THE STAG HOUND 



135 



covert looks made to jump. In such cases, unless you suffer 

 from a huntsman who waits for his hounds to get together, the 

 body of the pack scattered about in the thriving hazels of a 

 big wood have to make up their leeway as best they can ; 

 they do not get the ' all start fair ' chance which staghounds 

 get. Besides, owing to the ill-hung, patched-up nature of 

 the gates in Buckinghamshire and Berkshire, and to the 

 good-natured character of most of the fences making it 

 easier to jump the fence rather than have to fumble and 

 perhaps get off to open the gate, the Queen's Hounds do 

 not get so much squeezed out at gateways as often happens 

 in strongly enclosed and well-gated fashionable countries, 

 when the huntsman, with any few hounds he can get 

 together at the moment, has gone on as quickly as he can 

 either to a holloa or at the best of that mocking spirit, 

 information. 



A Master of hounds of my acquaintance, who hunts his 

 own pack in a wild and strong country, and who takes a lot 

 of catching if he gets away on anything like terms over what 

 William Goodall used to call the ' big old grasses,' writes to 

 me : ' My experience is that few who have their two horses 

 out for a day's hunting, a pair to drive them to covert, 

 and a hack to gallop home on, care about the hounds 

 which have given the day's sport, or observed the way in 

 which they hunted during the day, the way they drew for 

 their fox, the head they carried over the grass, the way they 

 stuck to it over the fallows, or the old hound which took it 

 down the road when the body of the pack was at fault, so 

 long as they were able to tire their horses, dirty their boots, 

 and have a good gallop over a negotiable country ' ; and he 

 goes on to say : ' I have been asked most pertinent questions 

 about hounds by people whom one would have thought were 

 the most unlikely to have interested themselves in such 

 matters, and I have picked up many a wrinkle from the 



