ON HALLOING 



snaps when you cheer hounds to an abortive view, 

 and the ends can seldom be pieced together again. 

 One cannot be too quiet towards the end of a run, 

 for it is the most tickHsh moment of the chase. 



Of course there may come a time when hounds 

 are fairly run out of scent by a beaten fox. A 

 halloa then may be the means of bringing him to 

 hand, if it is given by a person who has viewed 

 the fox as a beaten fox. Hounds are taken to 

 the exact spot where the fox was last seen, and 

 with luck they may hit him off and eventually 

 gain their due reward. The business of viewing a fox 

 as a beaten fox is not always so simple as it 

 sounds, for if the fox happens to see you first, 

 he will temporarily smarten himself up, and pull 

 himself together so that he appears like a fresh one. 

 Thus, if you get but a brief view of him you may 

 be easily deceived, but if you can keep him in 

 sight for some distance he will give himself away 

 by sagging to earth again with arched spine and 

 dragging brush. In a country where there is a 

 lot of halloing, as in Ireland, a huntsman had 

 better trust to his hounds entirely, and ignore 

 all halloas except those given by the whippers-in or 

 the Master. By constantly lifting hounds to 

 halloas you make them wild and unsteady, and 

 instead of getting their noses down they are 

 always on the alert for the voice of some idiot who 

 thinks it his duty to make as much noise as 

 possible every time he happens to view a fox. 



It is time enough to " let off steam" by 

 halloing, when hounds are eating their fox, for 

 you can do no harm then, and may provide some 

 amusement for the field if you are only a mediocre 

 performer. While a halloa may not exert any 

 direct influence on a fresh fox in the way of 

 altering the scent, it acts adversely on a beaten 



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