THE HUNTED CUB
CHAPTER V
WHEN the cub is equipped with knowledge sufficient to enable him to make a start in life, and is only lacking in experience, he gets his first taste of being hunted. On his return to covert after his night’s prowl in company with his brothers and sisters, he finds the entrance to the earth which has been his home blocked. Scratch as he may, he cannot get in, and is uncertain what to do next. There is the aroma of man about the earth, and suddenly the air seems filled with strange and uncouth noises. All the cubs are by this time on the move, for instinct teaches them that danger is abroad.
The wood seems full of hounds, and though the cubs thread the narrow passages beneath the undergrowth, they find it more and more difficult to evade the great blundering creatures which so relentlessly pursue them. Scent improves and the young entry becomes steadier, and our cub realizes that the suffocating wood, foul with strange smells and echoing with appalling noises, is no place for him. His mind reverts to another covert, a mile away across the fields, and with this point in view he slips through the fence and finds himself in the open. The air is sweet and clean, and he strides away across the dew-drenched grass, the sounds behind him growing fainter and fainter in the distance.
He has learnt by his first experience of hounds that it is better to fly than stay, and so has advanced another step in his education. On his return to the home covert, his nostrils are assailed by an overpowering odour of human and canine enemies, while the taint of blood lingers here and there amongst the undergrowth. It is impossible under these conditions to settle down in his old quarters, so, if the covert be a small one, he leaves it to take up his abode elsewhere. In large woodlands he searches out a fresh retreat, far removed from the scene of his peril.
First impressions are invariably the strongest, so that the cub which escapes by flight, and the one which eludes his pursuers by dodging and twisting about in covert, are both likely to resort to the same tactics when again disturbed by hounds. The former will probably prove his worth to the Hunt as a “straight necked ’un,” whilst the latter may develop into a short-running, twisting customer, most difficult to kill.
As we have already seen, the cub’s first impressions of being hunted are the strongest, and by whatever method he manages to elude hounds he is practically certain to try the same plan again. In the fell country of Cumberland and Westmorland, hunted foxes frequently travel long distances on the top of the stone walls. Even on a good scenting day this manœuvre delays pursuit, but it is doubtful if the fox adopts it for that reason. In winter, when the snow on the hills lies soft and deep, the fox finds he can get about more easily by following the wall tops, which are often blown clear by the wind. Remembrance of this tempts him to adopt the same plan when the ground is bare. As far as eluding hounds is concerned, the strategy of the fox is inferior to that of either hare or deer. Here again the limitation of his mind is his undoing. I have often seen a hunted hare lie absolutely still, even on bare ground, with hounds all round her; and on one occasion with a pack of beagles, one of the hounds actually trod on the hare. Now a hunted fox would have failed to brazen it out so well. He would have made the fatal mistake of moving too soon. Many a hare saves her life by squatting and remaining in that position until hounds have left the vicinity. A fox may on occasion do this if hounds do not come very near him, but he is apt to get on his legs and attempt to slink off unseen before his enemies have got out of sight. Some sharp-eyed whipper-in happens to view him, and before he quite knows what has taken place hounds are screaming on his line.
A hunted stag behaves after the manner of a hare, and will submerge himself in a stream, keeping absolutely motionless while practically surrounded by hounds. The latter have been known to jump right over a stag, without either recognising him or winding him. Roads and certain stretches of bad-scenting country often aid a hunted fox to escape, and so do cattle and sheep. Once therefore a fox finds he can elude his pursuers on such ground, or by running amongst livestock in the fields, he will repeat the performance at some later date.
The instinct of a hunted cub leads him to return to his home covert after the uproar behind him has subsided. As a rule, too, he is not long in making the return journey. I had an example of this a short time ago. A certain staghound pack came to a fox covert to draw for an out-lying deer. Hounds were thrown into the wood— a larch plantation on the top of a hill—and very soon a halloa from the far side gave warning that the stag was away. Before hounds had been more than a few minutes in covert, five fox cubs made their appearance in the open. Four of them I saw myself, and the fifth was viewed by someone else. Being on foot, I remained on the high ground near the wood while hounds hunted their stag into the valley below. Within ten minutes, I viewed three of the cubs back into the plantation, and no doubt the other two were not long behind them.
With old adult foxes, the same thing is likely to happen. A fox slips away and hounds run hard for perhaps twenty minutes, then comes a check, and the line cannot be recovered. The Master gives the order to draw somewhere else, and a fresh fox is found. Had hounds been taken back to the covert in which the original fox was lying, in all probability they would have got on to him again. Having shaken off his pursuers, a hunted fox frequently returns at once to his home covert.
The cub which survives his first hunting season may develop into a very clever fox if he keeps his wits about him. His initial experience with hounds has taught him that it is better to at once get “out of that” than stay, and as his mind is constantly sharpened by pitting his wits against those of his enemies and the creatures which he himself hunts, he becomes in time one of those “old customers” which so often escape, and which in the end manage not to be hunted at all. The least suspicious scent or sound puts such a fox on the alert, and he is away at once, long before hounds are in covert or anyone can get a view of him. When he grows old, and his powers begin to fail, his wits remain as sharp as ever; and no doubt his long and varied experience of life enables him to keep fat and well liking, even though he has hardly a sound tooth left in his head. Now and then hounds account for one of these “old customers,” and it is surprising in what good condition most of them are.
With reference to the fox’s mind, the question arises, What are the feelings of a hunted fox? We can easily imagine our own feelings, if pursued by a pack of large and noisy enemies, but though our mind and that of a wild animal act on a more or less similar basis, the quality of the mind-matter varies immensely. It is, I think, unreasonable to suppose that the mind of the fox is influenced in the same way as the mind of a human being. We express our thoughts and ideas in words, but the fox cannot do this; and without words, thought cannot advance very far. There is no looking forward in the fox’s case, his thoughts are concrete, and his memory is a mass of facts. There is more pain to a human being in anticipating the end than in the end itself. The fox’s mind is incapable of realising a probability, and therefore he can have no anticipation of death, until perhaps at the very last moment when his foes are actually upon him. Even then the end is swift, and is the payment the fox is required to make for the protection of himself and his kind. A fox dies fighting, and anyone who has experienced the excitement of the ring or the battlefield knows that in the heat of the moment pain is for the time being obliterated.
In another chapter I have mentioned the fact that certain foxes in the fell country do not assimilate in colour with their surroundings. In the case of a hunted fox, the further he runs and the dirtier he becomes, the less easy is he to see. A beaten fox shows his condition by his arched back, trailing brush, and lolling tongue, and to an experienced observer there is no doubt of his plight. Let such a fox however see you before you see him, and he is likely to straighten up and go away for a certain distance as if quite fresh. For this reason, an inexperienced person may easily imagine that he is a fresh one.
Clever as a fox is, his mind is strictly limited by experience. Once he has been to a place, he can go straight there again by day or night, but if he is forced beyond the boundary of his own particular beat, the limitation of his mind is apt to prove his final undoing. We have known a fox, hard pressed by hounds in country strange to him, go past several places in which he could have found sanctuary. It was quite evident that he did not know about these places, and though he could hardly fail to have seen them as he passed, he was apparently unable to grasp the probability that they might afford him refuge from his enemies. The mind of the fox appears to be a mass of facts, garnered during his wanderings and packed away in his brain for future reference. To these facts he trusts, but anything in the shape of a probability is quite beyond him.
One often hears it said that a fox hard-pressed by hounds will run round a covert rather than enter it, because in his heated condition the wood is likely to half smother him. Although hunted foxes often do skirt coverts during the course of a run, the woods are usually small ones, and the fox, having probably often visited them before, knows that they contain no safe retreat, and that the mere fact of running through them would only hamper him in his attempt to reach some definite point that he has in mind. We have on many occasions seen a hunted fox enter large woodlands in preference to skirting them, and as a fox would hardly feel the effects of the heat more in a big covert than a small one, it rather points to our theory being the correct one. Of course a hard-pressed fox may skirt a covert if he has never been in it before, because his mind is not open to the possibility of there being a safe refuge in it. The resources of a fox depend on the width of his beat, and his knowledge of the country, therefore when he is driven beyond that beat, he is very much at sea.
