i68 STAG-HUNTING ON EXMOOR. 



covers, in pouring rain, till 5.30 p.m., finding nothing 

 but hinds and young deer up to that time, when four 

 stags jumped up together. The pack was laid on one 

 and ran hard down the valley of the Exe till they were 

 stopped at 8 p.m., through want of light, to kill the 

 deer that was known to be dead beat close before 

 them. Twenty-six miles to go home, and kennels not 

 reached till midnight. In February of the next year 

 they left the kennels at 7.30, and killed their deer at 

 7 P.M., when the tufters had been running seven hours 

 and the pack about an hour less, continually changing 

 deer. They reached kennels a little after 9 p.m., hounds, 

 horses, and men all about dead beat. The latest time 

 at which the pack is recorded to have returned to 

 kennels is 2.30 a.m., after running a deer from Haddon 

 to the Quantocks. 



The huntsman and whip have of course two horses 

 apiece every day, and could often find work for a third 

 during the hind-hunting season. It is the rule rather 

 than the exception to get wet when hind-hunting ; and 

 when a westerly gale is tearing over the high ground 

 unchecked straight from the Atlantic it is often, literally, 

 hard to avoid being blown off one's horse. Yet hunting 

 is never given up except for fog and frost, and the 

 deer will run dead up wind in the teeth of the fiercest 



