SPORTSMAN 215 



has not been adopted by poachers until within the 

 last ten or twelve years, if so long ; but nothing is 

 so fatal, if set next to the oat-stubbles or fields 

 where they feed. The writer has had ten or twelve 

 hounds caught at a time by the foot, when cub- 

 hunting at four or five o'clock in the morning, 

 before the pheasants came out to feed ; and he has 

 taken several pheasants alive out of these wires, 

 and released them. And there is no plan that can 

 be adopted half so beneficial as to have a pack of 

 fox-hounds to open and widen the runs in and 

 about the covers. These wires are set as soon as it 

 is light, and the pheasants shortly after are caught 

 in them. The whole affair is done in a couple 

 of hours ; and it is impossible for the keeper to be 

 everywhere during that time. Indeed, poachers 

 have often been heard to say that a pack of fox- 

 hounds is the greatest enemy they have. 



Men who have keepers and who wish well to 

 fox-hunting, by ordering them to set their traps for 

 vermin in a particular way will catch all the vermin, 

 without touching a fox ; but the excuse is that 

 traps, which are baited with rabbits, etc., as 

 they say for small vermin, often catch foxes, — 

 indeed more foxes than anything else. Instead 

 therefore of baiting the trap in the usual way by 



