330 MANUAL FOR YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 



kill the most hares is to stand still, pretty well concealed 

 by some pine bush or stump, keeping every limb perfectly 

 motionless, with as many open glades around you and 

 under your eye as you can command, nearly in the spot 

 from which the game was first started. He is perfectly 

 certain to return, once and again ; for it is his nature ever 

 to run in small rings, endeavoring to deceive his pursuers 

 by foiling his own track, rather than to outstrip them by 

 speed. I never knew an instance of either variety going 

 straight away, or of the beagles being above a quarter of 

 an hour out of hearing. Indeed, they are rarely so long 

 absent. Their cheery cry at the return will tell the 

 sportsman when and in which direction to look for his 

 game ; but he must look sharp, or he will be apt to find, to 

 his astonishment, by seeing the hounds carry the scent 

 past his face within ten paces, that the small gray rascal 

 has stolen before his eyes unobserved, under cover of it is 

 wonderful how little brush or low herbage, or jumped 

 across an opening while his eyes were momentarily averted. 

 Again, if he do not keep himself perfectly motionless, 

 his time is thrown away. A hare before hounds, and 

 sometimes even a deer, if the wind be not fairly in his 

 nostrils from the enemy, will run straight up to a man, 

 standing in full view in the open, if he move not hand, 

 head nor foot, as if he were a post, perhaps mistaking him 

 for such. But let him wink but an eyelid perceptibly, and 

 it will be off at a tangent, like lightning. It is singular, 

 indeed ; but his voice not only has less effect in deterring 

 the animal or increasing its speed, than the show of any 

 movement, but actually causes it to stop and listen. 



