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Fox-hunting in the Highlands
I have very little to say
on this most momentous of all sporting subjects; and that little will, I
fear, be sadly
" Unmusical to Melton ears,
And harsh in sound to Quorne."
But what are a set of poor
fellows like us to do, living here amongst mountains, and ravines, and
torrents, and deep watercourses, and morasses, against none of which the
best horse that ever put foot on turf could contend for five minutes? It
took me, I must confess, some time before I could get over all the finer
tone of my Leicestershire feelings; and I have no doubt that I blushed a
perfect scarlet the first time that I doubled up a fox with a rifle-ball;
but now, rendered callous by use and necessity, I can do execution upon
him without a pang.
In Scotland the fox holds
the first place among "vermin." I do not think that a mountain-fox would
live long before a pack of regular fox-hounds, but in his own country he
is well able to take care of himself. He is a handsome powerful fellow ;
and in size and strength more like a wolf than a Lowland fox, and well he
may be, since his food consists of mutton and lamb, grouse and venison.
His stronghold is under some huge cairn, or among the fragments that strew
the bottom of some rocky precipice, perhaps three thousand feet above the
sea. In those mountain solitudes he does not confine his depredations to
the night; I have often encountered him in broad daylight, and through my
deer-glass have watched his manner of hunting the ptarmigan, which is not
so neat, but appears quite as successful, as the tactics of the cat. By an
unobservant eye, the track of a fox is easily mistaken for that of a dog.
The print is somewhat rounder, but the chief difference is the superior
neatness of the impression and the exactness of the steps, the hind-foot
just covering the print of the fore-foot. The fox makes free with a great
variety of game, and the demands of his nursery require a plentiful
supply. In the hills he lives on lambs, sheep, grouse, and ptarmigan ; in
the low country the staple of his prey is rabbits, where these are
plentiful; but nothing comes amiss to him, from the field-mouse upwards.
The most wary birds, the wood-pigeon and the wild duck, do not escape him,
and he destroys a considerable number of the young of the roe. The honey
of the wild bee is one of his favourite delicacies; and vermin-trappers
have found no bait more effective to lure him than a piece of honey-comb.
His nose is very fine, and he detects the taint of human footstep or hand
for days after it has been communicated. Several ways are tried for
evading his suspicions. Some trappers place three or four traps in a
circle, and leave them well covered for some days without any bait; and at
the end of that time, when all taint must have left the traps, they place
a bait in the centre. Another way is to place the traps in shallow water,
and a bait on some bank where he cannot reach it without running a good
chance of treading on them. Even when the enemy is in the trap the victory
is not won : and if he escapes, whether whole or maimed, after being
trapped, he is too well warned ever to be caught again. Altogether,
trapping has never been very successfully practised against the fox in the
Highlands, and the old native practice of "fox-hunting," as the
professional mode of killing them is called here, is still much preferred.
Of all ways of earning a
livelihood, perhaps there is none that requires a greater degree of
hardihood and acuteness than the trade of a vermin-killer in the Highlands
— meaning by "vermin," not magpies, crows, and "such small deer," but the
stronger and wilder carnivorous natives of the mountain and forest — the
enemies of the sheep and lambs. In the Highlands he is honoured with the
title of "The Fox-hunter" but the Highland fox-hunter leads a very
different life, and heads a very different establishment, from him of
Leicestershire. When you first come upon him in some wild glen, you are
somewhat startled at his appearance and bearing. He is generally a wiry
active man, past middle age, slung round with pouches and belts for
carrying the implements of his trade; he wears a huge cap of badger-skin,
and carries an old-fashioned long-barrelled fowling-piece. At his feet
follow two or three couple of strong gaunt slow-hounds, a brace of
greyhounds, rough, and with a good dash of the lurcher, and a
miscellaneous tail of terriers of every degree.
A short time ago, the foxes
having made too free with the lambs, the sheep-farmer of the glen summoned
the fox-hunter to his assistance, and I joined him with my rifle. Before
daylight, the fox-hunter and myself, with two shepherds, and the usual
following of dogs, were on the ground, and drew some small hanging
birch-woods near the scene of the latest depredations. While the whole
pack of dogs were amusing themselves with a marten-cat in the wood, we
found a fresh fox-track on the river bank below it, and after considering
its direction leisurely, the fox-hunter formed his plans. The hounds were
coupled up, and left to the charge of the two shepherds, whilst we started
with our guns for a steep corrie, where he expected we could command the
passes. It was a good hour and half of a jog-trot, which seemed a familiar
pace to my companion. We at length turned off the great glen, and
proceeded up a small, rapid, rocky burn tracing it to where it issued
through a narrow fissure in the rocks, down which the water ran like a
mill-race. Scrambling up to the head of the ravine, we found ourselves in
the corrie, a magnificent amphitheatre of precipitous grey rocks. The
fox's favourite earth was known to be far up on the cliff, and as only two
passes could easily lead to it, we endeavoured to command them both. My
station was high up, on a dizzy enough crag, which commanded one of the
passes for a considerable way, and sufficiently screened me from all the
lower part of the corrie. Having with some difficulty got to my place, and
arranged the best vista I could command whilst keeping myself unseen, I
had a few minutes to admire the wild scene below me. It was a narrow
corrie, with a small clear stream twisting and shining through an endless
confusion of rugged grey rocks.
I had not been placed many
minutes when a deep bay reached me through the clear morning air. I
listened with eagerness; and soon heard the whole pack in full cry, though
at a great distance, and apparently not coming quite in our direction.
While watching, however, the different entries to the corrie, I saw a fox
come leisurely down a steep slope of loose stones towards where the
fox-hunter was concealed. Presently he stopped, and quietly sitting down,
appeared to listen for the dogs; and, not hearing their cry come nearer,
he came quietly and leisurely along, till he reached the track where we
had crossed the corrie; when, cautiously stopping with his nose to the
ground, he changed his careless manner of running to a quick canter,
halting now and then, and snuffing the air, to find out where the enemy
was concealed. Just then, too, the hounds appeared to have turned to our
direction, and another fox came in view, entering the corrie to my right
hand at a great pace, and making directly towards me, though still at a
mile's distance. The first fox had approached within sixty or seventy
yards of the fox-hunter, when I saw a small stream of smoke issue from the
rocks, and the fox staggered a little, and then I heard the report of the
gun. The foxes both rushed down the hill again, away from us, one
evidently wounded; when, the echo of the shot sounding in every direction,
first on one side of the corrie, then on another, and then apparently on
every side at once, fairly puzzled the poor animals. The wounded fox
turned back again, and ran straight towards where the fox-hunter was,
while the other came towards me. He was within shot, and I was only
waiting till he got to an open bit of ground, over which I saw he must
pass, when the hounds appeared in full cry at the mouth of the corrie by
which he had entered. Reynard stopped to look; and stretching up his head
and neck to do so, gave me a fair shot at about sixty yards off. The next
moment he was stretched dead, with my ball through him; while the other,
quite bewildered, ran almost between the legs of my fellow-chasseur, and
then turned back towards the dogs; who, meeting him full in the face,
wounded as he was, soon caught and slew him. In a short time the whole of
our troops, dogs, shepherds, and all, were collected; and great were the
rejoicings over the fallen foe. I must say, that though our game was
ignoble, the novelty of the proceedings, and the wildness and magnificence
of the scenery, had kept me both amused and interested. I forget the name
of the corrie: it was some unpronounceable Gaelic word, signifying the "Corrie
of the Echo." |
