IN THE SHIRES 



far between, but they do exist, and the sport the 

 foxes afford is naturally poor. 



With the enclosure of the country, and the 

 appearance of conveniently placed coverts, the 

 fox of the Midlands changed his habits to some 

 extent. In the old days, Reynard usually had 

 to travel far and fast in order to reach some point 

 he had in mind, whereas to-day in certain dis- 

 tricts he can run from covert to covert, and 

 hounds find a difficulty in sticking to his line, owing 

 to the presence of fresh foxes. As a well known 

 Midland M.F.H. once said : " If you run a fox 

 more than ten minutes in this country, the 

 chances are that he is another." As far as the 

 riding part of the business is concerned, it matters 

 little how often hounds change, so long as they 

 keep on running, and to-day most of the longest 

 nms are generally the result of one or more such 

 changes. 



The more foxes you have, especially in an 

 enclosed country like the Shires, the less ground 

 will each individual fox know, and the less chance 

 you have of bringing off a really good hunt with 

 one fox as pilot from start to finish. 



In his general habits, the fox of the Midlands 

 differs little from his cousin of the mountains. 

 A fox is a fox wherever you find him, and he is 

 well able to accommodate himself to his sur- 

 roundings. In the Shires, foxes are apt to be 

 less wary than those which inhabit a non-hunting 

 country, for, with the exception of the hounds, 

 they have few if any enemies, and do not require 

 to be so constantly on the alert as the hill-fox, 

 against whom continual warfare is waged. The 

 low-country fox leads an easy and somewhat 

 artificial existence, until such time as the hounds 

 catch him, or his cunning enables him to keep 



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