204 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN 



site ride, to give him the meeting ; and having posted myself, I 

 heai'd him fling his tongue, and, my ear told me, coming towards 

 where I stood ; there then was a long silence, but at length the 

 angry yell, the booming of his full tongue, and the bound of the 

 roused doe, distinctly reached me, all coming towards where I 

 stood, and in another moment she paused in the bushes, dead 

 beat, and I shot her through the head at four o'clock, when she 

 became as stiff as a hunted fox. My experience in this peculiar 

 method of hunting teaches me that a deer slowly pm-sued by a 

 bloodliound will do as I have seen hares do in cold scents with 

 harriers ; when beaten, their last effort will be a strong one ; 

 they will go farther and faster befoi'e they lay up than they 

 have gone before ; but if that effort is mastered, and they are 

 got up to again, the struggle is over. 



The perfection of the shooting at Heron Court is the vai-iety 

 of the game, and the ignorance of the gunner as to what next 

 will rise before him. Lord Malmsbury, I think, killed thirty- 

 six wild-swans in one winter to his own gun ; and an eagle and 

 a swan have been shot within twenty-four hours of one another. 

 The stuffed specimens of the i-ai-e birds killed there, and which 

 adorn the hall, are unequalled in number, variety, and interest. 



Attached to Heron Court are the Stour, Little Stour, and 

 Moors river, where the pike-fishing is excellent ; the largest fish 

 I killed with the rod, in March last, weighed twenty-one pounds 

 and a half; and, like all the Stour pike caught in season, was 

 most excellent, when baked, for the table. The best way to 

 dress a pike is to boil it with the scales on; on carving, the 

 scales peel off in large flakes with the skin, mider the fish-knife, 

 and, the water being thus kept out of the fish, adds to its firm- 

 ness and flavour. The tench, sometimes weighing three or four 

 pounds, from these rivers are beautiful, and so are the perch ; 

 but in those portions of the Stom- where I have fished, the perch 

 seldom exceed a pound in weight. Salmon come a certain 

 distance up the Stour, as well as the Avon ; yet, though the 

 rivers approximate so close as to form the same harbour at 

 Christchurch, the salmon will only rise to a fly in the Avon. 



