SPORT ANCIENT AND 

 MODERN 



HUNTING 



FOXHOUNDS 



IT cannot be said that Surrey takes 

 high rank as a hunting county, but it 

 provides better sport than do many 

 hunting districts of far greater pre- 

 tensions. 

 Some sixty years ago Mr. R. S. Surtees 

 caricatured Surrey hunting unsparingly. He 

 pictured the Surrey hunting man as a Cock- 

 ney pure and simple, ignorant of sport, of 

 country life and country ways, addicted to 

 riding over all sorts of crops, and worst of all 

 as a timid horseman. We have always been 

 of opinion that Surtees grossly exaggerated 

 his pictures of hxmting in Surrey ; but what- 

 ever the opportunity it offered for the cari- 

 caturist sixty years ago, it is certain that at 

 the present time hunting in Surrey is carried 

 on in orthodox fashion, as it has been for 

 long past. Surrey men ride just as hard as 

 do men of any other county. In the best of 

 the Burstow country, and in the southern 

 district of the Surrey Union, below the hill, 

 one who really follows hounds encounters 

 fences of the most formidable description ; 

 and yet when hounds rim hard in these parti- 

 cular districts there is as large a proportion of 

 men with them as there is out with the 

 Quorn in a quick run over the Hoby Vale. 

 It may be added that broadly speaking Surrey 

 ' fields ' are the best behaved we have ever 

 met, and the writer has seen most of the 

 famous English packs of foxhounds at work. 



The sportsman who hunts in Surrey to-day 

 is far more careful about crops, about damage 

 generally, and about over-riding, than is the 

 average hunting man elsewhere. The Surrey 

 hunting man is sometimes a Londoner, more 

 frequently a dweller in the outskirts of 

 Suburbia, and very often he lives in the 

 heart of the country where he hunts, and 

 has made it his business to know the nature 



of every crop at a glance, so that he may not 

 ride where his horse is likely to do harm. 

 We remember one Saturday when hounds 

 were running hard, near Leigh, that after 

 several grass fields a small enclosure of grow- 

 ing corn presented itself. The huntsman 

 was leading, and he rode straight on after his 

 hounds ; but the first man of the field pulled 

 up as he landed over the fence, and rode 

 down the headland of the field. His example 

 was copied by every one who was riding the 

 line, and in a moment some forty or fifty 

 horsemen and women were touring round 

 two sides of a field in single file. In no 

 other county that we know is observance of 

 this rule so punctilious, and it applies equally 

 to the shutting of gates and replacing of slip 

 rails. 



There is a gate which is peculiar to the 

 southern part of Surrey and to Sussex, which 

 is known as a ' heave gate,' and this is almost 

 invariably jumped. Though strongly built, 

 it is by no means a formidable obstacle, being, 

 as a general rule, rather under than over 

 three feet in height. In the big woods, where 

 every one follows hounds into covert, the 

 exit is almost invariably by a heave gate, 

 and the spectacle of a whole ' field ' jump- 

 ing it in succession is not uncommon, for 

 very often the gate is locked or fastened up. 

 Sometimes the jump is made more formidable 

 by a single rail placed about lo inches above 

 the gate proper, but this rail is nearly always 

 a slip rail, and is generally pulled out, unless 

 hounds are running hard. 



Of foxhound packs Surrey can boast four 

 whose kennels are situated in the county ; 

 but, as a matter of fact, only one of the four 

 confines its operations entirely to the county. 

 The packs in question are the Old Surrey, 

 the Surrey Union, the Burstow and the 

 Chiddingfold. The Old Surrey has part 

 of its country in Kent, the Burstow district 



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