BRITISH SPORT PAST AND PRESENT 



1880 the Devon and Somerset lost their stag after a thirty-mile 

 run : he beat them, as many a stag has done, before and since, 

 by putting out to sea, whence he was rescued by fishermen. 



Deer make extraordinarily big jumps on occasion. Lord 

 Ribblesdale says that the deer Runaway earned his name by 

 jumping the oak palings of Swinley paddocks, 8 feet high : 

 he had been startled by the crack of a whip. A fallow buck 

 which, having escaped from Chippenham Park, was run by 

 harriers, made two wonderful leaps to regain its old quarters : 

 the first 27 feet over a rail and bank into a road, the next over 

 the park wall which, with the bank on which it stood, was 

 9 feet in height : the two consecutive leaps covered 42 feet. 



Fallow deer have given some long runs : but perhaps they 

 are more remarkable for their craft than for straight running. 

 Mr. George Race maintains that a fallow deer shows greater 

 resource in eluding hounds than either fox or hare. ' I have 

 seen them when beaten jump into a brook and submerge them- 

 selves till only their nose remained above water. They will 

 spring sideways from their tracks and crouch in covert while 

 hounds over-run the scent. I have seen them drop down in a 

 wood of a year's growth in a large bunch of grass and briars, 

 hiding cleverly where you would think it impossible for so large 

 an animal to find concealment.' 



Cervine methods, in a word, have not changed during the 

 centuries : ' and bicause they should have no sent of him nor 

 vent him he wil trusse all his iiii feete under his belly and will 

 blow^ and breath upon ye grounde in some moyst place in such 

 sorte yt I have scene the houndes passe by such an Harte 

 within a yeard of him and never vent him ... if he have 

 taken the soyle in such sort, that of all his body you shal see 

 nothing but his nose : and I have seen divers lye so untyll 

 the houndes have beene upon them before they would ryse ' 

 [The Booke of Hunting, 1576). 



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