830 MANUAL FOR YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 
kill the most hares is to stand still, pretty well concealed 
by some pine bush or stump, keeping every. limb perfectly 
motionless, with as many open glades around you and 
under your eye aS you can command, nearly in the spot 
from which the game was first started. He is perfectly 
certain to return, once and again; for it is his nature ever 
to run in small rings, endeavoring to deceive his pursuers 
by foiling his own track, rather than to outstrip them by 
speed. I never knew an instance of either variety going 
straight away, or of the beagles being above a quarter of 
an hour out of hearing. Indeed, they are rarely so long 
absent. Their cheery cry at the return will tell the 
sportsman when and in which direction to look for his 
game; but he must look sharp, or he will be apt to find, to 
his astonishment, by seeing the hounds carry the scent 
past his face within ten paces, that the small gray rascal 
has stolen before his eyes unobserved, under cover of—it is 
wonderful how—little brush or low herbage, or jumped 
across an opening while his eyes were momentarily averted. 
Again, if he do not keep himself perfectly motionless, 
his time is thrown away. A hare before hounds, and 
sometimes even a deer, if the wind be not fairly in his 
nostrils from the enemy, will run straight up to a man, 
standing in full view in the open, if he move not hand, 
head nor foot, as if he were a post, perhaps mistaking him 
for such. But let him wink but an eyelid perceptibly, and 
it will be off at a tangent, like lightning. It is singular, 
indeed ; but his voice not only has less effect in deterring 
the animal or increasing its speed, than the show of any 
movement, but actually causes it to stop and listen. 
