Articles

There are few packs of harriers in England that can equal the Quarme harriers them in keenness, pace, working capacity, and nose. However, they are well worthy of notice as being among the last representatives of the old light-coloured hunting hound once found plentifully in Devon, Somerset, and Cornwall. Until the year 1825, when the...

You could be forgiven for assuming the comment below was submitted as part of the evidence to the recent Government inquiry into fake news: ‘There are, on the other hand, some organisations which have been formed solely for the purpose of securing the prohibition of a particular sport or all field sports. In the main...

Frederick Watson wrote entertainingly of “hound song.” in the 1930’s these are his thoughts taken from an early Baily’s.   Hounds, like all real artists, sing on the smallest possible provocation, but they prefer the night before a hunt because they have not dined, and feel – quite naturally – extremely aesthetic, Hound singing has...

According to the author this is really a cautionary story for all who may be tempted to ignore advice because they like to imagine they know something about a subject. Now, I started piling-in to beagles shortly after I learnt to walk and, except for a years spent in seafaring, I con­ed to do so...

This article appeared in the very first annual Baily’s Hunting Directory in 1897 and was obviously intended to give some words of advice on what not to wear whilst on the hunting field. It is included here both as a historical note and to provide a small degree of comfort to those who even with...

In this evocative article James Apperley recalls his first experience of harriers. It was one of those days when the weather is like a Cossack cavalry charge, all wild momentum in a livery of ragtag greys, scudding just above the cottage roofs, too low and fast for rain. The kind of day when to be...

I can hear a skylark singing. A thin stream of song-code spilling out into the air above my head. I look up, struggling to find focus in the blue for a moment before I spot him: a brown blur, hanging in the buffeting breeze one hundred feet up. It’s the first time I’ve heard a...

During the year 1877, it seems an attempt was made to have the huntsman hunt the hounds with less assistance from their owners, but as hounds  were ‘trencher fed’ and did not know him, being kept at home, both hounds and owners were gloriously independent, and hunted themselves to suit themselves. If the huntsman was...

In 1906 Captain Herrick, of Crookstown, County Cork, kept a pack of 15 couple of 12-inch beagles which he used to hunt the stoat during the spring, and summer, their Master’s time being taken up with the chase of the fox during the autumn and winter. The hounds were bred by Capt. Herrick for this...

A considerable list could be compiled of unusual mounts on which men have followed hounds. In the last century there were several incidents of young bulls being ridden, some of them even in the Shires, and many a youngster has had his first day’s hunting on a donkey. I, myself, have seen a mule put...