HUNTING ABROAD 157 



the thrill of real hunting quite impossible to obtain 

 following a drag. Moreover, none of the glorious day's 

 fun results in the killing of any of the creatures of the 

 wild. 



Many well-known minting men agree that it re- 

 quires quite as much intelligence to hunt a deer as a 

 fox, and what is more, as the deer seems utterly in- 

 different as to how or which way he runs, one is abso- 

 lutely obliged to keep hounds in sight, for, once lost, 

 no amount of hunting lore will enable one to find them 

 again. When hounds are running it requires a very 

 phlegmatic temperament to remember that the deer 

 is only a " carted" one. 



The pace is as fast, if not faster, than even the 

 Meadow Brook drag, and the jumps as big as ever 

 found in the proverbial drag that was "laid with a 

 butterfly net." The stag will jump twenty feet with 

 the ease and grace of a flying bird; will give you a 

 twenty-mile point and even run into the next county, 

 keeping you out from dawn to dark,* but the first 

 man or woman in at the " taking" of the stag has the 

 undeniably gratifying job of saving the beautiful animal 

 from the pack. 



It is true that fox-hunting is by no means as cruel 

 a sport as the rabid S. P. C. A. agents would have us 

 believe; that it does not brutalize its votaries — for 

 if it did the British nation instead of being one of the 

 kindest to animals would be the reverse. It is equally 

 true that the fox probably does not possess the human 

 sensitiveness with which he is endowed in John Mase- 

 field's truly beautiful poem " Reynard the Fox." It 



* Occasionally when hunting these carted deer, the hounds will get 

 on the scent of an "outlaw" stag, or one who, enlarged a long time 

 past, has never been retaken. In this case a truly exciting day results. 



