This section is from the book "Hunting", by Fredrick North. Also available from Amazon: Hunting.
Keep your hounds light and strong. The great art is to convert flesh into well-developed muscle. Keep their skins loose, and their coats clean, shiny and glossy.
Give your hounds plenty of long steady exercise during the summer and show them all sorts of riot. Go out as early as possible in the morning, and have them in good working condition before cub-hunting.
A huntsman should never rate or strike a hound.
A whipper-in should always correct a hound on the spot. If he cannot get at him at the moment, he should wait till he repeats the fault and then correct him sharply.
He should take care how he strikes a hound amongst others, as he may strike the wrong one.
It is no use damning a whipper-in if things go wrong, it will only confuse and very likely irritate a man who is doing his best. Speak to him seriously and point out his mistakes to him on the first opportunity while going home.
Never hurry your hounds in going to covert or returning home ; 5 miles an hour is about the pace. Let them have plenty of reasonable freedom. Nothing looks so bad as a pack of hounds whipped up close to a huntsman's heels.
In going from covert to covert, and indeed when hounds are not running, avoid riding over seeds and wheat, etc., and breaking down fences and gates.
Whippers-in should "make" their hounds on every possible occasion ; prevent their picking up bones, and see if any are lame.
We know no more about scent than we did 100 years ago. It depends on the state and nature of the soil, and the state of the atmosphere, and therefore is subject to rapid variations, and I think also on the fox itself.
 
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