The Sporting Dictionary and Rural Repository, Volume 2 (of 2): Of General Information upon Every Subject Appertaining to the Sports of the FieldTaplin, William
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The Sporting Dictionary and Rural Repository, Volume 2 (of 2): Of General Information upon Every Subject Appertaining to the Sports of the Field
Taplin, William
Hunting -- Dictionaries; Sports -- Dictionaries
Opposite opinions have always been entertained by the advocates for each
particular kind of chase, as may have proved most applicable and
convenient to their situation, occasions, residence, and time of life.
That every description of HUNTING has its proportional attraction to its
distinct and different votaries is well known; but the constant struggle
for superiority in vindication of their _respective sports_, has ever
been between those who hunt FOX and those who hunt STAG; each being
equally violent in defence of the cause his private or personal reasons
prompt him to espouse. MR. DANIEL, in his "Rural Sports," when
animadverting upon the STAG, makes the following remarks: "At the
present day, as an object of chase to the sportsman, the stag requires
but cursory mention: those, indeed, who are fond of pomp and parade in
hunting, will not accede to this opinion; but the only mode in which
this chase can recommend itself to the _real_ sportsman, is, when the
deer is looked for, and found, like other game which hounds pursue. At
present very few hounds, except those of the royal establishment, are
kept exclusively for this amusement; and were the KING once to see a fox
well found, and killed handsomely, he would, in all, probability, give a
decided preference in favour of fox-hounds; for what a marked difference
is there between conveying, in a covered cart, an animal, nearly as big
as the horse that draws it, to a particular spot, where he is liberated,
and cheerly riding to the covert side with all the ecstacy of hope and
expectation!"
After quoting a few lines of beautiful imagery from the poetic sublime
of SOMERVILE, descriptive of throwing off, the drag, the unkenneling,
and breaking covert with fox-hounds, he proceeds thus: "The most
impassioned stag-hunter must confess, that no part of his chase admits
of such description. The only variety he can fairly expect, depends upon
the wind and the temper of the deer, who, by being either sulky, or not
in condition to maintain a contest with the hounds, (to whom he leaves a
burning scent, that gives them no trouble in the pursuit,) shortens or
extends his gallop; but there is none of the enthusiasm of hunting,
which the sportsman feels, when he is following an animal, upon whose
own exertions of speed and craftiness his life is staked; and where no
stoppages, but the checks arising from the two sources above mentioned,
intervene."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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