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It is important, too, when fox-hunting, to study 

 the direction of the wind. len hounds are drawing 

 or hunting in big woodlands, and the wind is high, if 

 one does not keep down wind, it is easy to lose them 

 completely; and when hounds are running across the 

 wind in the open it is well to keep down wind of them, 

 for tired foxes nearly always sink the wind. But 

 it is a mistake to think that a fox, even a tired one, 

 never turns up wind: I have seen men lose a hunt from 

 a too implicit belief in this rule, and the failing does 

 not seem to have been unknown to our grandfathers, for 

 Beckford, writing of huntsmen, says; "I have known them 

 lose foxes rather than condescend to try up the wind at 

 all". 



The importance of closely watching hounds, both 

 for the^r sakes and your own, cannot be exaggerated. 

 I shall return to the subject in another chapter, from 

 the hound point of view; but here I will only add that 

 unless you learn to watch hounds closely and study their 

 ways, you will never ride up to them well, day in and 

 day out, aa s good man should. 



In my opinion the good man to hounds is the persistent 

 performer - the man who tries each day he goes out, and 

 who tries equally on all his horses, who always tries to 

 get a start, and when he fails sees all he can of a run 

 from a back seat, while, without riding his horse's head 

 off, he is on the look-out to alter that back seat to a 

 front one. 



ben all is said and written about riding to hounds, 

 the greatest secret is a grim determination, when you 

 are well placed alongside hounds, to stay there; and 

 when you get badly away, an equally grim determination 

 to stick to it and put matters right at the first chance 

 you get. The man who, when he gets a good start and 

 when he is riding his best horse, can flash over country 

 brilliantly for fifteen minutes and then dies away, is 

 of no account. 



A very de^r old friend of mine afforded a good 

 illustration of what such determination can do. In 

 his youth all sport, except hunting, had come his way. 

 Of that he had none, nor, I think, more riding than falls 

 to the lot of an Adjutant of a Highland regiment. 



