Recollections of the Vine Hunt. 



an excellent sportsman and exceedingly popular, and 

 is indeed still looked back to with respect, as the father 

 of foxhunting in that country ; but his mode of fox- 

 hunting was peculiar. He kept a pack of powerful 

 harriers with a cross of the foxhound ; and with these 

 he hunted hare habitually, and fox occasionally ; that 

 is to say, whenever he thought he could find one. On 

 these occasions he met very early in the morning, 

 keeping the body of his pack in couples, and trusting 

 to two or three steady old foxhounds for finding. 

 With these he would go quietly round the gorse covers 

 on the Southdown Hills ; and if there was no drag, nor 

 any symptom of a fox having gone into the cover, he 

 did not waste time in drawing it, but went on to 

 another. As soon as a fox was found, the rest of the 

 hounds were uncoupled, and, when once put on the 

 scent of the fox, were sufficiently steady to it through 

 the day. In this way Mr. King Sampson is said to 

 have shown excellent sport ; and I have no doubt that 

 he killed many a fox which a modern pack of hounds, 

 with a modern Brighton field of some hundreds of men, 

 women, and children in the midst of them, must needs 

 have lost. I need scarcely add that this same country 

 has long been hunted by an excellent pack of regular 

 foxhounds. 



Late in the last century, some friends of my father 

 attempted to hunt fox with a pack of harriers on the 

 Nettlebed Hills in Oxfordshire. At the beginning of 

 the season they succeeded well enough ; but after 

 Christmas, when foxes had become stronger and more 

 dispersed, these hounds proved unequal to the great 

 distances and long draws required of them, and were 

 generally half tired before the fox was found. 



