HUNTING NOTES.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 11 July 1925, Page 12

HUNTING NOTES.

(By “Yoicks Over.”). An old hutiwsiman came in from the hunting field, tired and bowed from a long day in the saddle. Rheumatism, was beginning to get him in every joint. "In short, he ruminated, life is not what it was. He swallowed his customary quart of mulled ale. Said he is lowly and generously to his first whip, who came to the door of the stable, “Take a piece of wood, Whip, and knock me over the head. You can then have my job.” Entries close with the secretary on Tuesday next for the annual point-to-point steeplechases on Saturday, July IS, at Waver ley. The committee reserves the right to classify all nominations. The following is from Izaac Walton’s ..“Coinpleat Angler” : “The earth feeds and carries those horses that carry us. If I would be prodigal of my time and your patience, what might I not say in commendation, of the earth, that puts limits to the/proud and raging sea, and by that means preserves both man and beast? And it destroys them not, as we see it daily doth those that venture upon the sea, and are there •ship-wrecked, drowned and left to feed haddocks; when we that aro so wise as to keep ourselves on, the earth, walk, and talk, and live, and eat, and drink, and go a-hunting.” And thus the »same Izaac in another passage: “Hunting is a game for princes and noble pensonis; it hath been highly prized in all ages; it was, one of the qualificationts that- Xenophon bestowed on, his Cyrus, that lie was a hunter of wild beasts. Hunting trains up the younger nobility to the use of manly exercises in their riper age. What more ma.nly exercise than hunting the wild hoar, the stag, the buck, the fox, or the hare? Hrw doth it preserve health, and increase strength and activity!” The English otter may he called cunning, and the fox crafty, hut these terms do not apply to the hare. She — and the acknowledged use of the female gender by all hunters denote s it—is a fearful and timid creature. . If long courses with barters lie desired, then she must he hunted as quietly as possible. The best rung with harriers are ever those in which the hare has a field start of the hounds, and the. hounds a field of the hunt followers. Tlie hare then can make the best, use of her natural turn of speed, and the hound of its nose to the scent. At Mr. G. V - . Pearce’s last Saturday, when the hare got well away from the hounds and the hounds from the field, such a run took place as one may never wish a better. * v The annual hunt ball takes place in Waverley next Friday, the night before Ihe point-to-point steeples. Again hounds ran well at the last hunt —Mr. A. Mitchell’s, at Manaia. As Mr. Mitchell’s country and that of his neighbours is excellent hunting country, and the fences were well tended, so was the day an excellent hunting day.