STAG-HUNTING 



TURBERVILE'S description of the approved methods 

 of harbouring, rousing and hunting a stag in the 

 sixteenth century would in the main apply as well 

 to those in vogue on Exmoor, in the New Forest 

 and Lancashire at the present time, as they would to the 

 sport in the days of the Normans, when chase, by the un- 

 privileged, of the ' King's Great Game ' was an offence punish- 

 able by death or mutilation. The most noteworthy change 

 has been in the hounds. When Mr. Lucas, Master of the hunt 

 since known as the Devon and Somerset,^ in 1825 sold his pack 

 to go to France, the last of the old breed of staghounds left 

 England. ' For courage, strength, speed and tongue, they 

 were unrivalled : few horses could live with them in the open. 

 Their rarest quality perhaps was their sagacity in hunting in 

 the water. Every pebble, every overhanging bush or twig 

 which the deer might have touched was quested . . . and the 

 crash with which the scent, if detected, was acknowledged and 

 announced made the whole country echo again.' Daniel says 

 ' the Staghound is large and gallops with none of the neatness 

 of the Foxhound ' : it would seem also to have been more 

 temperate, as he observes that its only excellence (!) 'is the 

 being more readily brought to stop when headed by the Hunts- 

 man or his assistants, altho' in the midst of his keenest pursuit.' 

 There is no better picture of stag-hunting on Exmoor than 

 that of Dr. C. P. Collyns :— 



' . . . But we must move onward ; below us we gaze on 

 the lovely vale of Porlock, a strip of richly cultivated land, 

 beyond which the plantations of Selworthy rise green and 

 high, hiding the cliffs against which the angry waters of the 



1 The name was uot adopted until 1837. 

 31 



