132 The Hunting Field With Horse and Hound 



land you will find yourself in reach of a pack of hounds and 

 wherever that is you will find also, first class accommodations 

 for man and beast, and someone not too far away of whom you 

 may hire a mount. 



Of all the delightful places to put up, a village inn in a 

 favourite hunting district fills the bill. The larger hotels are as 

 a rule dreary, lonesome, forbidding affairs. 



At all the leading hunt centres there are any quantity of 

 hunting boxes with first class stabling for rent from £60 to 

 X600 or more for the season. It is quite the fashion in Eng- 

 land to hire such a small country or suburban box with two to 

 four acres of land and to leave the hunters there all summer 

 in charge of a groom. Some sell out root and branch and 

 buy again a few months before the season opens. Others flit 

 about, hunting from a dozen different centres during the sea- 

 son, depending on mounts from "Jobmasters." This is as 

 economical a way as any, and as most Jobmasters ^^A\{ mount 

 a man, especially a stranger, as well or better than he can 

 mount himself, it usually gives good satisfaction, especially 

 to visiting sportsmen. 



What astonishes an American most is where all the foxes 

 come from to supply each club with three to five kills a week. 

 A blank day is quite unusual anywhere, and a day when there 

 is a run that the fox fails to be accounted for is also unusual. 

 Frank Gillard during his 26 years as huntsman to the Belvoir 

 killed 2709 foxes, an average of over 100 per season, which is 

 also about the average number of runs between the opening 

 day about September 15th and the closing day in the latter 

 part of April. There are many other packs that can show as 

 good and even better records than the above. Americans who 

 are mostly accustomed to blank days and runs without a kill 

 wonder at the great difference in this respect between the two 

 countries. It is easily accounted for. First, nearly every farm 

 in Great Britain is a game preserve and most of the larger 



