POX HUNTING IN AMERICA. 269 



with greater ease and quickness, and the scene becomes ani- 

 mating and exciting. Now the masters dash into the chase, 

 and with wild, eager yells of bursting excitment, they spur 

 after the roaring pack and regardless plunge at headlong 

 speed over and through the difficulties of the ground. 



When the woods are free from underbrush, which is often 

 the case in Virginia and the Carolinas, the grass and bushes 

 being burnt almost annually, many of the sportsmen keep up 

 with the dogs, and the fox is frequently in sight. He now 

 resorts to some of the manoeuvres for which he is famous ; 

 he . plunges into a thicket, doubles, runs into the water, leaps 

 on to a log, or perhaps gets upon a worm fence and runs 

 along the top of it for a hundred yards, leaping from it with 

 a desperate bound and continuing his flight in the vain hope 

 of escape. At length he becomes fatigued ; he once more 

 drives into the closest thickets, where he doubles hurriedly ; 

 he hears and even sees the dogs upon him, and as a last resort 

 climbs a small tree. The hounds and hunters are almost in- 

 stantly at the foot of it, and while the former are barking 

 fiercely at the terrified animal, the latter usually determine 

 to give him another chance for his life. The dogs are taken 

 off to a little distance, and the fox is forced to leap to the 

 ground by reaching him with a long pole or throwing a billet 

 of wood at him ; he is allowed a quarter of an hour before 

 the hounds are permitted to pursue him ; but he is now less 

 able to escape than before, he has become stiff and chill, is 

 soon overtaken, and falls an easy prey, turning, however, 

 upon his pursuers, with a fierce despair, and snapping at them 

 indomitably, game to the last. 



The extraordinary cunning and sagacity of the Gray Fox 

 is so much the constant theme of Southern hunters, that we 

 might collect quite a volume of well authenticated stories of 

 its feats ; but the best of the joke is, that wonderful as are 

 the stories they tell of it, we in Kentucky, and wherever the 

 Reel Fox has yet made its appearance, manage to out-Herod 



