger. hetzjagd as distinguished from birsch. In the following article the English practice is mainly considered.
Doubtless the early inhabitants of Britain shared to a large extent in the habits of the other Celtic peoples; the fact that they kept good hunting dogs is vouched for by Strabo; and an interesting illustration of the manner in which these were used is given in the inscription quoted by Orelli (n. 1603)—“Silvano Invicto Sacrum—ob aprum eximiae formae captum, quem multi antecessores praedari non potuerunt.” Asser, the biographer of Alfred the Great, states that before the prince was twelve years of age he “was a most expert and active hunter, and excelled in all the branches of that noble art, to which he applied with incessant labour and amazing success.”[7] Of his grandson Athelstan it is related by William of Malmesbury that after the victory of Brunanburgh he imposed upon the vanquished king of Wales a yearly tribute, which included a certain number of “hawks and sharp-scented dogs fit for hunting wild beasts.” According to the same authority, one of the greatest delights of Edward the Confessor was “to follow a pack of swift hounds in pursuit of game, and to cheer them with his voice.” It was under the Anglo-Saxon kings that the distinction between the higher and lower chase first came to be made—the former being expressly for the king or those on whom he had bestowed the pleasure of sharing in it, while only the latter was allowed to the proprietors of the land. To the reign of Cnut belong the “Constitutiones de Foresta,” according to which four thanes were appointed in every province for the administration of justice in all matters connected with the forests; under them were four inferior thanes to whom was committed immediate care of the vert and venison.[8] The severity of the forest laws which prevailed during the Norman period is sufficient evidence of the sporting ardour of William and his successors. The Conqueror himself “loved the high game as if he were their father”; and the penalty for the unauthorized slaughter of a hart or hind was loss of both eyes.
At an early period stag hunting was a favourite recreation with English royalty. It seems probable that in the reign of Henry VIII. the royal pack of buckhounds was kennelled Stag hunting. at Swinley, where, in the reign of Charles II. (1684), a deer was found that went away to Lord Petre’s seat in Essex; only five got to the end of this 70 m. run, one being the king’s brother, the duke of York. George III. was a great stag hunter, and met the royal pack as often as possible.
In The Chase of the Wild Red Deer, Mr Collyns says that the earliest record of a pack of staghounds in the Exmoor district is in 1598, when Hugh Polland, Queen Elizabeth’s ranger, kept one at Simonsbath. The succeeding rangers of Exmoor forest kept up the pack until some 200 years ago, the hounds subsequently passing into the possession of Mr Walter of Stevenstone, an ancestor of the Rolle family. Successive masters continued the sport until 1825, when the fine pack, descended probably from the bloodhound crossed with the old southern hound, was sold in London. It is difficult to imagine how the dispersion of such a pack could have come about in such a sporting country, but in 1827 Sir Arthur Chichester got a pack together again. Stag hunting begins on the 12th of August, and ends on the 8th of October; there is then a cessation until the end of the month, when the hounds are unkennelled for hind hunting, which continues up to Christmas; it begins again about Ladyday, and lasts till the 10th of May. The mode of hunting with the Devon and Somerset hounds is briefly this: the whereabouts of a warrantable stag is communicated to the master by that important functionary the harbourer; two couple of steady hounds called tufters are then thrown into cover, and, having singled out a warrantable deer, follow him until he is forced to make for the open, when the body of the pack are laid on. Very often two or three hours elapse before the stag breaks, but a run over the wild country fully atones for the delay.
It is only within comparatively recent times that the fox has come to be considered as an animal of the higher chase. William Twici, indeed, who was huntsman-in-chief to Edward II., and who wrote in Norman French a treatise on Fox hunting. hunting,[9] mentions the fox as a beast of venery, but obviously as an altogether inferior object of sport. Strutt also gives an engraving, assigned by him to the 14th century, in which three hunters, one of whom blows a horn, are represented as unearthing a fox, which is pursued by a single hound. The precise date of the establishment of the first English pack of hounds kept entirely for fox hunting cannot be accurately fixed. In the work of “Nimrod” (C. J. Apperley), entitled The Chase, there is (p. 4) an extract from a letter from Lord Arundel, dated February 1833, in which the writer says that his ancestor, Lord Arundel, kept a pack of foxhounds between 1690 and 1700, and that they remained in the family till 1782, when they were sold to the celebrated Hugh Meynell, of Quorndon Hall, Leicestershire. Lord Wilton again, in his Sports and Pursuits of the English, says that “about the year 1750 hounds began to be entered solely to fox.” The Field of November 6, 1875, p. 512, contains an engraving of a hunting-horn then in the possession of the late master of the Cheshire hounds, and upon the horn is the inscription:—“Thomas Boothby, Esq., Tooley Park, Leicester. With this horn he hunted the first pack of foxhounds then in England fifty-five years. Born 1677. Died 1752. Now the property of Thomas d’Avenant, Esq., county Salop, his grandson.” These extracts do not finally decide the point, because both Mr Boothby’s and Lord Arundel’s hounds may have hunted other game besides fox, just as in Edward IV.’s time there were “fox dogs” though not kept exclusively for fox. On the whole, it is probable that Lord Wilton’s surmise is not far from correct. Since fox hunting first commenced, however, the system of the sport has been much changed. In our great-grandfathers’ time the hounds met early, and found the fox by the drag, that is, by the line he took to his kennel on his return from a foraging expedition. Hunting the drag was doubtless a great test of nose, but many good runs must have been lost thereby, for the fox must often have heard the hounds upwind, and have moved off before they could get on good terms with him. At the present day, the woodlands are neither so large nor so numerous as they formerly were, while there are many more gorse covers; therefore, instead of hunting the drag up to it, a much quicker way of getting to work is to find a fox in his kennel; and, the hour of the meeting being later, the fox is not likely to be gorged with food, and so unable to take care of himself at the pace at which the modern foxhound travels.
Cub hunting carried out on a proper principle is one of the secrets of a successful season. To the man who cares for hunting, as distinct from riding, September and October are not the least enjoyable months of the whole hunting season. As soon as the young entry have recovered from the operation of “rounding,” arrangements for cub hunting begin. The hounds must have first of all walking, then trotting and fast exercise, so that their feet may be hardened, and all superfluous fat worked off by the last week in August. So far as the hounds are concerned, the object of cub hunting is to teach them their duty; it is a dress rehearsal of the November business. In company with a certain proportion of old hounds, the youngsters learn to stick to the scent of a fox, in spite of the fondness they have acquired for that of a hare, from running about when at walk. When cubbing begins, a start is made at 4 or 5 A.M., and then the system is adopted of tracking the cub by his drag. A certain amount of blood is of course indispensable for hounds, but it should never be forgotten that a fox cub of seven or eight months old, though tolerably cunning, is not so very strong; the huntsman should not, therefore, be over-eager in bringing to hand every cub he can find.
Hare hunting, which must not be confounded with Coursing (q.v.), is an excellent school both for men and for horses. It is attended with the advantages of being cheaper than any other kind, and of not needing so large an area of Hare. country. Hare hunting requires considerable skill; Beckford even goes so far as to say: “There is more of true hunting with harriers than with any other description of hounds.... In the first place, a hare, when found, generally describes a circle in her course which naturally brings her upon her foil, which is the greatest trial for hounds. Secondly, the scent of the hare is weaker than that of any other animal we hunt, and, unlike some, it is always the worse the nearer she is to her end.” Hare hunting is essentially a quiet amusement; no hallooing at hounds nor whip-cracking should be permitted; nor should the field make any noise when a hare is found, for, being a timid animal, she might be headed into the hounds’ mouths. Capital exercise and much useful knowledge are to be derived by running with a pack of beagles. There are the same difficulties to be contended with as in hunting with the ordinary harrier, and a very few days’ running will teach the youthful sportsman that he cannot run at the same pace over sound ground and over a deep ploughed field, up hill and down, or along and across furrows.
Otter hunting, which is less practised now than formerly, begins just as all other hunting is drawing to a close. When the waterside is reached an attempt is made to hit upon the track by which the otter passed to his Otter. “couch,” which is generally a hole communicating with the river, into which the otter often dives on first hearing the hounds. When the otter “vents” or comes to the surface to breathe, his muzzle only appears above water, and when he is viewed or traced by the mud he stirs up, or by air bubbles, the hounds are laid on. Notwithstanding the strong scent of the otter, he often escapes the hounds, and then a cast has to be made. When he is viewed an attempt is made to spear him by any of the field who may be within distance; if their spears miss, the owners must wade to recover them. Should the otter be transfixed by a spear, the person who threw it goes into the water and raises the game over his head on the spear’s point. If instead of being speared, he is caught by the hounds, he is soon worried to death by them, though frequently not before he has inflicted some severe wounds on one or more of the pack.
When railways were first started in England dismal prophecies were made that the end of hunting would speedily be brought about. The result on the whole has been the reverse. While in some counties the sport has suffered, townsmen Packs. who formerly would have been too far from a meet can now secure transport for themselves and their horses in all directions; and as a consequence, meets of certain packs are not advertised because of the number of strangers who would be induced to attend. The sport has never been so vigorously pursued as it was at the beginning of the 20th century, 19 packs of staghounds being kept in England and 4 in Ireland, over 170 packs of foxhounds in England, 10 in Scotland and 23 in Ireland, with packs of harriers and beagles too numerous to be counted. The chase of the wild stag is carried on in the west country by the Devon and Somerset hounds, which hunt three or four days a week from kennels at Dunster; by the Quantock; and by a few other local packs. In other parts of England staghound packs are devoted to the capture of the carted deer, a business which is more or less of a parody on the genuine sport, but is popular for the reason that whereas with foxhounds men may have a blank day, they are practically sure of a gallop when a deer is taken out in a cart to be enlarged before the hounds are laid on. Complaints are often raised about the cruelty of what is called tame stag hunting, and it became a special subject of criticism that a pack should still be kept at the Royal kennels at Ascot (it was abolished in 1901) and hunted by the Master of the Buckhounds; but it is the constant endeavour of all masters and hunt servants to prevent the infliction of any injury on the deer. Their efforts in this direction are seldom unsuccessful; and it appears to be a fact that stags which are hunted season after season come to understand that they are in no grave danger. Packs of foxhounds vary, from large establishments in the “Shires,” the meets of which are attended by hundreds of horsemen, some of whom keep large stables of hunters in constant work—for though a man at Melton, for instance, may see a great deal of sport with half-a-dozen well-seasoned animals, the number is not sufficient if he is anxious to be at all times well mounted—to small kennels in the north of England, where the field follow on foot. The “Shires” is a recognized term, but is nevertheless somewhat vague. The three counties included in the expression are Leicestershire, Rutlandshire and Northamptonshire. Several packs which hunt within these limits are not supposed, however, to belong to the “Shires,” whereas a district of the Belvoir country is in Lincolnshire, and to hunt with the Belvoir is certainly understood to be hunting in the “Shires.” The Shire hounds include the Belvoir, the Cottesmore, the Quorn and the Pytchleys; for besides the Pytchley proper, there is a pack distinguished as the Woodland. It is generally considered that the cream of the sport lies here, but with many of the packs which are generally described as “provincial” equally good hunting may be obtained. Round about London a man who is bent on the pursuit of fox or stag may gratify his desire in many directions. The Essex and the Essex Union, the Surrey and the Surrey Union, the Old Berkeley, the West Kent, the Burstow, the Hertfordshire, the Crawley and Horsham, the Puckeridge, as regards foxhounds; the Berkhampstead, the Enfield Chase, Lord Rothschild’s, the Surrey, the West Surrey and the Warnham, as regards staghounds—as well as the Bucks and Berks, which was substituted for the Royal Buckhounds—are within easy reach of the capital.
Questions are constantly raised as to whether horse and hounds have improved or deteriorated in modern times. It is probable that the introduction of scientific agriculture has brought about an increase of pace. Hounds hunt Modern horses and hounds. as well as ever they did, are probably faster on the whole, and in the principal hunts more thoroughbred horses are employed. For pace and endurance no hunter approaches the English thoroughbred; and for a bold man who “means going,” a steeplechase horse is often the best animal that could be obtained, for when he has become too slow to win races “between the flags,” he can always gallop much faster, and usually lasts much longer, than animals who have not his advantage of blood. The quondam “’chaser” is, however, usually apt to be somewhat impetuous at his fences. But it must by no means be supposed that every man who goes out hunting desires to gallop at a great pace and to jump formidable obstacles, or indeed any obstacles at all. A large proportion of men who follow hounds are quite content to do so passively through gates and gaps, with a canter along the road whenever one is available. A few of the principal packs hunt five days a week, and sometimes even six, and for such an establishment not fewer than seventy-five couples of hounds are requisite. A pack which hunts four days a week will be well supplied with anything between fifty and sixty couples, and for two days a week from twenty-five to thirty will suffice. The young hound begins cub-hunting when he is some eighteen months old, and as a rule is found to improve until his third or fourth season, though some last longer than this. Often, however, when a hound is five or six years old he begins to lack speed. Exceptional animals naturally do exceptional things, and a famous hound called Potentate is recorded by the 8th duke of Beaufort to have done notable service in the hunting field for eleven seasons.