REMINISCENCES 



bitches. Where you find a bitch otter, there is 

 often a dog within a mile or so, either up or down 

 stream; and no doubt the two of them keep that 

 particular stretch of water free from other lutrine 

 intruders. 



Scent and its vagaries will no doubt always be a 

 mysterious problem. How often have we seen 

 hounds able to hunt quite well amongst the under- 

 growth, yet when they reached an open expanse of 

 sand where the seal of an otter was plainly visible, 

 they have crossed it without a single hound speak- 

 ing. An instance of this comes to mind during the 

 season of 192 1, when hounds ran well across 

 country, whereas on a sand-bank, literally padded 

 flat with otter tracks, never a hound opened. 



Although hounds may sometimes travel a long 



way upstream without touching a drag, that does 



not always signify that you will not find. An 



instance of this comes to mind when we were 



hunting a small hill-stream. Hounds had covered 



some miles of water without a sign of a drag, and 



the field was becoming rather discouraged, when 



147 



