122 THOUGHTS ON HUNTING 



to say it is the only time when it should be done. While hounds run straight 

 it cannot be of any use ; for they will get on faster with the scent than they 

 would without it. 



When hounds are hunting a cold scent, and point towards a cover, 

 let a whipper-in get forward to the opposite side of it : should the fox 

 break before the hounds reach the cover, stop them, and get them nearer 

 to him. 



When a fox persists in running in a strong cover, lies down often behind 

 the hounds, and they are slack in hunting him, let the huntsman get into 

 the cover to them : it may make the fox break ; it may keep him off his 

 foil ; or may prevent the hounds from giving him up. 



It is not often that slow huntsmen kill many foxes : they are a check 

 upon their hounds, which seldom kill a fox but with a high scent, when it 

 is out of their power to prevent it. What avails it, to be told which way 

 the fox is gone, when he is so far before that you cannot hunt him ? A 

 Newmarket boy, with a good understanding and a good voice, might be 

 preferable, perhaps, to an indifferent and slack huntsman ; he would press 

 on his hounds while the scent was good, and the foxes that he killed he 

 would kill handsomely. A perfect knowledge of the intricacies of hunting 

 is chiefly of use to slow huntsmen, and bad hounds ; since they more often 

 stand in need of it. Activity is the first requisite in a huntsman to a pack 

 of fox-hounds : a want of it, no judgment can make amends for ; while 

 the most difficult of all his undertakings is the distinguishing between 

 different scents, and knowing with any certainty the scent of his hunted 

 fox. Much speculation is here required the length of time that hounds 

 remain at fault ; difference of ground ; change of weather ; all these 

 contribute to increase the difficulty, and require a nicety of judgment, and 

 a precision, much above the comprehension of most huntsmen. 



When hounds are at fault, and cannot make it out of themselves, let 

 the first cast be quick : the scent is then good ; nor are the hounds likely 

 to go over it : as the scent gets worse, the cast should be slower, and be 

 more cautiously made. This is an essential part of hunting, and which, 

 I am sorry to say, few huntsmen attend to. I wish they would remember 

 the following rules, viz. that, with a good scent, their cast should be quick 

 with a bad scent, slow ; and that, when their hounds are picking along a 

 cold scent, they are not to cast them at all. 



When hounds are at fault, and staring about, trusting entirely to 

 their eyes and their ears, the making a cast with them, I apprehend, would 

 be to little purpose. The likeliest place for them to find the scent, is where 

 they left it ; and when the fault is evidently in the dog, a forward cast is 

 least likely to recover the scent. 1 



1 Hounds know where they left the scent, and, if let alone, will try to recover it. Im- 

 patience in the huntsman, at such times, seldom fails, in the end, to spoil the hounds. 



