156 STAG-HUNTING ON EXAfOOR. 



run so begun has lasted for six or seven hours, the 

 first part -very slow, and the last part fast enough 

 to satisfy any one. The distances traversed are of 

 course very great, and few riders last to the end; 

 only, in fact, those who love hunting for its own sake 

 and delight to see hounds work as well as race. In 

 some heartrending cases the select few are sometimes 

 grievously disappointed. In September, 1884, a stag 

 was run for two hours with wretched scent, from the 

 cliffs above Glenthorne to the Chains. When the 

 hounds reached this point it seemed hopeless to 

 recover the deer; and a bare dozen, or fewer, of a 

 field of three hundred, alone stuck to the hounds on 

 this wretched boggy tract ; the rest turning homeward. 

 The deer was presently fresh found in a bed of rushes 

 and went back over the same ground to the place 

 where he had been found in thirty-three minutes, right 

 in the line of the home-goers, who of course had the 

 best of it, while the persevering had to cross a network 

 of combes and bogs, and with difficulty recovered their 

 places. But if the last were not sometimes first, there 

 would be few indeed at the death of a deer. 



It is rare to kill a warrantable deer, stag or hind, in 

 less than an hour from the find. A fat heavy old stag 

 may, if pressed throughout, be brought to bay in half 



