F OR some time 
my young- 
friend Fred 
-, who is a lover 
of hounds < and the 
wild woods, had been pressing me for 
an invitation to accompany me on a 
fox hunt. 
As the roads were likely to be 
snowed up at any time and in bad 
shape for motoring, I decided to give 
him the promised trip without more 
delay. So I wrote, asking him to come 
out to my place on the sixteenth of 
December so that we could get an 
early start on the morning of the 
seventeenth. The place where I in¬ 
tended to hunt was known as the river 
swamp. Past experience has taught 
me that it is not always possible to 
return the same day unless one is 
willing to return without one’s dogs, 
which I may say I have never done yet 
(although I have not always been pre¬ 
pared to pass the night in the hush 
with any degree of comfort). So we 
loaded on our car, our two-man tent, 
together with robes, oil heater, a sup¬ 
ply of oil and plenty of bread, butter, 
bacon, coffee, sugar and buns, and got 
started on our thirty-five mile drive at 
six o’clock in the morning. 
We arrived at the river swamp in 
good shape at eight-thirty, not very 
good time, I will admit, but part of our 
journey lay over mud roads that had 
frozen hard at a time when they were 
badly cut up. The-result was that one 
could hardly stay on the seat at a 
speed of fifteen miles per hour. 
As the weather was threatening, we 
decided to put up our tent and arrange 
things so that nothing would get wet 
before we started out to try our luck. 
All this time Mike, Belle and Pepper 
(my three dogs) were sitting by the 
fence, to which we had tied them, tak¬ 
ing in the whole proceeding — impa¬ 
tient, to say the least—until we fin¬ 
ished our task and picked up our guns. 
Then with one accord they leaped and 
tugged at their chains, as if each were 
By GEORGE HULL 
anxious to be away first to claim the 
honor of jumping reynard from the 
nook he had chosen in which to spend 
the day. 
Before going on with the story, I 
would like to give the reader a de¬ 
scription of the dogs that we used in 
this hunt. 
First, I will try to describe Pepper, 
a black-and-tan of small size. He is 
not at all particular what he runs, 
from a cotton tail rabbit to a deer. 
He has been a wonderful little fellow, 
but is now past his prime. 
Mike is a deep-chested black, white 
and tan fox hound of 
medium size, three years 
old, has a deep bass 
voice and runs rabbit 
^ or fox, but always pre¬ 
fers reynard if he is about. 
Belle is a female fox hound, white 
with small black spots on her coat, 
and a little brindle head, rather small 
jin size, but the best little fox dog I 
have ever owned. I have never known 
her to leave a fox trail as long as 
reynard was above ground. 
The swamp that we hunted is very 
thick, with a corduroy road running 
straight through from east to west. 
On the south side, the swamp (com¬ 
posed chiefly of cedar and tamarack) 
stretches out for a distance of about 
five miles, and on the north a distance 
of fifteen miles, with a varying width 
of from one to three miles. 
A fox, when first started, invariably 
runs down wind, and as the wind was 
in the southwest, we thought it ad¬ 
visable to put the dogs in on. the south 
side of the road, and remain on the 
road for a short time. 
We released the dogs shortly after 
nine o’clock, and in less than five min¬ 
utes had the satisfaction of hearing 
Belle give tongue, about one-quarter 
mile to the southwest. Pepper ana 
Mike were soon heard from and the 
three voices combined could be dis¬ 
tinctly heard as they traveled at great 
speed toward the southwest and away 
from the road on which we stood. They 
did not go out of hearing, however, 
before the game decided to turn, and 
as we heard the dogs draw nearer, we 
gripped our guns firmly and kept a 
keen eye, for it does not take a fox 
long to clear an opening of fifteen feet, 
this being the amount of space that 
was free from undergrowth on the cor¬ 
duroy road. We were standing about 
one-hundred and fifty yards apart, and 
so covered the most likely-looking spot 
for a crossing, as we figured that, 
armed as we were with double-barrel 
choke bored guns and BB shot, we 
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