PACE

CHAPTER IX

IN order to bring a fox to hand, hounds must press him at some period of the run. It is the pace, coupled with the superior condition of the hounds, that kills.

I have heard it stated that a wild animal which has to work for its food, will always be in better condition than another—such as a hound—which has food brought to it. With this statement I must beg to disagree. Take for instance a carted deer, which is hand-fed on hard feed, and a wild stag which feeds himself. Which of them will be in the better condition? and by condition I mean fitness to stand up before hounds. I think anyone with experience of both forms of stag hunting, will agree with me when I plump for the hand-fed deer. Hounds are fed at regular intervals, usually early on the morning of the day before hunting. The huntsman knows the appetites of individual hounds, and feeds accordingly. By this means the pack is kept in good and level condition. When hounds arrive at the meeting place, they have thoroughly digested their food, and have got rid of all waste matter; thus they are in the best of running order. Also, prior to the commencement of the season, they have been put through a course of slow and fast exercise, that has hardened their muscles and feet, and strengthened their wind.

In the case of the fox, he often feeds at irregular intervals, particularly in mountainous districts where weather conditions are frequently severe. As a rule he feeds at night, and what exercise he gets is taken on his hunting expeditions. Generally speaking this exercise is not fast, and if food happens to be plentiful, he does not cover a great deal of ground. When he returns, full-fed to his lying-up place, at daybreak or a little before, he is not in the best of shape for hard running. The earlier in the morning therefore that hounds unkennel him, the better chance they have to press him, if scent serves. An afternoon fox is always in better trim than a morning one, and so as a rule is an old dog fox which has travelled far beyond his own beat on a love-making trip.

The amount of pressure that hounds can bring to bear on their fox depends of course on the pace, and pace depends on the strength of the scent, for hounds cannot travel faster than their noses.

It was Goosey, the famous Belvoir huntsman, who begged leave to state that the fox was a toddling animal. By this he meant that a fox will keep putting a longer and longer interval between himself and the hounds, unless the latter are able to keep up a sufficient pressure. On a good scenting day, when hounds get away right on the back of their fox, the latter has to run his hardest; and, roughly speaking, the average fox cannot keep this up for more than twenty minutes or half an hour. At other times, when scent is moderate or catchy, hounds push on when they can, and are working and taking so much out of themselves all the time. Not so with the fox however. He moderates his pace, and may even stop or lie down, and by so doing gets his second wind if he requires it, and what to him is most important of all, he gains time. It is ever the fox’s aim to do this, for the slower he can go the less heated he gets, and eventually he is able to run hounds out of scent altogether.

The fox is extremely fast for a moderate distance, especially in rough ground where he can easily beat hounds. He is remarkably active too amongst crags and cliffs in mountainous country. On a good scenting day in the fell country, the pace is likely to be very fast indeed. The pace of the modern foxhound of the type one sees at Peterborough is second to none in the estimation of some people, but I am willing to wager a trifle that if field-trials for hounds were organised in this country, on the lines of those held in America, some of our hill-country hounds would surprise the judges by their speed.

The fastest runs generally occur when hounds are piloted by a dog fox which is out of his own country. On the hills, dog foxes often travel considerable distances on their love-making expeditions, and when hounds drop on to one of these customers the ensuing hunt is apt to be both fast and straight. The fox sets his mask for his own domains, and goes there in a bee line.

Elsewhere we have said that a fox has his own particular beat, every foot of which he knows, and his instinct is to turn back when he reaches the boundary of that beat. The lure of a vixen may tempt him beyond it, and I am inclined to think that when he returns he follows the same route which he took on the outward journey. Once he has followed a certain line of country, he never forgets it, and every detail of the way is stored up in his memory. Aside from this however, the homing instinct appears to be strongly developed in foxes, for there are many instances on record of foxes imported from distant parts of the country making their way back again across wide areas on which they have never put foot before.

The longest runs usually take place when scent is rather permanent than strong. The longest hunt I ever personally took part in, began at ten o’clock in the morning, and hounds were still running after dark. This was in the Lake District, and it is possible that hounds changed foxes, though I rather doubt it. It was never very fast at any period, and there were a number of checks, still hounds kept going on, their fox being one of the “toddling” sort mentioned by Goosey.

There is I think little doubt that the stamina of the fox to-day—at any rate in the Midlands—is less than that of his predecessors. This may be accounted for by the fact that there are now many more foxes than there used to be, and in consequence each individual fox has a smaller beat and knows less country. Food is likewise easier to obtain, and a fox has not to travel so far to get it, so the exercise he gets does not keep him in such hard condition as was the case in the old days when he and his kind were few and far between, and the country was more or less unenclosed.

We still hear of long runs, but as a rule more than one fox acts as pilot, for with foxes thick on the ground, and coverts planted at short intervals, changes are frequent. The modern quick tactics necessary in the Shires, where hounds are apt to be over-ridden, make for short bursts. In the old days, hounds usually killed the fox they started with, for the supply of foxes was a meagre one. Hounds too could use their noses better than their present-day representatives of fashionable type. They were bred for work, with no thought of show, and when hounds were bought and sold, they fetched prices more commensurate with their ability in the field than is the case to-day.

In an ordinary enclosed country, where hounds are ridden to, a fall of snow may temporarily stop hunting. On the fells, where hounds are followed on foot, snow, if it is not too deep, seldom interferes with sport. In soft snow—which often carries a good scent, particularly when it is damp —hounds, owing to their greater length of leg, can travel faster and more easily than the fox. Thus it often happens that a fox, which under ordinary conditions would go right out to the high tops, cannot face the deeper snow on the more elevated slopes, and so hounds, to use a local expression “lay him in,” or in other words force him into the low ground. There, unless he goes to earth, his shrift is likely to be short, and a kill in the open is often the crowning event of such a run.

Although the majority of foxes, particularly the hill-type, are more muscular than fat, one occasionally comes across a specimen carrying more than his share of adipose tissue. A fox of this kind probably spends most of his time in the midst of a plentiful food supply, and if hounds happen to get on to him he does not as a rule last long if the pace is fast.

In another chapter I have made mention of a fox which took refuge beneath a patch of blaeberry scrub on a crag-face. Prior to reaching this retreat, he had been very hard run by two and a half couples of hounds, the pack having split. When he was at last evicted from the crag, he made a comparatively feeble effort to escape, and after a short scurry, went to ground under a big stone. It was the pace, coupled with his own fat condition, that killed this fox.

Certain creatures, the heron for example, when pursued, lighten themselves by vomiting up their food. I have never heard of a fox doing this, but in “The Master of Game,” the oldest English hunting book, it says, with regard to coursing the fox: “If greyhounds give him many touches and overset him, his last remedy, if he is in an open country, will be that he vishiteth gladly (the act of voiding excrements) so that the greyhounds should leave him for the stink of the dirt, and also for the fear that he hath.”

The “Master of Game” was written between the years 1406 and 1413, and from it one soon discovers that the sportsmen of that period were possessed of a very intimate acquaintance with the habits and “nature” of the wild animals they pursued. They were well aware of the necessity for pressing a beast at some period of the run, particularly if the animal was fleet footed. In order to keep up the pressure, they employed relays of hounds. In the chapter on “The Wolf and his nature” it says: “They go so fast when they be void (empty) that men have let run four leashes of greyhounds, one after the other and they could not overtake him, for he runs as fast as any beast in the world, and he lasts long running, for he has a long breath.”

At the time the book was written, it was customary to take the fox in coverts, with hounds and nets. In the open he was apparently coursed with greyhounds.

When hounds run together as a pack, the pressure they bring to bear on their quarry is dependent not only on pace, but on the competitive spirit aroused amongst them, what we call drive. When a hound gets his hackles up, and exhibits a keenness to be always pushing on, then he has plenty of drive. A pack, the individual hounds of which are always working at high pressure, is therefore sure to be a killing one.