20 
FOREST AND STREAM 
be kept up, and he must be used alternately in cover and open 
if possible. 
For uiy own part, I would prefer a dog to hunt always in 
a fine, dashing style, even though occasionally flushing in his 
eagerness, than to hunt by trailing or in a slow, pottering 
style. Mr. B.'s premises in regard to breaking young dogs 
upon shy birds, to teach cautiousness, are all well enough ; but 
ruffed grouse are ill adapted even for that purpose, since their 
habit of running is likely to lead the dog into worse faults 
than could be compensated for by all the cautiousness ac- 
quired. Moreover, thick cover is an entirely unfit place to give 
a young dog his initiatory field lessons, for at that lime espe- 
cially should lie be constantly under the eye of his breaker. 
It is much easier to teach a new virtue than to correct an 
acquired fault. 
I heartily agree with Mr. Burges that too much attention 
cannot be given to thoroughly breaking the dog in the yard 
ere allowing him to go into the field. This is of great import- 
ance, but too often neglected by sportsmen who break their 
own dogs, and also by professional breakers, who obtain 
quicker, but not better results, by taking puppies into the 
field with old dogs to learn to find game ere they have been 
brought under control. However well yard-broken a young 
dog may be, it is impossible to keep him constantly iu sight 
in thick cover, provided he does any hunting; and there would 
be great danger of bis acquiring a fondness for bunting bares 
and other fur almost before his breaker would suspect it. Mr. 
B’s idea of choosing the cover for the initiatory field lessons 
is certainly a novel one, and I hardly think that mauy sports- 
men will indorse his preference, unless they wish their dogs 
broken especially for cover shooting. 
The snipe, as found iu the North and East in autumD, is far 
preferable for developing the same qualities, “ keen nose and 
cautiousness,” than is the ruffed grouse, and the habitat of 
the snipe is far better suited for breaking a dog. I am well 
aware that in the West and South the principal snipe shoot- 
ing is in the spring, at which time the habits of the birds are 
different from those during the autumn migration. But go to 
Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, or the Northern 
Atlantic Stales in September or early October, and you can 
find game that will bring out the good qualities of your dogs. 
If you desire wild birds and a strong scent, select a cold, 
damp, windy day. Take your young dog and bunt up wind. 
If the birds are plenty he’ll soon take the scent; but not from 
the ground. If he flushes, as is very likely at first, you can 
see how and why be does it, and govern yourself accordingly. 
Here there being nothing to bide him from view, every op- 
portunity to teach a virtue or encourage him is a praiseworthy 
action can be taken advantage of, and faults can be corrected 
ere they become confirmed. On the day described the birds 
will be wild enough, but the scent is good and can often be 
taken at eight or ten rods distance by a keen-nosed dog. 
As the dog catches the first scent be slackens the pace, and 
with head raised sniffs the air, soon learning to hunt thus for 
game, and not with nose to the ground. There is no trailing 
in this shooting, although snipe will often run where the 
ground is smooth with sparse cover, for.the body scent of this 
bird is, under ordinary circumstances, stronger than the foot- 
scent. 
Again, if your dog is sufficiently cautious, and you wish to 
practice him on dose lying birds, select a calm, warm day, 
and the best feeding-grounds. Now, the birds will suffer 
both the dog and yourself to approach very near, and here is 
the opportunity to teach your dog staunchness, if he needs 
any lesson in that line. 
If iu a locality where ruffed grouse abounded, and no other 
game upon which dogs could be broken, then would I give 
them their initiatory lessons on game in the cover and upon 
grouse ; but it would be “Hobson's choice, ’’and not my own. 
Although not here expressing an opinion as to which of our 
many game birds may be best adapted for the field education 
of dogs, I certainly do not consider the ruffed grouse to be so, 
but quite the contrary, both from its habits end its habitat. 
Of course I am writing, as I judge did Mr. Burges in the 
article referred to, exclusively of pointers and setters. I trust 
that he does not advocate trailing as an accomplishment that 
should be taught these dogs. But little encouragement is 
needed for the acquirement of that which is so congenial to 
them, and if once confired trailers it is often very difficult to 
entirely break them of a habit that is so detestable when ad- 
hered to in the open. It is presumable that one so well known 
in connection with canine matters in this country as is Mr. 
Burges, has had much experience with dogs in the field. 
Therefore is it the more remarkable that he should advocate 
breaking first in cover and upon ruffed grouse, dogs that are 
to be used for mixed or open shooting. Dir. Burges says : 
“We see then the advantage of giving the dog his first lessons 
upon grouse (ruffed grouse,) since, when proficient upon them, 
he is fitted for all others.” I would add to my remarks on the 
subject that I trust my readers can see the disadvantage of 
giving the dog his first lessons upon ruffed grouse. 
Evkbett Smith. 
For Forest and Stream, and Rod and Gun. 
AFTER THE HOUNDS. 
REMOTIBCENOES — NO. II. 
A FTER being entered at hares, as described in my last, ! 
was in due time promoted to fox hunting. As soon aj 
my legs were loDg enough to grip a pony I was mounted on i 
pad saddle, without stirrups, and permitted to' follow th< 
hounds. I took to fox hunting as naturally as a duck t< 
water. At first I did not pretend to ride straight across coun 
try as my seniors did, but a pretty good knowledge of tin 
topography of our county enabled me, by cutting across ant 
dodging around, to hear, if not see, much more of the ebasi 
than one would suppose, and not unfrequently I contrived t( 
be in at the death. In my youth I hunted with two subscrip 
lion packs of fox hounds of considerable note, some accoun 
of which I propose to give in future numbers of your paper 
One of these packs was in Baltimore and the other at Wash, 
ington City, and both were at their best about the time o: 
General Jackson’s second term. As for private packs they 
were innumerable, for the planter in the slave States who die 
not keep from one to ten couples of hounds was an exceptior 
*“8 class ; and from the day when the crops were secured ir 
the fall, so that no injury could result from leaving down the 
H 01 * 2 , in , tlie ®pring, hunting as the chief re- 
creation of the landed gentry of the South, and took prece- 
dence of shooting, deer driving and all other field sports. 
thC P packs wllich 1 best remember were those 
of Mr. Ramsay Waters, at Annapolis ; the Ogles, at Bel Air ; 
Mr. Charles Hanson’s, near Baltimore, and Major Harry Car- 
roll’s, at Perry Hall, near the same city. . 
In Virginia, the Taylors, of Mount Airy ; the Corbins, or 
Moss Neck; the Chicheslers and the Broadnaxes were all 
famous for their hounds and the matches they made upon 
them. Indeed, the venatic passion iu the Old Dominion is 
still so strong as to have survived nil the disasters of the late 
civil war, and as a proof of it, we may read in a recent issue 
of a local paper — The Roanoke Valley —a challenge from Dir. 
Wimbish, near Lynchburg, and Dir. Stokes, of Lunenburg, to 
run their combined packs against those of Dir. Broadnax, oi 
Brunswick, and Mr. Tucker, of Gaston, for a very heavy 
wager. 
Of all the private packs I ever followed, except my own 
gray-fox pack in Mississippi, that owned and hunted by Dir. 
Ramsay Waters, at Annapolis, Maryland, afforded me, I think, 
the best sport ; not that the hounds were better, or even as 
good as some others, but because they hunted a better coun- 
try, where foxes were numerous, as they always are in a tide- 
water section, abounding in ducks, fish and crabs, all of which 
are favorite tid-bits on Reynard’s bill of fare ; and then the 
level lands were cut up there into innumerable small peninsu- 
las, or “ necks,” as they are called, iu which the fox can be 
hemmed in as it were, and prevented from making straight 
runs of ten and twenty miles, as he will frequently do in the 
upper country. For some reason, probably because I had the 
luck to be a prominent actor on the occasion, a run which 1 
had, when not quite twelve years of age, with the Annapolis 
pack, made so strong an impression on me tlmt I can recall all 
its incidents as vividly at this moment, after a lapse of fifty 
years, as I could the day of its occurrence. 
Dly father and myself went to breakfast with Dir. Waters, 
who lived iu one of those old-fashioned colonial homes, near 
St. Anne’s Church, full an hour before day— and a bountiful 
breakfast it was, such as can be had only iu the tidewater 
counties of the Southern States. “Peach and honey ’’ to 
begin with, half a dozen varieties of hot bread, two-year old 
home-cured ham, smoked sausage, oysters in every form, 
broiled ducks and partridges, aud t hat most delicate relish pe- 
culiar, I believe, to the Southern States, corned shad. While 
enjoying our meal we could hear the impatient baying of the 
hounds, some eleven couples, which, under charge of an old 
negro, were awaiting us at the door, in the most frequented 
street of the old metropolis. At the very first peep of dawn 
we were in the saddle, the hounds were uncoupled, and we 
started for one of the neighboring “necks,” in which we 
hoped to find an old red dog-fox, famous for having repeatedly 
beaten the best packs in Anne Arundel and Prince George 
counties. As we slowly trotted along, the dormant echoes of 
the sleeping town were suddenly aroused by a deep, prolonged, 
but musical, howl from one of the dogs. Our host, who was 
leading the way some ten yards iu front, pulled up and ob- 
served the challenge came from old “Trueman," the most 
reliable hound in his kennel, who was never known to “open ” 
on anything but the trail of a fox, and that, as extraordinary 
as it might appear, he was now giving tongue within the limits 
of the city on a fox trail and nothing else; and while he was 
yet speakiDg, half a dozen dogs joined in. The cry proceeded 
from a small market-house which stood at that time at the 
right of the main street leading from the city and near the 
suburbs. 
As the sequel will show, it was the trail of the identical 
fox we were looking for ; he had ventured, as doubtless he 
had frequently done before, into the market-house to pick up 
some of the offal usually to be found in such places. The 
trail was yet warm enough to aflord us a good cry. and it was" 
followed without difficulty down the road, across a couple of 
fields und into quite a large cover of second growth pines 
near South River ferry. When here, the cry of the hounds, 
which had been swelling as we advanced, suddenly burst into 
a thunderous tempest of sound, which we were afterward told 
was distinctly heard across South River two miles away. 
Old Reynard was up, and, flourishing his white -tipped flag in 
defiance of a foe he had beaten so often, he broke cover gal- 
lantly, but meeting the horsemen in the road he darted back 
again, and here, as if to supple his lithe limbs for the coming 
contest, he ran in circles within the cover for twenty minutes 
or more, and then dashed away in full view of the field, evi- 
dently aiming for the up country in the neighborhood of Elk- 
ridge, twenty miles away, as he had often done before to the 
discomfiture of his pursuers ; fortunately, he encountered a 
string of market wagons and was coursed by some cur dogs, 
this caused him to double back, aud he headed for Primrose 
Hill, a country seat belonging to the late Lewis Netb, situated 
on a peninsula opposite to and in full view of Annapolis. At 
this double, a check, the only one during the whole chase, oc- 
curred, and this gave Mr. Waters time to tell us that he now 
felt confident of either killing the fox or of r unn ing him to 
earth. To avoid the latter, it was deternflhed that I, the only 
boy present, should be detailed to watch the earth and prevent 
the entrance of the fox. 
As the rim was now confined within the limits of the “neck,” 
and the hounds on such good terms with their fox as to 
make it next to an impossibility to lose him, Dir. Waters 
pulled out of the chase and took me to the earths about a 
half a mile away. This fox burrow, one of the most ancient 
and extensive in the State of Maryland, dug probably by the 
first red foxes that crossed the Chesapeake more than a cen- 
tury ago, runs so far under ground and has so many galleries 
as to make it a difficult task to dig a fox out. It is just under 
the brow of an almost perpendicular cliff eighteen or twenty 
feet high, and overlooks the whole peninsula clear away to 
the bay shore. Here, after hitching my pony some fifty yards 
away in a thicket, I was left by my guide with the strictest in- 
junctions to remain seated in the mouth of the den so as to fill 
it up completely, and on no account to leave my position even 
for a second. Somewhat consoled for being thus thrown out of 
the active pursuit by the responsibility of my functions, I wil- 
lingly obeyed orders, nor had I any cause to repent, for from 
my commanding position I had a better view of the chase then 
those who followed the hounds ; indeed, except when at rare 
intervals fox and dogs were concealed' by the tall grass or 
thickets, I witnessed the whole of it with an excitement more 
intense than I had ever yet experienced in my young life. 
The distance blended the fierce cry of the pursuing hounds 
into the sweetest music, and as the chase drew near or receded 
the harmony was like that of an yEolian harp played upon 
by the summer winds. I could every now and then see the 
gallant fox, yet fresh and strong, skimming along far in ad- 
vance, with the ease of a swallow cutting through the air; then 
half a mile in the rear would come the gaunt, long-stridiDg 
hounds, four or five abreast, with sterns down and heads 
up, running on a burning breast-high scent, and gradually 
gaining on their quarry. Since that day I have witnessed some 
of the most stirring scenes in the whole range of field sports 
both home and abroad ; I have treed and shot the black hear 
and the catamount in the Stygian swamps of Louisiana - some 
of the biggest bucks of the Alleghanies have dropped in their 
tracks at the crack of my rifle ; I have fired into clouds of 
wild-fowl at Carroll’s Island until my gun was too hot to 
hold ; but for delirious excitement nothing will compare with 
what I experienced on that day when I sat almost breathless 
in the mouth of the fox den at. Primrose, and were I to live n 
thousand years I never would forget it. 
At the end of I know not. what time, for I was too much 
excited to note it, it. became evident that the fox was failing 
fast and running his last foil. He had probably found too 
heavy a meal in the market-house, and from some cause could 
not throw it up as foxes and dogs readily do when hard 
pressed. Be that as it may, when he last crossed my view he 
was making shorter turns ; he labored in his lope, aud hj 8 
brush was trailing on the ground, and as he disappeared from 
view under the creek bank the clamorous pack was but two 
hundred yards behind him. After disappearing from sight 
under the bank, the chase led up the creek to my left, and 1 
could hear the roaring cry gradually receding in my rear, 
until it became almost inaudible, and I begau to fear that 
Reynard was making a hold push to escape from the “ neck," 
hut the failing condition in which I had seen him last reassured 
me. aud presently the music became more and more distinct, 
nearer and nearer came the cry rapidly swelling into a perfect 
hurricane of sound. Just then, when I was ready to jump out 
of my very skin with suppressed emotion, a tew clods of 
earth fell upon my head, and the fox, now dead beat, jumped 
down almost in my lap. It would be hard to say which was 
most startled, he or I. I leaped to my feet and he made a 
great bound in the air and fell rolling heels over head down 
the face of the cliff, aud before he could recover his legs the 
whole pack came after like a roaring avalanche, covering ine 
with dirt as they passed, and nearly carrying me with them 
in tlieir descent. In an instant the poor fox disappeared be- 
neath a living mound of yelliug, snarlmg, writhing hounds, 
and before I could reach him he was crunched beneath the 
savage fangs of his enemies into a limp, disjointed mass. As 
soon as I could I out with my barlow, whipped off the brush 
aud stuck it iu my cap. When my father and the other gen- 
tlemen joined me they were greeted by the proudest twelve- 
year-old boy in the proud old State of Maryland. F. G. S. 
The Real British Breed of Dogs. — Incredible, but often 
truthfill, stories are told of the endurance of dogs in running 
deer and foxes. Sometimes hundreds of miles of ground are 
run over. The biggest and, proportionately, the most truth- 
ful, story we have ever yet heard, is told by the Lynchburg 
Virginian of Jan. 30, ultimo. It purports to come from 
au old negro beater named Lake, and is included among the 
reminiscences of the writer, from which we quote. The writer 
is referring to the prodigious performances of a hound named 
“King.” He says; 
“As far as we could see, King had been chasing the deer for 
twenty-four hours, which, of course, was so improbable that 
the bare possibility excited much discussion. Uncle Sam and 
Lake, however, stood to it that the dog had been running the 
deer since the day before, as it appeared. 
“I chanced to ride with Lakesome twoor three miles imnv 
diately after this incident, and expressed strong disbelief 
the likelihood of King’s performance. Lake insisted upo> 
that such a race was nothing to be wondered at. 4 V 
sir,’ he said, ‘ Mas’ Sam’s stock of dogs is the rale 
British breed, and dat race of King’s is nothin' to what . 
known 'em do. Dar was an ole red fox dar in de rnounti 
jes ’hove Dias’ Sam’s, aud many was de race I liad after hu 
but I never could ketch him, cos for waut of time. I /was 
always 'bliged to blow off de dogs and give him up. Well, I 
swore, come Christinas, I would ketch dat fox if it took me 
all de holidays. I know’d ’zactly where he lay, and by day 
Christmas morning I had him up. I run dat fox all Christ 
mas day and all Christmas night. Next momin' Mas' Sam he I 
sends one of de nigger boys to see what had come of me ami I 
de dogs. I took dat nigger's fresh horse, and I runs dat foi 
all dat day ; you never hearn such a chase. About night | 
Dias' Sam sends annudder nigger. I takes his horse and runs P 
dat fox all dat night. Next momin’, ’bout daybreak, dat horse | 
was broke down, and I gits down off him and takes after dal 
fox on foot. I was so tired I could jes barely walk ; but, 
Lor’ bless you ! it was all de same, for de dogs were jes’ . 
ahead, yellin' like mad, and de fox in sight— all walkin'. Me I 
an' de dogs walked after de fox till ten o’clock dat day before I 
we cotched him, an’ when Dias' Sam sent for us dey had to I 
git a wagon to haul me and de dogs home.’ ‘ Why, Lake 
4 Fac, sir ; you jes’ ask Mas’ Sam. I tell you dem dogs is | 
de rale ole British breed. Dey ’lows no varmint dat runs on N 
top of de ground to git away from ’em, once do scent gin K 
hot.’ ” 
Russian Setters. — “E. A. B.” asks upon what page to 
“Stonehenge" I find the quotations made in my article upon 
J. H. Walsh. If, as “E. A. B."6ays, “Stonehenge" gives four I 
pages mainly in their favor a9 superior to the English setter, ; 
he has very much changed his mind since writing the follow jJ 
ingin his “British Rural Sports:" 44 DIany good sportsmen 
use these dogs constantly, and I have seen some of them do I 
their work well ; but they are so unsightly to my eye that 1 
should never be willing to exchange the noble-looking EDglisb jJ 
or Irish setter or pointer for such a poodle-looking brute ns I 
the Russian;" and, furthermore, expresses my own views in I 
these words : 44 But as to my taste, all the beauty of shooting 
consists in pleasing the eye by the fine working of handsaw' 
dogs. I could never get over the unsightliness of these uu- 1 
couth creatures." Amiods Canxum- 
Mr N. P. Leach, of the Quebec Game Protective Club, | 
Montreal, has just lost a very valuable Norfolk spaniel, win- , 
ner of the first prize in Montreal in 1870, and one of the best I 
ruffed grouse dogs known. His death was caused, it is lie- ! 
lieved, by a kitchen girl in a hotel throwing him a piece of I 
hot meat just off from the coals. A post mortem examine 
tion showed his stomach, lungs, and intestines near his sto- 1 
mack to be badly inflamed, while the intestines further down : 
ward were white and hard as a whip cord. 
A Druggist’s Mistake. — Dir. Tremaine, of Allegheny 
City, Pa., reports the death of his Irish Better puppy I*" 1 ', I 
winner of first aud special prices at Pittsburgh last month. I 
He was poisoned by a mistake of an apothecary in filling “ 
proscription. Suit has been entered for recovery of his vali“‘ 
Bob was by Rufus H., out of DIoU II. 
