]4 NOTES FOE HUXTIXG-MEN 



These, with a hack in addition, ought to do you 

 well, and, with luck, enable you to squeeze in a fifth 

 day pretty often. If, however, stern necessity for- 

 bids you to keep so large a stud, it is for you to 

 decide either to hunt less frequently, do shorter 

 days, or, taking the risks, keep one horse out 

 all day. 



Masters of Midland packs allow two horses per 

 hunt servant for each day in the week they hunt, 

 with two or three extra ones besides. This sounds 

 a very liberal allowance, each horse coming out 

 but once a w^eek for half a day ; but it must be 

 remembered that, whilst they are out, these horses 

 have considerably more to do than yours or mine ; 

 and I only mention the figures to show you what 

 men, with the best of everything at their command, 

 and doing things on a large scale, find from the 

 experience of years to be the requisite minimum. 

 However generous a master might be, he would 

 hardly keep more horses than was necessary, and 

 I am sure that, taking one season with another, 

 they do not find the above proportions excessive. 

 Only the other day I was going round the stable of 

 a well-mounted pack which hunts over a strongly 

 fenced country. It was towards the end of an open 

 season, and the stud-groom was decidedly short of 

 horses, though his stud consisted of the very best 

 of fourteen-stone blood hunters ridden by light men. 



