-2 BUNTING AND SPORTING NOTES. 



hounds have tasted plenty of blood. Horses have not 

 suffered from the hard ground, and everything is ready 

 for a good beginning. With the ^Yynnstay hunt, as 

 your readers are all aware, a change has come over the 

 scone, owiog to the late Sir Watkin's death — an event 

 that all sportsmen, of whatever type, most deeply 

 deplored, because they felt that they had thus lost the 

 head and front of hunting in the county. A man, 

 who, for more than forty years, had done everything 

 that money, influence, tact, and experience could do to 

 make their pleasures of the hunt^ing second to none 

 in the United Kingdom. Sir Watkin, however, still 

 lives in his successor, and building, as the present 

 Sir Watkin wull do, on the foundations and example 

 set him so splendidly, I have not the slightest doubt 

 that, if all goes well with him, he will have a still 

 greater chronicle of success to hand on, let us hope, to a 

 long line of heirs. 



With a stable full of nice horses, an improved pack 

 of hounds, a keen heart, a new^ huntsman, and all the 

 country at his back, w^hat can he wish for more, in a 

 sportmg sense, in this sublunary world I William 

 LocKey, his new huntsman, I have known so many years 

 that I am shy of saying too nmcii of him, for fear it should 

 be considered mere fulsome praise. No man ever won his 

 spurs so thoroughh- as he did while in the Ludlow country 

 - — as a whip he was certainly the best I ever saw there, 

 while in kennel management he had a master, who 

 delighted to teach him everything. When he went 

 into W^orcestershire the Ludlow men grieved terribly. 

 It took him some time to shake off the whip and 

 become the huntsman — a place in which very few^ 

 men have succeeded in Worcestershire. The truth 

 to tell, it is essentially a blind and difficult country, 

 inhabited by fast pushing men. It carries a poor 

 scent and its foxes are short-running, torturous beggars, 

 as a rule. The hedges are so high and uncut, and 

 there is so much hedgerow timber, that a huntsman 

 has a poor chance of getting forward, and kills few 

 foxes. With all this, Lockey has left many staunch 

 friends in Worcestershire, and will, I am sure, make 

 many fresh ones in Shropshire. He has temper. 



