HUNTING.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LI, Issue 16878, 5 November 1925, Page 9

HUNTING.

THE MOST BRITISH OF SPORTS. ’ ’

Is it lo bo wondered at that in this “the most British of all the Colonies," hunting finds every year now enthusiasts and devotees of the sport of kings 1 ’ Bull fighting, which draws its countless thousands in (Spain, fails to attract the Brltishbr. That sitting in safety behind, stout, barriers and cheering the efforts of others and witnessing untold cruelty to thousands of worn-out horses, never could stir up excitement in a single British heart. The Britisher looks for personal excitement. .and that element of danger in his sport. “The game was never yet worth a rap For rational man to play Into which no accident, no mishap Could possibly find a wav,"

probably sums up the creed of the average British sportsman, and if lie is an active man at all he may turn to fishing, shooting and golf, but will alternately ' declare with Wlivto Melville -2

‘l freely confess that the host of my fu n

I owe to horse and Uuund.’’ For in hunting—be it the foxhunt of the Old Country or the next best substitute, the hare hunt eu,joyed iu this, there is an appealing something in that, nerve-stirring cry of hounds which no other sport provides, and that wonderful feel of sweeping shoulders -and powerful quarters of a good liorso under one conveys a pleasure .which no other, feeling of Comradeship can equal. One often hears the opinion expressed that the motor-car is ousting the horse. This is undoubtedly correct as regards the harness horse, but actual statistics prove in England and Ireland that the facility of travel afforded by the advent of the motor-car has greatly increased the demand for hunters. Business men who through pressure of time were, in the earlier days, unable to think of hunting, can now send their horses “on," go to their offices at 9 a.m v put in an hour at their correspondence, get into their ears and be thirty miles away to the meet by 11 a.m. LOVE OF HUNTING.

This brings out another interesting fact, lhal the love of hunting lies dormant iu many an English breast through lack of opportunity, and the descendants of two and even more generations of business men at Home aro amongst some of the keenest enthusiasts.

A bad horseman knowing nothing of hunting used to be regularly dubbed a “tailor," but now in my own knowledge 1 cun speak of one actually in that trade who never put a Jog over a liorso until ho was 88 years of age wlu» is now one of the keenest hunting men I have met, a fine natural horseman and a desperately hard man to hounds. 1 also know another, the son of a breeches maker in Exoter who, at the time of the late war was a populni master of foxhounds, hunting his own pack, a fine, fearless horseman, and a capital amateur huntsman. Yes, undoubtedly the love of hunting will never die whilst Englishmen live.

I was talking last winter to a gentleman resident near one of the far distant meets of the Poverty Bay hounds who had not hunted or seen hounds for years until the season before last, when hounds met in his country, lie did not intend hunting at all, but he heard the cry of lioiindsy running and lie said it “sent, such a creepy sensation down his spine and so strung up his nerves" that lie hail a horse caught up straight away and joined in the hunt. To-day he is one of our keenest supporters and never misses a chance of a hunt when hounds are within reach.

I suppose-this .love of hunt ing is a form of disease! At least. i,t is lo soino like intoxicating liquor, and many a man who would not- “ride over a potato furrow " in cold ■ blodd, never looks twice, at a fence when that wonderful chords of running hounds is luring him on. It is something that the average man cannot attempt- to analyse, affecting as it. docs the very horse wo bestride, who possibly a “slug" to ride 'ail’d a horse that will “turn it up" if asked to jump a fence when riding round flic station, will cock his ears and jump boldly and well in the wake of the. magnetic pack. A broad-minded freedom is the spirit of tlie hunting field, where all meet as equals from the highest, to the lowest; it is the finest fellowship and the greatest menace to Bolshevism and. strife in'the world, and could well be brought into every day life to the betterment of civilisation as a whole. —‘ ‘ Snaffles."