HARE-HUNTING 



may remark that when, after 1st February or thereabouts, 

 you find two hares together, be sure and lay the pack on the 

 line of the one that goes away first, for that is sure to be the 

 buck. It is true that he may keep circling round to the doe, 

 but on the other hand he is just as likely to fly to the district 

 whence he came, and may then give a straight run with an 

 exceptional point.' 



There be those who maintain that the hare is every whit 

 as resourceful as the fox. Was it not Beckford who attributed 

 to her cunning the hare's legendary connection with witches ? 

 A beaten hare will go to ground in drain or rabbit hole : in 

 the Field of 15th February 1875 there is record of a ferret 

 having bolted a rabbit from a burrow, which rabbit was quickly 

 followed by a hare which appeared with the ferret clinging to 

 her. Whether harriers had recently been in the neighbour- 

 hood does not appear. Mr. Webster once had this same ex- 

 perience. The Haldon got a hare away from a dense woodland 

 known as Black Forest,^ and after a fine gallop checked close 

 to a house and buildings known as Gulliford. While trying to 

 recover the line an astonished cry of * A hare, a hare ' was 

 heard. The hunted hare had gone to ground in a bank which 

 was being at that moment ferreted by people without guns, 

 and one of the party caught the hare as she bolted (a ferret 

 will bolt a hare in a moment). * Never,' says Mr. Webster, 

 * spare a hare that goes to ground ; she will do it again on the 

 next opportunity, and the habit is very likely to be hereditary. 

 He also remarks that anything in the shape of an open door 

 offers peculiar attractions to the hunted hare. ' When hounds 

 come to a decided check near buildings of any description, 

 the huntsman should be most careful to try every open door. 

 One may lose hares in all sorts of queer places, stables and 

 outhouses and the like : it is also judicious to look behind 

 anything like boxes or barrels or a pile of faggots. An old 

 aunt of mine once saved a hare from the Eton Beagles by 

 opening a door for her.' 



1 The woodlands in the Haldon country are seldom drawn by foxhounds as they are 

 full of wild fallow deer. 



H 57 



