CHAPTER III 



MODERN CONDITIONS OF 

 HUNTING 



MANY and great are the changes which have 

 taken place in hunting during the last thirty 

 or forty years. Not indeed in the actual 

 manner of hunting, but rather in the conditions which 

 surround it. As far as the style of pursuit of either 

 fox, hare, or stag is concerned there is practically nothing 

 new. Present-day masters and huntsmen bring out a 

 pack of similar size to what was used a hundred years 

 ago, and at a cursory glance little difference would be 

 noticed — except perhaps in the matter of colour — be- 

 tween the hounds of our great-grandfathers and those 

 used to-day. The expert would not be long in dis- 

 covering where variations existed, but to the ordinary 

 eye a pack of hounds is a pack of hounds all the world 

 over. The method of drawing coverts, the subsequent 

 run and general system of pursuing a fox, of casting 

 hounds when they can no longer own the line, and of 

 breaking the fox up when killed are probably much the 

 same as they were in the earliest days of the sport. It 

 is more than probable that fewer hunted foxes are dug 

 out than was formerly the case, and doubtless there has 

 been some alteration in the hours, but in all its chief 

 essentials foxhunting is still conducted as it always 

 was, the conditions only having changed. 



And of the many changes which have taken place, or 



25 



