204 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN 



site ride, to give him the meeting ; and having posted myself, I 

 heard him fling his tongue, and, my ear told me, coming towards 

 where I stood ; there then was a long silence, but at length the 

 angry yell, the booming of his full tongue, and the bound of the 

 roused doe, distinctly reached me, all coming towards where I 

 stood, and in another moment she paused in the bushes, dead 

 beat, and I shot her through the head at four o'clock, when she 

 became as stiff as a hunted fox. My experience in this peculiar 

 method of hunting teaches me that a deer slowly pursued by a 

 bloodhound will do as I have seen hares do in cold scents with 

 harriers ; when beaten, their last effort will be a strong one ; 

 they will go farther and faster before they lay up than they 

 have gone before ; but if that effort is mastered, and they are 

 got up to again, the struggle is over. 



The perfection of the shooting at Heron Court is the variety 

 of the game, and the ignorance of the gunner as to what next 

 will rise before him. Lord Malmsbury, I think, killed thirty- 

 six wild-swans in one winter to his own gun ; and an eagle and 

 a swan have been shot within twenty-four hours of one another. 

 The stuffed specimens of the rare birds killed there, and which 

 adorn the hall, are unequalled in number, variety, and interest. 



Attached to Heron Court are the Stour, Little Stour, and 

 Moors river, where the pike-fishing is excellent ; the largest fish 

 I killed with the rod, in March last, weighed twenty-one pounds 

 and a half; and, like all the Stour pike caught in season, was 

 most excellent, when baked, for the table. The best way to 

 dress a pike is to boil it with the scales on; on carving, the 

 scales peel off in large flakes with the skin, under the fish-knife, 

 and, the water being thus kept out of the fish, adds to its firm- 

 ness and flavour. The tench, sometimes weighing three or four 

 pounds, from these rivers are beautiful, and so are the perch ; 

 but in those portions of the Stour where I have fished, the perch 

 seldom exceed a pound in weight. Salmon come a certain 

 distance up the Stour, as well as the Avon; yet, though the 

 rivers approximate so close as to form the same harbour at 

 Christchurch, the salmon will only rise to a fly in the Avon. 



