72 THE RED DEER OF EXMOOR. 



his whip, that they would move. Some few years 

 ago we ran a young stag from the Molland Covert 

 over Anstey Common. Hounds were running well 

 through the furz6 bushes on the south side of the 

 common, with a field of perhaps a couple of hundred 

 galloping along behind them, but an old stag lay fast 

 in the furze brake with his nose on the ground, while 

 the pack swung by within fifty yards of him, and 

 many riders passed him much closer than that. Yet 

 he never stirred a muscle. In one of the big runs 

 over the forest in 1903, as we galloped through a 

 patch of fern near Withy bed, Mr. Gordon Clark's 

 horse jumped clean over a hind which was lying fast. 

 We all sat one day in a field by Bradley to watch 

 tufters rouse a stag out of some very thick fern and 

 bramble bushes just across a little goyal not big 

 enough to be called a combe. We could see an 

 antler rising above the fern, and watched hounds 

 which had the greatest difficulty in forcing their way 

 through the thick patch of bushes only about thirty 

 yards long by twenty wide. They could just wind 

 deer somewhere, but could not tell where, and it was 

 not till a hound came right on the stag, and dashed 

 at him to seize him, that he deigned to make a move, 

 and then two, and not one only, jumped up. " The 

 Art of Venerie " puts it thus: 'And because they 

 should have no sent of him or vent him he will trusse 

 all his iiii feet under his belley, and will blow and 

 breathe upon the ground in some moyst place in such 

 sorte yt I have seen the houndes passe such an harte 



