58 THE AMERICAN HUNTING DOG 



large pack for his own use, as coon hunting was 

 his favourite recreation. The Eedbones, more or 

 less pure, or else crossed on Walker stock, are in 

 existence to-day and still going strong, quite a 

 few kennels advertising them. 



Of the Northern hounds, the Buckfields orig 

 inated around the town of Buckfield, Me., and were 

 used for deer driving and fox hunting in the 

 Northern style, that is, the gunner standing on a 

 runway and shooting the fox ahead of the hounds, 

 just as deer are shot in the South. An aside here 

 seems inevitable on the oddities of sectional no 

 tions regarding the ethics of sport. Your North 

 ern still-hunter of deer looks with as much horror 

 on the driver of the South as the horse-and-hound 

 man of Kentucky does on the New Englander who 

 would dare to shoot a fox instead of running him 

 to a finish. Really, it is local conditions that gov 

 ern in both cases, and the ethics are equally 

 sportsmanlike in both. It would be impossible to 

 run a fox with hounds in the Northern mountains ; 

 also impossible to still-hunt a deer in the South 

 ern brushwood. You must have more or less open 

 country to run foxes to horse, and you must have 

 mountainous country to still-hunt deer. The best 

 horse could not keep up with a fox in the Ver 

 mont hills, so they are shot ahead of the dogs; 



