HUNTING THE FOX 57 



leading Hounds have come to the first check. 

 Nothing could be more demoralizing. 



When the Hounds who are left behind have been 

 striving with their heads in the air to get to the 

 front, it takes them some time to grasp the situation 

 when they get there ; many valuable moments 

 are lost before they recover their moral and put 

 their heads down ; acute observers will tell you 

 that under these circumstances, unless there is a 

 burning scent, things are never quite the same again, 

 and that a minute or two, apparently lost at the 

 beginning in giving every Hound a good start, is 

 recovered over and over again in the course of the 

 run by the concentration and cohesion resulting 

 from the whole body starting in a mass. In order 

 to accomplish this, the moment a Fox is holloaed 

 away down wind the Huntsman should either stand 

 still or, if necessary, turn back up wind, so as to 

 get into close touch with the body of the pack. 

 He should then tell them that the Fox has gone 

 and that he wants them. For this purpose he 

 should reserve one particular call on his horn, a 

 call that he never sounds except when the Fox has 

 broken covert, or when he has got his foot upon 

 the Fox's dead body. Hounds will fly to this note 

 like nothing on earth, and will come tumbling out 

 of the thick covert into the ride, or field as the case 

 may be, only too gladly. The Huntsman then 

 canters them round to the holloa — where the 



