A Sporting Pilgrimage Author:Caspar Whitney Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: dare (Ireland), the Duke of Buccleuch's, and the Earl of Eglinton's (Scotland) hunt four days. A very large number, of course, meet three days, and a few pack... more »s of fox-hounds in less-favored districts and practically all the stag-hounds hunt only twice each week, so that three would probably be the fair average figure of weekly runs. The average number of mounts at the meets is not so easily estimated; in the " shires" 500 is not unusual in J. S. LovnKy ON THE EXMOORSGOING TO COVERT the height of the season, rarely less than 300 are seen, and 200 is considered somewhat of a poor turning out. In the Meath country, the Leicestershire of Ireland, 300 would probably be a gala field and 200 the usual limit. With the Devon and Somerset stag-hounds, which stand first in quality of sport and second to none in quantity of following, the fields are of huge proportions, as the illustration of the Cloutsham meet will show. Your Devonshire host will smile compassionately as you wax eloquent over the big fields of 500 you have seen at the Quorn covert-side, and take you out the next day to a meet at the Quantocks, and show you, likely as not, half as many again, on foot and in saddle, awaiting the " Hark together ! hark ! and forrard away" of huntsman Anthony Hux- table as the noblest beast of chase breaks covert. But there is only one Exmoor and one pack of real stag-hunting hounds in England. The Ward Union, in the Meath country, and her Majesty's, and Lord de Kothschild's are the most prominent of the other stag-hounds, and attract about equally in number of following, which would be that between the " shires " and the more popular provinces; in the best of the latter, 200 is not an infrequent field and 100 an average. While few meets in England fail to bring out 100 horsemen ...« less