224 THOUGHTS ON HUNTING 



If a cover be very large, and you have many scents, 

 be not in a hurry to get your hounds together ; if your 

 pack be numerous, let them run separate, only taking 

 care that none get away entirely from the rest : — by 

 this means many foxes will be equally distressed ; the 

 hounds will get together at last ; and one fox. at the 

 least, you may expect to kill. 



The heading a fox back at first, if the cover be 

 not a large one, is oftentimes of service to hounds, as 

 he will not stop, and cannot go off unseen. When 

 a fox has been hard-run, I have known it turn out 

 otherwise ; and hounds that would easily have killed 

 him out of the cover, have left him in it. 



If it be not your intention that a fox should break, 

 you should prevent him, I think, as much as you can, 

 from coming at all out of the cover ; for, though you 

 should head him back afterwards, it most probably 

 would put the hounds to a fault. When a pack of 

 fox-hounds once leave a cover after their game, they 

 do not readily return to it again. 



When a fox has been often headed back on one 

 side of a cover, and a huntsman knows there is not 

 anybody on the other side to halloo him, the first fault 

 his hounds come to, let him cast that way, lest the fox 

 should be gone off ; and, if he be still in the cover, he 

 may still recover him. 



Suffer not your huntsman to take out a lame hound. 

 If any be tender- footed, he will tell you, perhaps, that 

 they will not mind it when they are out : probably 

 they may not ; but how will they be on the next day ? 

 A hound not in condition to run, cannot be of much 



