TUE CHASE OF THE CARTED DEER. 255 



and persist in running round them for hours — in which case I 

 scarcely know a more ludicrous sight than a field of well- 

 mounted sportsmen, in all the glory and paraphernalia of the 

 chase, sitting to watch the antics of a stag that Av«n't run, as he 

 leaps in and out of orchards and pigsties. When they do go, 

 the runs are often of great length, and a trial of stamina to 

 horses, and nerve to their riders, if the country is at all stiff, as, 

 from the deer's generally running in nearly direct lines from 

 point to point, though he may make several angles during the 

 course of the chase, there is very little chance of a nick, and 

 men for the most part must ride straight to hounds if they 

 wish to see anything of it. AVhen we hear of very severe chases, 

 however, which have extended over a long time, and find 

 people pluming themselves on their own desperate riding, and 

 the goodness of their horses in reaching the end of them, it is 

 as well to ask how many times during the run the hounds were 

 stopped. With a good pack most ordinary deer will be run 

 into in an hour or under, unless scent be very bad indeed ; but, 

 by continually stopping the pack, I have seen a deer, which 

 could have been fairly run into in ten or a dozen miles, driven 

 the length of thirty, and the chase related as a marvellous feat 

 of speed and endurance, whereas it was very certain the deer 

 for the greater part of it was only running on sufferance, and 

 both horses and hounds did the journey by easy stages, if I 

 may use the term. It will be said that natural checks in this 

 kind of hunting seldom occur, and that these pauses merely 

 take the place of them ; but, in any other chase, when speaking 

 or writing of a superior run, how often do we say hounds race 

 so long ivitliout a check, intimating that therein lies the beauty 

 and pleasure of the performance. It is scarcely consistent, then, 

 to make artificially, in hunting the carted deer, what we by no 

 means like or approve of in any other chase. 



Some deer, having once run to, and been taken at a certain 

 place, will always fly to it again, turn them out where you 

 ■will j and when they do this, it gives the chase something 



