With the Galway ^Blazers 



Hounds were making the woods ring to their music. 

 Scent seemed to be perfect, but the big number of cubs 

 that were afoot complicated matters and made it very 

 difficult for hounds to concentrate on one particular line. 



I had heard that this part of Galway was over-stocked 

 with foxes, and when two more members of the tribe 

 appeared on either side of me I felt that the wood must 

 be alive with them. I charged at the smaller one and 

 headed him back into the wood. The bigger one ignored 

 my efforts, loped across the road, hopped over a wall 

 and slipped away across country. I watched this old 

 gentleman admiringly. Hounds would have little busi- 

 ness chasing that old campaigner at this stage of the 

 season. The older members of the pack might have 

 been fit enough, but the un- entered puppies and the 

 hunt horses were not yet equal to a strenuous cross- 

 country run. 



There was a determined note in the music in the 

 wood. The undergrowth crashed as hounds charged. 

 The music weakened as they ran. They were coursing 

 their quarry. Soon there was an angry growl, a rattle 

 on the horn, and I knew there was one fox less in 

 Galway. 



In a few moments hounds were speaking again. This 

 time the cry was redoubled. One could hear the young 

 excited notes of the puppies. They may have been 

 running silent before, but now they were beginning to 

 hunt in deadly earnest. They may have had aristocratic 

 blood in their veins, they might win prizes on the Show 

 bench at Peterborough or Clonmel, but their primary 



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