THE OTTERHOUND. 



153 



than probable that the rough-coated terrier 

 is identical with the now recognised Otter- 

 hound as an offshoot of the Southern Hound ; 

 but be that as it may, there has been a 

 special breed of Otterhound for the last 

 eighty years, very carefully bred and gradu- 

 ally much improved in point of appear- 

 ance. They are beautiful hounds to-day, 

 with heads as typical as those of Blood- 

 hounds, legs and feet 

 that would do for Fox- 

 hounds, a unique coat 

 of their own, and they 

 are exactly suitable for 

 hunting the otter, as 

 everyone knows w ho 

 has had the enjoyment 

 of a day's sport on 

 river or brook. 



The very existence of 

 the otter is a mystery. 

 He seldom allows him- 

 self to be seen. There 

 is a cunning about the 

 animal that induces 

 him to live far away 

 from the haunts of 

 man, and to occupy 

 two totally different 

 points of vantage, as 

 it were, in as many „ „ _, _. . 



J From 'The Spoilsman s 



hours. He may live in 

 a burrow on a cliff 

 by the sea, and his fishing exploits may 

 extend seven or eight miles up a river, 

 generally in the hours nearest midnight. 

 A stream in South Devon defied whole 

 generations of otter hunters, or perhaps, 

 more properly speaking, the otters did. No 

 matter how early in the morning the hunt 

 was started, there would be a hot trail up 

 stream, hounds throwing their tongues 

 and dashing from bank to bank, through 

 pools, over clitters of rocks, and often 

 landing on meadow-side ; but there would 

 be no otter, and then the hunt would turn 

 and hounds would revel on a burning scent 

 down stream, the quarry meanwhile sleep- 

 ing in his sea-girt holt perfectly safe from 

 any interference. Then, again, the otter 

 may live on the moorside at the head of 



the river, and fish down and back. He is 

 then more accessible, and it is under such 

 conditions that the best sport is obtained. 

 But still these animals are wrapt in won- 

 drous mystery. The Rev. C. Davies, who 

 wrote in The New Sporting Magazine under 

 tin- nomme de guerre of " Gelert," in giving 

 his experience of South Devon otter-hunt- 

 ing early in the 'forties, relates that he 



THE SOUTHERN HOUND <1803\ 



P. Reinagh, R.A. 



quite astonished old resident farmers when 

 he first commenced hunting near their 

 homesteads. They asked him what he 

 was doing. He replied that he was " otter- 

 hunting," and they laughed, and told 

 him they had never heard of such an 

 animal ; and yet he must have killed over 

 fifty in the next five years within a mile of 

 them, and of course otters had always 

 been there. It was the reverend gentle- 

 man's surmise, therefore, that the otter in- 

 habits nearly every river in Great Britain, 

 but that there is no knowing his where- 

 abouts until he is regularly hunted . 



There are different opinions on the sub- 

 ject as to how the otter should be hunted, 

 and the kind of hound best suited for 

 the sport. Mr. Davies leant towards the 



