98 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS 



second horseman and I just moved him along two or three 

 yards in front of our horses to the nearest homestead, half 

 a mile or so away in the valley below. He went much 

 more kindly than many a Craven shorthorn or any Lonk or 

 Herdwick wether would have done.' 



At the risk of redundancy, I will insist again upon mettle 

 and fettle as the things most profitable to stag-hunting. 

 The ridiculous and unseemly things which sometimes occur 

 out stag-hunting may usually be traced to the want of the 

 one or the other, or of both. It is foolish to hunt a 

 weak deer, and wrong to hunt an unwilling one. A stag- 

 hunt does not depend upon the mere capture of the deer— 



I Mr. T. Nevill, of Chilland, says in his MS. journal written in 1870: ' I so 

 far succeeded in taming a red deer presented to nie by the Duke of Beaufort in 

 1855, that I turned him out on Winchester race-course and other open places, 

 and after giving us an excellent chase, when he had gone to bay and the hounds 

 were whipped off, he came at my call and followed me home, trotting alongside 

 my horse. Once he took soil in a pool after a very good chase : the moment I 

 called him he came out with a great bound, and galloped alongside of my 

 stirrup iron, to the astonishment of my sporting friends. My hind Princess 

 was just as tame. She fed in a field with our cows, started away when she 

 heard the deep note of two couple and a half of hounds, when I laid them on, 

 ran thirty miles and was lost, the hounds and horses being quite beaten. Three 

 weeks afterwards I heard of her whereabouts, took the same number of hounds 

 and hunted her- racing pace— for an hour, when she ran among some cows. 

 The huntsman called to a labourer to open a farmyard gate. In she went with 

 the cows. I dismounted, and the moment I called she came and pressed so 

 closely to me that I was afraid she would tread on my feet. A fallow deer 

 presented to me by the Earl of Portsmouth was made equally tame. This deer, 

 although so frequently chased by the hounds, would come up at feeding time, 

 and eat meal out of their trough.' But Mr. Nevill's command over animals 

 was extraordinary. Notwithstanding his apparent helplessness, for he was a 

 cripple from youth, he could hold horses that ran away with other people, and 

 thought nothing of putting a half-broken thoroughbred colt in harness, and 

 driving him alone for the first time. Many savage dogs, which their owners 

 dared not go near, were given to him on condition that he unchained them, and 

 took them away ; and a jackal given him by a friend from India would follow 

 him about like a dog, range the fields a long way in front, and come back on 

 being called and roll round his feet. ' I repeatedly hunted him,' says Mr. 

 Nevill in his MS. , ' with my bloodhounds. If closely pressed, he would frequently 

 i,'et his back to some bank or knoll and fiercely keep them at bay, showing his 

 white teeth till I came to the rescue.' 



