lOO STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS 



ing.' ' Lord Kintore would have, made a capital Master of 

 the Buckhounds. 



The best deer run to points, and I think concern them- 

 selves little about wind, although their preference is said to be 

 to run on a side wind ; but it is as well to uncart a deer with his 

 head up wind, and give him time to make up his mind. It is 

 customary with the Queen's Hounds for the first whip to ride 

 the deer for a few hundred yards, to keep him away from the 

 country which you do not want him to take over, and to edge 

 him into the country you do. Davis liked to point him to- 

 wards any conspicuous hill, such as Harrow, if he could, with 

 a good stretch of country before him, and believed in giving 

 him a sort of cynosure. In the sequel, I think it makes very 

 little difference. 



With certain deer, however, I got to know where to send 

 my change or my hack almost with certainty. I remember 

 turning out a havier named Lord Clanwilliam just under 

 Maiden Earley. He ran us out of daylight to Easthamp- 

 stead. We had him harboured in one of Lord Down- 

 shire's woods and found him there a fortnight later. It 

 was a very pretty find, quite like the real thing, and he 

 gave us a good run. He ran the last six or seven miles 

 almost stick for stick of his old line the reverse way. We 

 must all have jumped several fences in exactly the same 

 places — I know I did — and we took him in an outhouse in 

 the very next field to the one we had turned him out in. It 

 is related of the Miller, a noted deer in Davis's time, that 

 if he got two or three hundred yards out of his old line 

 he would take the greatest pains to right himself, and 

 would then set to in earnest. The Miller ran for eleven 



' ' Nimrod ' cites, in proof of the advantage of letting a fox get well away in 

 his own way, and at his own time, the fact that a woodland fox which has stolen 

 away, and only been viewed when well away, will stand longer before hounds 

 than a fox found in a gorse cover. 



