IN THE SHIRES 



aim of most of them appears to be a fast gallop, 

 with plenty of jumping, and blood at the finish. 

 They have no patience with long draws, or slow 

 hunting runs. Seeing that this is the case, more 

 foxes are necessary to provide quick finds, and 

 so the various hunting countries in the Midlands 

 now carry an enormous stock. It is safe to say 

 that the average fashionable pack kills more 

 cubs before regular hunting begins than would 

 have sufficed our ancestors for an entire season. 

 It is popularly supposed that hounds must be 

 " blooded up to the eyes" before they are pro- 

 perly entered, and so twenty or thirty brace of 

 cubs are accounted for. As a matter of fact, 

 this "blooding" business is greatly overdone, 

 despite what the various authorities tell us. 

 Many provincial packs kill very few cubs, while 

 the fell packs do no regular cub-hunting at all, 

 and never actually break up their foxes. The 

 same may be said of many American packs which 

 seldom get blood, yet all the north country hounds 

 and those in America exhibit the greatest keenness 

 to hunt. It is this enormous increase of foxes 

 that is responsible for the decadence of the Midland 

 fox to-day. Cub-hunting is far more necessary 

 to reduce the stock of foxes than to blood hounds, 

 and even after the cubbing business is over the 

 remaining stock is generally far too big in most 

 countries to provide good hunting runs, apart 

 from the galloping and jumping point of view. 

 One has only to read the hunting accounts in the 

 sporting papers to realize how seldom a really fine 

 hunt with a single fox comes off in the fashionable 

 countries to-day. It is usually a case of one or 

 more changes, with hounds run out of scent at 

 the end, and a trot to fresh covert for another 

 quick find. 



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