LETTER VII
Unless I had kept a regular journal of all that has been done in the kennel, from the time when my young hounds were first taken in, to the end of the last season, it would be impossible, I think, to answer all the questions which, in your last Letter, you ask concerning them. I wish that a memory, which is far from a good one, would enable me to give the information that you desire. If I am to be more circumstantial than in my former Letter, I must recollect as well as I can the regular system of my own kennel; and, if I am to write from memory, you will, without doubt, excuse the want of the lucidus ordo. It shall be my endeavour, that the information which these Letters contain shall not mislead you.
You wish me to explain what I mean by hounds being handy. It respects their readiness to do whatever is required of them; and particularly, when cast, to turn easily which way the huntsman pleases.1
I was told the other day by a sportsman, that he considers the management of hounds as a regular system of education, from the time when they are first taken into the kennel: I perfectly agree with this gentleman; and am well convinced that if you expect sagacity in your hound when he is old, you must be mindful what instruction he receives from you in his youth; for as he is, of all animals, the most docile, he is also most liable to bad habits. A diversity of character, constitution, and disposition, are to be observed amongst them; which, to be made the most of, must be carefully attended to, and differently treated. I do not pretend to have succeeded in it myself; yet you will perceive, perhaps, that I have given it some attention.
I begin to hunt with my young hounds in August. The employment of my huntsman the preceding months is to keep his old hounds healthy and quiet, by giving them proper exercise; and to get his young hounds forward.2 They are called over often in the kennel: it uses them to their names, to the huntsman, and to the whipper-in. They are walked out often among sheep, hares, and deer: it uses them to a rate. Sometimes he turns down a cat before them, which they hunt up to, and kill; and, when the time of hunting approaches, he turns out badgers, or young foxes, taking out some of the steadiest of his old hounds to lead them on: this teaches them to hunt. He draws small covers and furze brakes with them, to use them to a halloo, and to teach them obedience. If they find improper game, and hunt it, they are stopped and brought back; and as long as they will stop at a rate, they are not chastised. Obedience is all that is required of them, till they have been sufficiently taught the game that they are to pursue: an obstinate deviation from it afterwards is never pardoned. It is an observation of the Marchese Beccaria, that “La certezza di un castigo, benche moderato, fara sempre una maggiore impressione, che non il timore di un altro piu terribile, unito colla speranza, della ’impunita.”
When my young hounds are taken out to air, my huntsman takes them into that country in which they are designed to hunt. It is attended with this advantage: they acquire a knowledge of the country, and, when left behind at any time, cannot fail to find their way home more easily.
When they begin to hunt, they are first taken into a large cover of my own, which has many ridings cut in it, and where young foxes are turned out every year on purpose for them. Here they are taught the scent that they are to follow, are encouraged to pursue it, and are stopped from every other. Here they are blooded to fox. I must also tell you, that, as foxes are plentiful in this cover, the principal earth is not stopped; and the foxes are checked back, or some of them let in, as may best suit the purpose of blooding. After they have been hunted a few days in this manner, they are then sent to more distant covers, and more old hounds are added to them: there they continue to hunt, till they are taken into the pack, which is seldom later than the beginning of September; for by that time they will have learned what is required of them, and they seldom give much trouble afterwards.3 In September I begin to hunt in earnest; and after the old hounds have killed a few foxes, the young hounds are put into the pack, two or three couple at a time, till all have hunted. They are then divided; and as I seldom have occasion to take in more than nine or ten couple, one half are taken out one day, the other half the next, till all are steady.
Two other methods of entering young hounds I have practised occasionally, as the number of hounds have required; for instance, if that number be considerable (fifteen or sixteen couple), I make a large draft of my steadiest hounds, which are kept with the young hounds in a separate kennel, and are hunted with them all the first part of the season. This, when the old hounds begin to hunt, makes two distinct packs, and is always attended with great trouble and inconvenience. Nothing hurts a pack so much, as to enter many young hounds; since it must be considerably weakened, by being robbed of those which are the most steady; and yet young hounds can do nothing without their assistance. Such, therefore, as constantly enter their young hounds in this manner, will, sometimes at least, have two indifferent packs, instead of one good one.
In the other method, the young hounds are well awed from sheep, but never stooped to a scent till they are taken out with the pack: they are then taken out, a few only at a time; and, if your pack be perfectly steady, and well manned, may not give you much trouble. The method I first mentioned, is that which I most commonly practise, being most suitable to the number of young hounds that I usually enter—nine or ten couple: if you have fewer, the last will be most convenient. The one which requires two distinct packs, is too extensive a plan to suit your establishment, requiring more horses and hounds than you intend to keep.4
Though I have mentioned, in a former Letter, from eight to twelve couple of young hounds, as a sufficient number to keep up your pack to its present establishment; yet it is always best to have a reserve of a few couple more than you want, in case of accidents; since, from the time you make your draft to the time of hunting, is a long period, and their existence, at that age and season, very precarious; besides, when they are safe from the disorder, they are not always safe from each other; and a summer seldom passes without some losses of that kind. At the same time I must tell you, that I should decline entering more than are necessary to keep up the pack; since a great number would only create useless trouble and vexation.
You wish to know what number of old hounds you should hunt with the young ones: that must depend on the strength of your pack, and the number which you choose to spare; if good and steady, ten or twelve couple will be sufficient.
My young hounds, and such old ones as are intended to hunt along with them,5 are kept in a kennel by themselves till the young hounds are hunted with the pack. I need not, I am sure, enumerate the many reasons that make this regulation necessary.
I never trust my young hounds in the forest till they have been well blooded to fox, and seldom put more than a couple into the pack at a time:6 the others are walked out amongst the deer when the men exercise their horses, and are severely chastised if they take any notice of them: they also draw covers with them; selecting those where they can best see their hounds, and most easily command them, and where there is the least chance to find a fox. On these occasions, I had rather they should have to rate their hounds than encourage them. It requires less judgment, and, if improperly done, is less dangerous in its consequences. One halloo of encouragement to a wrong scent, more than undoes all that you have been doing.
When young hounds begin to love a scent, it may be of use to turn out a badger before them: you will then be able to discover what improvement they have made. I mention a badger, on a supposition that young foxes cannot so well be spared; besides, the badger, being a slower animal, he may easily be followed, and driven the way you choose he should run.
The day you intend to turn out a fox, or badger, you will do well to send them amongst hares, or deer. A little rating and flogging, before they are encouraged to vermin, is of the greatest use; as it teaches them as well what they should not, as what they should, do. I have known a badger run several miles, if judiciously managed; for which purpose, he should be turned out in a very open country, and followed by a person who has more sense than to ride on the line of him. If he do not meet with a cover, or hedge, in his way, he will keep on for several miles; if he do, you will not be able to get him any farther. You should give him a great deal of law, and you will do well to break his teeth.7
If you run any cubs to ground in an indifferent country, and do not want blood, bring them home, and they will be of use to your young hounds. Turn out bag-foxes to your young hounds, but never to your old ones. I object to them on many accounts: but of bag-foxes I shall have occasion to speak hereafter.
The day after your hounds have had blood, is also a proper time to send them where there is riot, and to chastise them, if they deserve it: it is always best to correct them when they cannot help knowing what they are corrected for. When you send out your hounds for this purpose, the later they go out the better; as the worse the scent is, the less inclinable will they be to run it, and, of course, will give less trouble in stopping them. It is a common practice with huntsmen, to flog their hounds most unmercifully in the kennel. I have already mentioned my disapprobation of it; but, if many of your hounds be obstinately riotous,8 you may with less impropriety put a live hare into the kennel to them, flogging them as often as they approach her: they will then have some notion, at least, for what they are beaten; but let me entreat you, before this charivari9 begins, to draft off your steady hounds: an animal to whom we owe so much good diversion, should not be ill-used unnecessarily. When a hare is put into the kennel, the huntsman and both the whippers-in should be present; and the whippers-in should flog every hound, calling him by his name, and rating him as often as he is near the hare; and upon this occasion they cannot cut them too hard, or rate them too much. When they think they have chastised them enough, the hare should then be taken away, the huntsman should halloo off his hounds, and the whippers-in should rate them to him. If any one love hare more than the rest, you may tie a dead one round his neck, flogging him and rating him at the same time. This possibly may make him ashamed of it. I never bought a lot of hounds, some of which were not obliged to undergo this discipline. Either hares are less plentiful in other countries, or other sportsmen are less nice in making their hounds steady from them.
I would advise you to hunt your large covers with your young hounds: it will tire them out;10 a necessary step towards making them steady;—will open the cover against the time you begin in earnest; and, by disturbing the large covers early in the year, foxes will be shy of them in the season, and show you better chases; besides, as they are not likely to break from thence, you can do no hurt to the corn, and may begin before it is cut.
If your hounds be very riotous, and you are obliged to stop them often from hare, it will be advisable to try on (however late it may be) till you find a fox; as the giving them encouragement should, at such a time, prevail over every other consideration.
Though all young hounds are given to riot, yet the better they are bred, the less trouble will they be likely to give. Pointers, well bred, stand naturally; and high-bred fox-hounds love their own game best. Such, however, as are very riotous, should have little rest: you should hunt them one day in large covers where foxes are in plenty; the next day they should be walked out amongst hares and deer, and stopped from riot; the day following be hunted again, as before. Old hounds, which I have had from other packs (particularly such as have been entered at hare), I have sometimes found incorrigible; but I never yet knew a young hound so riotous, but, by this management, he soon became steady.
When hounds are rated and do not answer the rate, they should be coupled up immediately, and be made to know the whipper-in: in all probability this method will save any further trouble. These fellows sometimes flog hounds unmercifully, and some of them seem to take pleasure in their cruelty: I am sure, however, I need not desire you to prevent any excess in correction.
I have heard, that no fox-hounds will break off to deer, after once a fox is found. I cannot say that the experience I have had of this diversion will in anywise justify the remark: let me advise you, therefore, to seek a surer dependence. Before you hunt your young hounds where hares are in plenty, let them be awed and stopped from hare: before you hunt amongst deer, let them not only see deer, but let them draw covers where deer are; for you must not be surprised, if, after they are so far steady as not to run them in view, they should challenge on the scent of them. Unless you take this method with your young hounds before you put them into the pack, you will run a risk of corrupting the old ones, and may suffer continual vexation, by hunting with unsteady hounds. I have already told you, that, after my young hounds are taken into the pack, I still take out but very few at a time when I hunt among deer: I also change them when I take out others; for the steadiness they may have acquired could be but little depended on, were they to meet with any encouragement to be riotous.
I confess, that I think first impressions of more consequence than they are in general thought to be: I not only enter my young hounds to vermin on that account, but I even use them, as early as I can, to the strongest covers and thickest brakes; and I seldom find that they are shy of them afterwards. A friend of mine has assured me, that he once entered a spaniel to snipes, and the dog ever after was partial to them, preferring them to every other bird.
If you have martin-cats within your reach, as all hounds are fond of their scent, you will do well to enter your young hounds in the covers they frequent. The martin-cat, being a small animal, by running the thickest brakes it can find, teaches hounds to run cover, and is therefore of the greatest use. I do not much approve of hunting them with the old hounds: they show but little sport; are continually climbing trees; and as the cover they run seldom fails to scratch and tear hounds considerably, I think you might be sorry to see your whole pack disfigured by it. The agility of this little animal is really wonderful; and though it frequently falls from a tree in the midst of a whole pack of hounds, all intent on catching it, there are but few instances, I believe, of a martin’s being caught by them in that situation.
In summer, hounds might hunt in an evening. I know a pack that, after having killed one fox in the morning with the young hounds, killed another in the evening with the old ones. Scent generally lies well at the close of the day; yet there is a great objection to hunting at that time; animals are then more easily disturbed, and you have a greater variety of scents than at an earlier hour.
Having given you all the information that I can possibly recollect, with regard to my own management of young hounds, I shall now take notice of that part of your last letter, where, I am sorry to find, our opinions differ. Obedience, you say, is everything necessary in a hound. and it is of little consequence by what means it is obtained. I cannot altogether concur in that opinion; for I think it very necessary that the hound should at the same time understand you: obedience, under proper management, will be a necessary consequence of it. Obedience, surely, is not all that is required of them: they should be taught to distinguish of themselves right from wrong, or I know not how they are to be managed when, as it frequently happens, we cannot see what they are at, and must take their words for it. A hound that hears a voice which has often rated him, and that hears the whip which he has often felt, I know will stop. I also know that he will commit the same fault again, if he has been accustomed to be guilty of it.
Obedience, you very rightly observe, is a necessary quality in a hound, for he is useless without it. It is, therefore, an excellent principle for a huntsman to set out upon; yet, good as it is, I think it may be carried too far. I would not have him insist on too much, or torment his hounds mal-à-propos, by forcibly exacting from them what is not absolutely necessary to your diversion. He intends, you say, to enter your young hounds at hare: is it to teach them obedience? Does he mean to encourage vice in them, for the sake of correcting it afterwards? I have heard, indeed, that the way to make hounds steady from hare, is to enter them at hare;11 that is, to encourage them to hunt her. The belief of so strange a paradox requires more faith than I can pretend to.
It concerns me to be under the necessity of differing from you in opinion; but, since it cannot now be helped, we will pursue the subject, and examine it throughout. Permit me then to ask you, what it is that you propose from entering your hounds at hare? Two advantages, I shall presume, you expect from it: the teaching of your hounds to hunt, and teaching them to be obedient. However necessary you may think these requisites in a hound, I cannot but flatter myself that they are to be acquired by less exceptionable means. The method I have already mentioned to make hounds obedient, as it is practised in my own kennel— that of calling them over often in the kennel, to use them to their names,12 and walking them out often among sheep, hares, and deer, from which they are stopped, to use them to a rate, in my opinion, would answer your purpose better. The teaching your hounds to hunt, is by no means so necessary as you seem to imagine: Nature will teach it them; nor need you give yourself so much concern about it. Art will only be necessary to prevent them from hunting what they ought not to hunt; and do you think your method a proper one to accomplish it?
The first, and most essential, thing towards making hounds obedient, I suppose, is to make them understand you; nor do I apprehend that you will find any difficulty on their parts, but such as may be occasioned on yours.13 The language that we use to them to convey our meaning should never vary; still less should we alter the very meaning of the terms we use. Would it not be absurd to encourage when we mean to rate? and, if we did, could we expect to be obeyed? You will not deny this; and yet you are guilty of no less an inconsistency, when you encourage your hounds to run a scent to-day, which you know, at the same time, you must be obliged to break them from to-morrow. Is it not running counter to justice and to reason?
I confess, that there is some use in hunting young hounds where you can easily command them; but even this you may pay too dearly for. Enter your hounds in small covers, or in such large ones as have ridings cut in them: whippers-in can then get at them; can always see what they are at; and I have no doubt that you may have a pack of fox-hounds steady to fox by this means, without adopting so preposterous a method as that of first making hare-hunters of them. You will find that hounds, thus taught what game they are to hunt, and what they are not, will stop at a word; because they will understand you; and, after they have been treated in this manner, a smack only of the whip will spare you the inhumanity of cutting your hounds in pieces (not very justly), for faults which you yourself have encouraged them to commit.
In your last letter you seem very anxious to get your young hounds well blooded to fox, at the same time that you talk of entering them at hare. How am I to reconcile such contradictions? If the blood of fox be of so much use, surely you cannot think the blood of hare a matter of indifference, unless you should be of opinion that a fox is better eating. You may think, perhaps, it was not intended they should hunt sheep; yet we very well know, that when once they have killed sheep, they have no dislike to mutton afterwards.
You have conceived an idea, perhaps, that a fox-hound is designed by Nature to hunt a fox: yet, surely, if that were your opinion, you would not think of entering him at any other game. I cannot, however, suppose Nature designed the dog which we call a fox-hound to hunt a fox only, since we very well know that he will also hunt other animals. That a well-bred fox-hound may give a preference to vermin, cœteris paribus, I will not dispute: it is very possible he may; but of this I am certain, that every fox-hound will leave a bad scent of fox for a good one of either hare or deer, unless he has been made steady from them; and in this I shall not fear to be contradicted. But, as I do not wish to enter into abstruse reasoning with you, or think it in anywise material to our present purpose, whether the dogs we call fox-hounds were originally designed by Nature to hunt fox, or not, we will drop the subject. I must, at the same time, beg leave to observe, that dogs are not the only animals in which an extraordinary diversity of species has happened since the days of Adam. Yet a great naturalist tells us, that man is nearer, by eight degrees, to Adam, than is the dog to the first dog of his race; since the age of man is fourscore years, and that of a dog but ten. It therefore follows, that if both should equally degenerate, the alteration would be eight times more remarkable in the dog than in man.
The two most necessary questions which result from the foregoing premises, are, Whether hounds entered at hare are perfectly steady afterwards to fox? and, Whether steadiness be not attainable by more reasonable terms? Having never hunted with gentlemen who follow this practice, I must leave the first question for others to determine; but, having always had my hounds steady, I can myself answer the second.
The objections that I have now made to the treatment of young hounds by some huntsmen, though addressed, my friend, to you, are general objections, and should not personally offend you. I know no man more just or more humane than yourself. For the disapprobation which you so strongly marked in your last letter, of the severity used in some kennels, the noble animal that we both admire is much beholden to you: your intention of being present yourself the first time a hound is flogged, to see how your new whipper-in behaves himself, is a proof of benevolence, which the Italian author of the most humane book14 could not fail to commend you for. Huntsmen and whippers-in are seldom so unlucky as to have your feelings; yet custom, which authorizes them to flog hounds unmercifully, does not do away the barbarity of it. A gentleman seeing a girl skinning eels alive, asked her “if it was not very cruel?” “Oh, not at all, Sir,” replied the girl; “they be used to it!”
