164 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN 



a jubilee, and that, unless there was such a scent as forced the 

 hounds to come along, neither Mr. Wyndham's exertion nor 

 that of his hounds would make a bad day a middling one, nor a 

 middling day one that was amply satisfactory. The greatest 

 compliment I ever had paid me, as to my huntsman's capabilities, 

 was when riding men, as well as sportsmen (they are not always 

 the same), said, " We like to come with you ; for whatever the 

 scent is, you always give us something to do." A huntsman 

 may make a bad day a good one by doing as Tom Oldacre used 

 to do, when there was no scent to serve his hounds ; that is, 

 guess the run of his fox so well, that he lifts bis hounds from 

 point to point till the weary fox comes back to him, and, instead 

 of keeping so far before the hounds, fails in his pace so much, 

 that the hounds get near enough to him to make a scent, where- 

 with to run and kill him. I call the man capable of doing this 

 a huntsman. Foolish people say, " Never lift hounds." The 

 real answer to this is, " Never lift them, unless they need it ; " 

 but if you are to have a good pack of hounds, willing and able 

 to kill their foxes, I assert that they must occasionally be lifted, 

 or the show on the kennel doors of foxes' scalps will be very few. 

 To prove how little judgment in a hunting-field sometimes sits 

 in a man's head, often have I heard hounds running to me as I 

 sat at the end of a cover, and because a hare has bolted out of 

 the meuse in the cover-hedge first, when the leading hound came 

 crashing through immediately after the hare, fools have cracked 

 their whips in the face of the pack, and cried, " 'Ware hare ! " 

 To think that the men who did so had not reason enough to 

 know that it was possible that the fox might have gone by 

 before they stood there, is enraging, and that they should not 

 be aware that a hare, being a timid animal, would naturally fly 

 before the noise of the hounds, and most probably avail herself 

 of the same hole in the hedge that gave egress to the fox, proves 

 an amount of ignorance scarcely to be believed. Again, I have 

 seen men crack their whips and cry, " 'Ware heel ! " when hounds 

 have run the line of scent up a green lane and back again, the 

 fox having been headed ; in short, there is no conceivable error 



