The steep field to our right, bounded by thick wattled hedges, was a known haunt, and dog, guns, and the wanderer alike were on the alert. But though we scanned the breadth of windswept ‘fog,’ not the slightest indication of fur was there. Rough, ranging down towards the foot of the glen, began to quarter the tiny level beneath the rise, and almost immediately up jumped a big rabbit. For a few seconds its rushing form was seen through the topmost ash-stems fringing the stream which drained the ghyll; then, as it ran above them, there was a double crack, both guns firing at once. The furry body rolled over and over, then came to rest just as the pursuing Rough galloped up. Now, a beagle is not, like a trained retriever, to be commanded with a word at a moment like this. It runs up to its quarry, and, should it not be dead, worries it till satisfied. This penchant, though in Rough almost small enough to be innocent, caused one or other of us, after each shot, to ‘pick up.’
A minute or two later the leathern bags to contain the day’s shoot, and our present instalment thereof, were being deposited in the stable of the farmhouse, after which we moved on again. Right opposite us, when orchard and cottage were cleared, was a steep bit of bank, where freshly-moved earth showed that rabbits were in active occupation. There was no chance of approaching this stronghold unseen from our present direction. It was a place for ferreting, rather. We now neared another rivulet. Rough was all excitement, straining to the limit of his leash, yet not violently rebellious of restraint. The principal motioned his friend to advance towards a gap in the thick sycamore hedge. Gun at the ready, he crept forward. We watched alertly. Beyond the hedge seemed to be a small field. The swelling ridge we had been passing here broke into a sheer front, not rocky, but grassy, and decked with hazel and oak and ash, pitted here and there where the soil perpetually frittered away. This face of the bluff was likely to be honeycombed with burrows, and the natural feeding-ground of their occupants would be the narrow level W—— was reconnoitring. I saw his gun go up, there was a couple of sharp reports, and W——, jamming fresh cartridges into the breach, was plunging across the stony beck course in the hope of getting a parting shot at some outlier. But if such there were, it did not come within our range of vision. W—— mounted the gap and walked out to ‘pick up.’ With Rough now at liberty, questing bramble and bush in a systematic manner in front of us, we now negotiated the very wobbly gate (or hurdle) which divided us from the coppiced bluff. The principal now turned to me.
‘Stand well back, and call if Rough drives anything among the bushes.’
The angle of the short rise was so severe that I could not do this properly till I had retreated into the bed of the streamlet. Rough was ranging, often hidden from sight by intervening bushes, halfway up the slope. From his excited movements, game had apparently been astir not many seconds ago. Trail after trail he struck, but each time the makers were safe aground. A moment of silence, then he gave tongue—a wild, musical clarion-call to the chase—and with head down and stern up flashed in and out among the bushes. A rabbit had crossed the brae in front of him toward the cluster of burrows opposite which W—— had posted himself. The sudden intrusion of a bustling enemy roused the rabbits sheltering in the further half of the coppice, and Rough’s grand voice rang out again and again as he galloped about.
‘Mark, to your left!’ The fur was making a dash across a narrow gap commanded by the distant gun. W—— slewed around quickly and fired. His eye was barely off the rolling body ere there was another sharp rustle among the grass. A rabbit was descending the brae in a frantic attempt to reach its hole. The shot, though at very short range, was not easy, for the rabbit presented a very foreshortened length, and was moving with the added impetus of the steep slope.
Rough was still frantically busy among the undergrowth in the closest part of the coppice. Rabbits were being dislodged without doubt, but they were able to get to earth without coming into our sight. One essayed to break in our direction, and the beagle, after a sharp backward glance, allowed it. The principal was ready the moment cover was left, and did not miss. The rabbit, though far up the slope when hit, rolled an inanimate corpse to within my reach.
It was now apparent that the occupants of the bluff-end coppice were thoroughly aroused to their danger, and that scant further toll would be extracted for the present, so we turned back—Rough most regretfully, and only in obedience to many calls and whistles—and surmounted the wobbly fence. At the crest of the bluff we walked across an intervening field to a dense-bottomed hedge, haunt of various outliers from the colony in the wood. One gun took each side the fence, Rough working ahead of them, and myself wandering a bit wide in the hope of flushing a ‘clapped ’un’ from the sodden long ‘fog’ grass. At first Rough didn’t seem very willing to work the hedge, probably because no game was there, contenting himself with trotting alongside. But before he had gone thirty yards he was all keenness, wriggling through the smallest smoots (tracks) to change fields every few seconds.
But not a rabbit would budge. For several hundred yards Rough wriggled and scampered, then paused with his nose scenting the air opposite a clump of impenetrable thorns, whimpering, and his lean body quivering with enthusiasm. But I guess this was the haunt of a cute old rascal who, from the secure mouth of his hole, was enjoying Rough’s quandary, and every few seconds exposing enough of his unreachable self to taint the air for the beagle’s nostrils to snuff. Quite a minute this probable by-play went on, and at the end our white companion moved on again by the hedgeside.
‘Stop!’ said the principal, close to whom I was walking. Throwing his gun up, he stepped backward some ten yards, his eyes all the while intent on something among the tushes of grass. Then he fired. There was a convulsive moment as a white body rolled over and over. The rabbit was but a small one, and as it lay had quite escaped my notice. Probably forty yards on the same incident occurred, but this time I sighted the frail, white-lined ears like two dead leaves above the grass. It is wasteful to shoot such tiny padders, but as they sit among the grass, with only a pair of ears visible, it is impossible to hazard a guess as to what size the creatures really are. To flush them and give them law in a field full of curious heifers means losing them, or risking serious damage to the bovine spectators.
The hedgerow finished, we turned farmwards, walking fairly wide apart to beat up as much ground as possible. Rough’s restless movements on the left sent a big rabbit leaping right across our front. Moving at speed, a rabbit presents much of the poetry of motion. How regularly its limbs curve and straighten, and its lithe body bounds in response to muscles hard as steel hidden beneath the soft gray-and-white fur. Yet this one, though blessed with abundant energy, did not get to cover before the principal’s gun spoke.