In hunting American big game with hounds, several entirely distinct
methods are pursued. The true wilderness hunters, the men who in
the early days lived alone in, or moved in parties through, the
Indian-haunted solitudes, like their successors of to-day, rarely made
use of a pack of hounds, and, as a rule, did not use dogs at all. In
the eastern forests occasionally an old time hunter would own one or two
track-hounds, slow, with a good nose, intelligent and obedient, of use
mainly in following wounded game. Some Rocky Mountain hunters nowadays
employ the same kind of a dog, but the old time trappers of the great
plains and the Rockies led such wandering lives of peril and hardship
that they could not readily take dogs with them. The hunters of the
Alleghanies and the Adirondacks have, however, always used hounds to
drive deer, killing the animal in the water or at a runaway.
As soon, however, as the old wilderness hunter type passes away, hounds
come into use among his successors, the rough border settlers of the
backwoods and the plains. Every such settler is apt to have four or five
large mongrel dogs with hound blood in them, which serve to drive off
beasts of prey from the sheepfold and cattle-shed, and are also used,
when the occasion suits, in regular hunting, whether after bear or deer.
Many of the southern planters have always kept packs of fox-hounds,
which are used in the chase, not only of the gray and the red fox, but
also of the deer, the black bear, and the wildcat. The fox the dogs
themselves run down and kill, but as a rule in this kind of hunting,
when after deer, bear, or even wildcat, the hunters carry guns with them
on their horses, and endeavor either to get a shot at the fleeing animal
by hard and dexterous riding, or else to kill the cat when treed, or the
bear when it comes to bay. Such hunting is great sport.
Killing driven game by lying in wait for it to pass is the very poorest
kind of sport that can be called legitimate. This is the way the deer
is usually killed with hounds in the East. In the North the red fox is
often killed in somewhat the same manner, being followed by a slow hound
and shot at as he circles before the dog. Although this kind of fox
hunting is inferior to hunting on horseback, it nevertheless has its
merits, as the man must walk and run well, shoot with some accuracy, and
show considerable knowledge both of the country and of the habits of the
game.
During the last score of years an entirely different type of dog from
the fox-hound has firmly established itself in the field of American
sport. This is the greyhound, whether the smooth-haired, or the
rough-coated Scotch deer-hound. For half a century the army officers
posted in the far West have occasionally had greyhounds with them, using
the dogs to course jack-rabbit, coyote, and sometimes deer, antelope,
and gray wolf. Many of them were devoted to this sport,--General Custer,
for instance. I have myself hunted with many of the descendants of
Custer's hounds. In the early 70's the ranchmen of the great plains
themselves began to keep greyhounds for coursing (as indeed they had
already been used for a considerable time in California, after the
Pacific coast jack-rabbit), and the sport speedily assumed large
proportions and a permanent form. Nowadays the ranchmen of the cattle
country not only use their greyhounds after the jack-rabbit, but also
after every other kind of game animal to be found there, the antelope
and coyote being especial favorites. Many ranchmen soon grew to own fine
packs, coursing being the sport of all sports for the plains. In Texas
the wild turkey was frequently an object of the chase, and wherever the
locality enabled deer to be followed in the open, as for instance in the
Indian territory, and in many places in the neighborhood of the large
plains rivers, the whitetail was a favorite quarry, the hunters striving
to surprise it in the early morning when feeding on the prairie.
I have myself generally coursed with scratch packs, including perhaps
a couple of greyhounds, a wire-haired deer-hound, and two or three long
legged mongrels. However, we generally had at least one very fast
and savage dog--a strike dog--in each pack, and the others were of
assistance in turning the game, sometimes in tiring it, and usually in
helping to finish it at the worry. With such packs I have had many a
wildly exciting ride over the great grassy plains lying near the Little
Missouri and the Knife and Heart Rivers. Usually our proceedings on such
a hunt were perfectly simple. We started on horseback and when reaching
favorable ground beat across it in a long scattered line of men and
dogs. Anything that we put up, from a fox to a coyote or a prong-buck,
was fair game, and was instantly followed at full speed. The animals we
most frequently killed were jack-rabbits. They always gave good runs,
though like other game they differed much individually in speed. The
foxes did not run so well, and whether they were the little swift, or
the big red prairie fox, they were speedily snapped up if the dogs had a
fair showing. Once our dogs roused a blacktail buck close up out of
the brush coulie where the ground was moderately smooth, and after a
headlong chase of a mile they ran into him, threw him, and killed him
before he could rise. (His stiff-legged bounds sent him along at a
tremendous pace at first, but he seemed to tire rather easily.) On two
or three occasions we killed whitetail deer, and several times antelope.
Usually, however, the antelopes escaped. The bucks sometimes made a good
fight, but generally they were seized while running, some dogs catching
by the throat, others by the shoulders, and others again by the flank
just in front of the hind-leg. Wherever the hold was obtained, if the
dog made his spring cleverly, the buck was sure to come down with a
crash, and if the other dogs were anywhere near he was probably killed
before he could rise, although not infrequently the dogs themselves were
more or less scratched in the contests. Some greyhounds, even of high
breeding, proved absolutely useless from timidity, being afraid to take
hold; but if they got accustomed to the chase, being worked with old
dogs, and had any pluck at all, they proved singularly fearless. A
big ninety-pound greyhound or Scotch deer-hound is a very formidable
fighting dog; I saw one whip a big mastiff in short order, his wonderful
agility being of more account than his adversary's superior weight.
The proper way to course, however, is to take the dogs out in a wagon
and drive them thus until the game is seen. This prevents their being
tired out. In my own hunting, most of the antelope aroused got away,
the dogs being jaded when the chase began. But really fine greyhounds,
accustomed to work together and to hunt this species of game, will
usually render a good account of a prong-buck if two or three are
slipped at once, fresh, and within a moderate distance.
Although most Westerners take more kindly to the rifle, now and then
one is found who is a devotee of the hound. Such a one was an old
Missourian, who may be called Mr. Cowley, whom I knew when he was living
on a ranch in North Dakota, west of the Missouri. Mr. Cowley was a
primitive person, of much nerve, which he showed not only in the hunting
field but in the startling political conventions of the place and
period. He was quite well off, but he was above the niceties of personal
vanity. His hunting garb was that in which he also paid his rare formal
calls--calls throughout which he always preserved the gravity of an
Indian, though having a disconcerting way of suddenly tip-toeing across
the room to some unfamiliar object, such as a peacock screen or a vase,
feeling it gently with one forefinger, and returning with noiseless gait
to his chair, unmoved, and making no comment. On the morning of a hunt
he would always appear on a stout horse, clad in a long linen duster, a
huge club in his hand, and his trousers working half-way up his legs.
He hunted everything on all possible occasions; and he never under any
circumstances shot an animal that the dogs could kill. Once when a skunk
got into his house, with the direful stupidity of its perverse kind, he
turned the hounds on it; a manifestation of sporting spirit which roused
the ire of even his long-suffering wife. As for his dogs, provided they
could run and fight, he cared no more for their looks than for his own;
he preferred the animal to be half greyhound, but the other half could
be fox-hound, colley, or setter, it mattered nothing to him. They were
a wicked, hardbiting crew for all that, and Mr. Cowley, in his flapping
linen duster, was a first-class hunter and a good rider. He went almost
mad with excitement in every chase. His pack usually hunted coyote, fox,
jack-rabbit, and deer; and I have had more than one good run with it.
My own experience is too limited to allow me to pass judgment with
certainty as to the relative speed of the different beasts of the chase,
especially as there is so much individual variation. I consider the
antelope the fleetest of all however; and in this opinion I am sustained
by Col. Roger D. Williams, of Lexington, Kentucky, who, more than any
other American, is entitled to speak upon coursing, and especially upon
coursing large game. Col. Williams, like a true son of Kentucky, has
bred his own thoroughbred horses and thoroughbred hounds for many
years; and during a series of long hunting trips extending over nearly
a quarter of a century he has tried his pack on almost every game animal
to be found among the foot-hills of the Rockies and on the great plains.
His dogs, both smooth-haired greyhounds and rough-coated deer-hounds,
have been bred by him for generations with a special view to the chase
of big game--not merely of hares; they are large animals, excelling not
only in speed but in strength, endurance, and ferocious courage. The
survivors of his old pack are literally seamed all over with the scars
of innumerable battles. When several dogs were together they would stop
a bull-elk, and fearlessly assail a bear or cougar. This pack scored
many a triumph over blacktail, whitetail, and prong-buck. For a few
hundred yards the deer were very fast; but in a run of any duration the
antelope showed much greater speed, and gave the dogs far more trouble,
although always overtaken in the end, if a good start had been obtained.
Col. Williams is a firm believer in the power of the thoroughbred
horse to outturn any animal that breathes, in a long chase; he has not
infrequently run down deer, when they were jumped some miles from cover;
and on two or three occasions he ran down uninjured antelope, but in
each case only after a desperate ride of miles, which in one instance
resulted in the death of his gallant horse.
This coursing on the prairie, especially after big game, is an
exceedingly manly and attractive sport; the furious galloping, often
over rough ground with an occasional deep washout or gully, the sight
of the gallant hounds running and tackling, and the exhilaration of the
pure air and wild surrounding, all combine to give it a peculiar zest.
But there is really less need of bold and skilful horsemanship than in
the otherwise less attractive and more artificial sport of fox-hunting,
or riding to hounds, in a closed and long-settled country.
Those of us who are in part of southern blood have a hereditary right
to be fond of cross-country riding; for our forefathers in Virginia,
Georgia, or the Carolinas, have for six generations followed the fox
with horse, horn, and hound. In the long-settled Northern States the
sport has been less popular, though much more so now than formerly; yet
it has always existed, here and there, and in certain places has been
followed quite steadily.
In no place in the Northeast is hunting the wild red fox put on a more
genuine and healthy basis than in the Geneseo Valley, in central New
York. There has always been fox-hunting in this valley, the farmers
having good horses and being fond of sport; but it was conducted in a
very irregular, primitive manner, until some twenty years ago Mr. Austin
Wadsworth turned his attention to it. He has been master of fox-hounds
ever since, and no pack in the country has yielded better sport than
his, or has brought out harder riders among the men and stronger jumpers
among the horses. Mr. Wadsworth began his hunting by picking up some of
the various trencher-fed hounds of the neighborhood, the hunting of that
period being managed on the principle of each farmer bringing to the
meet the hound or hounds he happened to possess, and appearing on foot
or horseback as his fancy dictated. Having gotten together some of these
native hounds and started fox-hunting in localities where the ground
was so open as to necessitate following the chase on horseback, Mr.
Wadsworth imported a number of dogs from the best English kennels. He
found these to be much faster than the American dogs and more accustomed
to work together, but less enduring, and without such good noses. The
American hounds were very obstinate and self-willed. Each wished to work
out the trail for himself. But once found, they would puzzle it out, no
matter how cold, and would follow it if necessary for a day and night.
By a judicious crossing of the two Mr. Wadsworth finally got his present
fine pack, which for its own particular work on its own ground would be
hard to beat. The country ridden over is well wooded, and there are many
foxes. The abundance of cover, however, naturally decreases the number
of kills. It is a very fertile land, and there are few farming regions
more beautiful, for it is prevented from being too tame in aspect by
the number of bold hills and deep ravines. Most of the fences are high
posts-and-rails or "snake" fences, although there is an occasional stone
wall, haha, or water-jump. The steepness of the ravines and the density
of the timber make it necessary for a horse to be sure-footed and able
to scramble anywhere, and the fences are so high that none but very good
jumpers can possibly follow the pack. Most of the horses used are bred
by the farmers in the neighborhood, or are from Canada, and they usually
have thoroughbred or trotting-stock blood in them.
One of the pleasantest days I ever passed in the saddle was after Mr.
Wadsworth's hounds. I was staying with him at the time, in company with
my friend Senator Cabot Lodge, of Boston. The meet was about twelve
miles distant from the house. It was only a small field of some
twenty-five riders, but there was not one who did not mean going. I was
mounted on a young horse, a powerful, big-boned black, a great jumper,
though perhaps a trifle hot-headed. Lodge was on a fine bay, which
could both run and jump. There were two or three other New Yorkers and
Bostonians present, several men who had come up from Buffalo for the
run, a couple of retired army officers, a number of farmers from the
neighborhood; and finally several members of a noted local family
of hard riders, who formed a class by themselves, all having taken
naturally to every variety of horsemanship from earliest infancy.
It was a thoroughly democratic assemblage; every one was there for
sport, and nobody cared an ounce how he or anybody else was dressed.
Slouch hats, brown coats, corduroy breeches, and leggings, or boots,
were the order of the day. We cast off in a thick wood. The dogs struck
a trail almost immediately and were off with clamorous yelping, while
the hunt thundered after them like a herd of buffaloes. We went headlong
down the hill-side into and across a brook. Here the trail led straight
up a sheer bank. Most of the riders struck off to the left for an easier
place, which was unfortunate for them, for the eight of us who went
straight up the side (one man's horse falling back with him) were the
only ones who kept on terms with the hounds. Almost as soon as we got to
the top of the bank we came out of the woods over a low but awkward rail
fence, where one of our number, who was riding a very excitable sorrel
colt, got a fall. This left but six, including the whip. There were two
or three large fields with low fences; then we came to two high, stiff
doubles, the first real jumping of the day, the fences being over four
feet six, and so close together that the horses barely had a chance
to gather themselves. We got over, however, crossed two or three
stump-strewn fields, galloped through an open wood, picked our way
across a marshy spot, jumped a small brook and two or three stiff
fences, and then came a check. Soon the hounds recovered the line and
swung off to the right, back across four or five fields, so as to enable
the rest of the hunt, by making an angle, to come up. Then we jumped
over a very high board fence into the main road, out of it again, and on
over ploughed fields and grass lands, separated by stiff snake fences.
The run had been fast and the horses were beginning to tail. By the time
we suddenly rattled down into a deep ravine and scrambled up the other
side through thick timber there were but four of us left, Lodge and
myself being two of the lucky ones. Beyond this ravine we came to one
of the worst jumps of the day, a fence out of the wood, which was
practicable only at one spot, where a kind of cattle trail led up to
a panel. It was within an inch or two of five feet high. However, the
horses, thoroughly trained to timber jumping and to rough and hard
scrambling in awkward places, and by this time well quieted, took the
bars without mistake, each one in turn trotting or cantering up to
within a few yards, then making a couple of springs and bucking over
with a great twist of the powerful haunches. I may explain that there
was not a horse of the four that had not a record of five feet six
inches in the ring. We now got into a perfect tangle of ravines, and the
fox went to earth; and though we started one or two more in the course
of the afternoon, we did not get another really first-class run.
At Geneseo the conditions for the enjoyment of this sport are
exceptionally favorable. In the Northeast generally, although there are
now a number of well-established hunts, at least nine out of ten runs
are after a drag. Most of the hunts are in the neighborhood of great
cities, and are mainly kept up by young men who come from them. A few of
these are men of leisure, who can afford to devote their whole time to
pleasure; but much the larger number are men in business, who work hard
and are obliged to make their sports accommodate themselves to their
more serious occupations. Once or twice a week they can get off for an
afternoon's ride across country, and they then wish to be absolutely
certain of having their run, and of having it at the appointed time; and
the only way to insure this is to have a drag-hunt. It is not the lack
of foxes that has made the sport so commonly take the form of riding to
drag-hounds, but rather the fact that the majority of those who keep it
up are hard-working business men who wish to make the most out of every
moment of the little time they can spare from their regular occupations.
A single ride across country, or an afternoon at polo, will yield more
exercise, fun, and excitement than can be got out of a week's decorous
and dull riding in the park, and many young fellows have waked up to
this fact.
At one time I did a good deal of hunting with the Meadowbrook hounds, in
the northern part of Long Island. There were plenty of foxes around us,
both red and gray, but partly for the reasons given above, and partly
because the covers were so large and so nearly continuous, they were not
often hunted, although an effort was always made to have one run every
week or so after a wild fox, in order to give a chance for the hounds
to be properly worked and to prevent the runs from becoming a mere
succession of steeple-chases. The sport was mainly drag-hunting, and
was most exciting, as the fences were high and the pace fast. The Long
Island country needs a peculiar style of horse, the first requisite
being that he shall be a very good and high timber jumper. Quite a
number of crack English and Irish hunters have at different times been
imported, and some of them have turned out pretty well; but when they
first come over they are utterly unable to cross our country, blundering
badly at the high timber. Few of them have done as well as the American
horses. I have hunted half a dozen times in England, with Pytchely,
Essex, and North Warwickshire, and it seems to me probable that English
thoroughbreds, in a grass country, and over the peculiar kinds of
obstacles they have on the other side of the water, would gallop away
from a field of our Long Island horses; for they have speed and
bottom, and are great weight carriers. But on our own ground, where
the cross-country riding is more like leaping a succession of five or
six-bar gates than anything else, they do not as a rule, in spite of
the enormous prices paid for them, show themselves equal to the native
stock. The highest recorded jump, seven feet two inches, was made by the
American horse Filemaker, which I saw ridden in the very front by Mr. H.
L. Herbert, in the hunt at Sagamore Hill, about to be described.
When I was a member of the Meadowbrook hunt, most of the meets were held
within a dozen miles or so of the kennels; at Farmingdale, Woodbury,
Wheatly, Locust Valley, Syosset, or near any one of twenty other queer,
quaint old Long Island hamlets. They were almost always held in the
afternoon, the business men who had come down from the city jogging over
behind the hounds to the appointed place, where they were met by the men
who had ridden over direct from their country-houses. If the meet was
an important one, there might be a crowd of onlookers in every kind of
trap, from a four-in-hand drag to a spider-wheeled buggy drawn by a pair
of long-tailed trotters, the money value of which many times surpassed
that of the two best hunters in the whole field. Now and then a
breakfast would be given the hunt at some country-house, when the whole
day was devoted to the sport; perhaps after wild foxes in the morning,
with a drag in the afternoon.
After one meet, at Sagamore Hill, I had the curiosity to go on foot over
the course we had taken, measuring the jumps; for it is very difficult
to form a good estimate of a fence's height when in the field, and five
feet of timber seems a much easier thing to take when sitting around the
fire after dinner than it does when actually faced while the hounds are
running. On the particular hunt in question we ran about ten miles, at
a rattling pace, with only two checks, crossing somewhat more than sixty
fences, most of them post-and-rails, stiff as steel, the others being of
the kind called "Virginia" or snake, and not more than ten or a dozen in
the whole lot under four feet in height. The highest measured five feet
and half an inch, two others were four feet eleven, and nearly a third
of the number averaged about four and a half. There were also several
rather awkward doubles. When the hounds were cast off some forty riders
were present, but the first fence was a savage one, and stopped all who
did not mean genuine hard going. Twenty-six horses crossed it, one of
them ridden by a lady. A mile or so farther on, before there had been
a chance for much tailing, we came to a five-bar gate, out of a road--a
jump of just four feet five inches from the take-off. Up to this, of
course, we went one at a time, at a trot or hand-gallop, and twenty-five
horses cleared it in succession without a single refusal and with
but one mistake. Owing to the severity of the pace, combined with the
average height of the timber (although no one fence was of phenomenally
noteworthy proportions), a good many falls took place, resulting in an
unusually large percentage of accidents. The master partly dislocated
one knee, another man broke two ribs, and another--the present
writer--broke his arm. However, almost all of us managed to struggle
through to the end in time to see the death.
On this occasion I owed my broken arm to the fact that my horse, a
solemn animal originally taken out of a buggy, though a very clever
fencer, was too coarse to gallop alongside the blooded beasts against
which he was pitted. But he was so easy in his gaits, and so quiet,
being ridden with only a snaffle, that there was no difficulty in
following to the end of the run. I had divers adventures on this horse.
Once I tried a pair of so-called "safety" stirrups, which speedily
fell out, and I had to ride through the run without any, at the cost of
several tumbles. Much the best hunter I ever owned was a sorrel horse
named Sagamore. He was from Geneseo, was fast, a remarkably good jumper,
of great endurance, as quick on his feet as a cat, and with a dauntless
heart. He never gave me a fall, and generally enabled me to see all the
run.
It would be very unfair to think the sport especially dangerous on
account of the occasional accidents that happen. A man who is fond
of riding, but who sets a good deal of value, either for the sake of
himself, his family, or his business, upon his neck and limbs, can hunt
with much safety if he gets a quiet horse, a safe fencer, and does not
try to stay in the front rank. Most accidents occur to men on green or
wild horses, or else to those who keep in front only at the expense
of pumping their mounts; and a fall with a done-out beast is always
peculiarly disagreeable. Most falls, however, do no harm whatever to
either horse or rider, and after they have picked themselves up and
shaken themselves, the couple ought to be able to go on just as well as
ever. Of course a man who wishes to keep in the first flight must expect
to face a certain number of tumbles; but even he will probably not
be hurt at all, and he can avoid many a mishap by easing up his horse
whenever he can--that is, by always taking a gap when possible, going at
the lowest panel of every fence, and not calling on his animal for
all there is in him unless it cannot possibly be avoided. It must be
remembered that hard riding is a very different thing from good riding;
though a good rider to hounds must also at times ride hard.
Cross-country riding in the rough is not a difficult thing to learn;
always provided the would-be learner is gifted with or has acquired a
fairly stout heart, for a constitutionally timid person is out of place
in the hunting field. A really finished cross-country rider, a man who
combines hand and seat, heart and head, is of course rare; the standard
is too high for most of us to hope to reach. But it is comparatively
easy to acquire a light hand and a capacity to sit fairly well down in
the saddle; and when a man has once got these, he will find no especial
difficulty in following the hounds on a trained hunter.
Fox-hunting is a great sport, but it is as foolish to make a fetish of
it as it is to decry it. The fox is hunted merely because there is no
larger game to follow. As long as wolves, deer, or antelope remain in
the land, and in a country where hounds and horsemen can work, no one
could think of following the fox. It is pursued because the bigger
beasts of the chase have been killed out. In England it has reached its
present prominence only within two centuries; nobody followed the fox
while the stag and the boar were common. At the present day, on Exmoor,
where the wild stag is still found, its chase ranks ahead of that of
the fox. It is not really the hunting proper which is the point of
fox-hunting. It is the horsemanship, the galloping and jumping, and the
being out in the open air. Very naturally, however, men who have passed
their lives as fox-hunters grow to regard the chase and the object of
it alike with superstitious veneration. They attribute almost mythical
characters to the animal. I know some of my good Virginian friends, for
instance, who seriously believe that the Virginia red fox is a beast
quite unparalleled for speed and endurance no less than for cunning.
This is of course a mistake. Compared with a wolf, an antelope, or even
a deer, the fox's speed and endurance do not stand very high. A good
pack of hounds starting him close would speedily run into him in the
open. The reason that the hunts last so long in some cases is because
of the nature of the ground which favors the fox at the expense of the
dogs, because of his having the advantage in the start, and because
of his cunning in turning to account everything which will tell in his
favor and against his pursuers. In the same way I know plenty of English
friends who speak with bated breath of fox-hunting but look down upon
riding to drag-hounds. Of course there is a difference in the two
sports, and the fun of actually hunting the wild beast in the one case
more than compensates for the fact that in the other the riding is
apt to be harder and the jumping higher; but both sports are really
artificial, and in their essentials alike. To any man who has hunted big
game in a wild country the stress laid on the differences between them
seems a little absurd, in fact cockney. It is of course nothing against
either that it is artificial; so are all sports in long-civilized
countries, from lacrosse to ice yachting.
It is amusing to see how natural it is for each man to glorify the
sport to which he has been accustomed at the expense of any other. The
old-school French sportsman, for instance, who followed the bear, stag,
and hare with his hounds, always looked down upon the chase of the fox;
whereas the average Englishman not only asserts but seriously believes
that no other kind of chase can compare with it, although in actual fact
the very points in which the Englishman is superior to the continental
sportsman--that is, in hard and straight-riding and jumping--are those
which drag-hunting tends to develop rather more than fox-hunting
proper. In the mere hunting itself the continental sportsman is often
unsurpassed.
Once, beyond the Missouri, I met an expatriated German baron, an
unfortunate who had failed utterly in the rough life of the frontier.
He was living in a squalid little hut, almost unfurnished, but studded
around with the diminutive horns of the European roebuck. These were the
only treasures he had taken with him to remind him of his former life,
and he was never tired of describing what fun it was to shoot roebucks
when driven by the little crooked-legged _dachshunds_. There were plenty
of deer and antelope roundabout, yielding good sport to any rifleman,
but this exile cared nothing for them; they were not roebucks, and
they could not be chased with his beloved _dachshunds_. So, among my
neighbors in the cattle country, is a gentleman from France, a very
successful ranchman and a thoroughly good fellow; he cares nothing for
hunting big game, and will not go after it, but is devoted to shooting
cotton-tails in the snow, this being a pastime having much resemblance
to one of the recognized sports of his own land.
However, our own people afford precisely similar instances. I have
met plenty of men accustomed to killing wild turkeys and deer with
small-bore rifles in the southern forests who, when they got on the
plains and in the Rockies, were absolutely helpless. They not only
failed to become proficient in the art of killing big game at long
ranges with the large-bore rifle, at the cost of fatiguing tramps, but
they had a positive distaste of the sport and would never allow that it
equalled their own stealthy hunts in eastern forests. So I know plenty
of men, experts with the shot-gun, who honestly prefer shooting quail in
the East over well-trained setters or pointers, to the hardier, manlier
sports of the wilderness.
As it is with hunting, so it is with riding. The cowboy's scorn of every
method of riding save his own is as profound and as ignorant as is that
of the school rider, jockey, or fox-hunter. The truth is that each of
these is best in his own sphere and is at a disadvantage when made to do
the work of any of the others. For all-around riding and horsemanship, I
think the West Point graduate is somewhat ahead of any of them. Taken as
a class, however, and compared with other classes as numerous, and not
with a few exceptional individuals, the cowboy, like the Rocky Mountain
stage-driver, has no superiors anywhere for his own work; and they are
fine fellows, these iron-nerved reinsmen and rough-riders.
When Buffalo Bill took his cowboys to Europe they made a practice in
England, France, Germany, and Italy of offering to break and ride, in
their own fashion, any horse given them. They were frequently given
spoiled animals from the cavalry services in the different countries
through which they passed, animals with which the trained horse-breakers
of the European armies could do nothing; and yet in almost all cases the
cowpunchers and bronco-busters with Buffalo Bill mastered these beasts
as readily as they did their own western horses. At their own work of
mastering and riding rough horses they could not be matched by their
more civilized rivals; but I have great doubts whether they in turn
would not have been beaten if they had essayed kinds of horsemanship
utterly alien to their past experience, such as riding mettled
thoroughbreds in a steeple-chase, or the like. Other things being equal
(which, however, they generally are not), a bad, big horse fed on oats
offers a rather more difficult problem than a bad little horse fed on
grass. After Buffalo Bill's men had returned, I occasionally heard it
said that they had tried cross-country riding in England, and had shown
themselves pre-eminently skilful thereat, doing better than the English
fox-hunters, but this I take the liberty to disbelieve. I was in England
at the time, hunted occasionally myself, and was with many of the men
who were all the time riding in the most famous hunts; men, too, who
were greatly impressed with the exhibitions of rough riding then being
given by Buffalo Bill and his men, and who talked of them much; and yet
I never, at the time, heard of an instance in which one of the cowboys
rode to hounds with any marked success.[*] In the same way I have
sometimes in New York or London heard of men who, it was alleged,
had been out West and proved better riders than the bronco-busters
themselves, just as I have heard of similar men who were able to go
out hunting in the Rockies or on the plains and get more game than the
western hunters; but in the course of a long experience in the West I
have yet to see any of these men, whether from the eastern States or
from Europe, actually show such superiority or perform such feats.
[*] It is however, quite possible, now that Buffalo Bill's
company has crossed the water several times, that a number
of the cowboys have by practice become proficient in riding
to hounds, and in steeple-chasing.
It would be interesting to compare the performances of the Australian
stock-riders with those of our own cowpunchers, both in cow-work and in
riding. The Australians have an entirely different kind of saddle, and
the use of the rope is unknown among them. A couple of years ago the
famous western rifle-shot, Carver, took some cowboys out to Australia,
and I am informed that many of the Australians began themselves
to practise with the rope after seeing the way it was used by the
Americans. An Australian gentleman, Mr. A. J. Sage, of Melbourne, to
whom I had written asking how the saddles and styles of riding compared,
answered me as follows:
"With regard to saddles, here it is a moot question which is the better,
yours or ours, for buck-jumpers. Carver's boys rode in their own saddles
against our Victorians in theirs, all on Australian buckers, and honors
seemed easy. Each was good in his own style, but the horses were not
what I should call really good buckers, such as you might get on a back
station, and so there was nothing in the show that could unseat the
cowboys. It is only back in the bush that you can get a really good
bucker. I have often seen one of them put both man and saddle off."
This last is a feat I have myself seen performed in the West. I suppose
the amount of it is that both the American and the Australian rough
riders are, for their own work, just as good as men possibly can be.
One spring I had to leave the East in the midst of the hunting season,
to join a roundup in the cattle country of western Dakota, and it was
curious to compare the totally different styles of riding of the cowboys
and the cross-country men. A stock-saddle weighs thirty or forty pounds
instead of ten or fifteen and needs an utterly different seat from that
adopted in the East. A cowboy rides with very long stirrups, sitting
forked well down between his high pommel and cantle, and depends upon
balance as well as on the grip of his thighs. In cutting out a steer
from a herd, in breaking a vicious wild horse, in sitting a bucking
bronco, in stopping a night stampede of many hundred maddened animals,
or in the performance of a hundred other feats of reckless and daring
horsemanship, the cowboy is absolutely unequalled; and when he has his
own horse gear he sits his animal with the ease of a centaur. Yet he is
quite helpless the first time he gets astride one of the small eastern
saddles. One summer, while purchasing cattle in Iowa, one of my ranch
foremen had to get on an ordinary saddle to ride out of town and see
a bunch of steers. He is perhaps the best rider on the ranch, and will
without hesitation mount and master beasts that I doubt if the boldest
rider in one of our eastern hunts would care to tackle; yet his
uneasiness on the new saddle was fairly comical. At first he did not
dare to trot and the least plunge of the horse bid fair to unseat him,
nor did he begin to get accustomed to the situation until the very end
of the journey. In fact, the two kinds of riding are so very different
that a man only accustomed to one, feels almost as ill at ease when he
first tries the other as if he had never sat on a horse's back before.
It is rather funny to see a man who only knows one kind, and is
conceited enough to think that that is really the only kind worth
knowing, when first he is brought into contact with the other. Two or
three times I have known men try to follow hounds on stock-saddles,
which are about as ill-suited for the purpose as they well can be; while
it is even more laughable to see some young fellow from the East or from
England who thinks he knows entirely too much about horses to be taught
by barbarians, attempt in his turn to do cow-work with his ordinary
riding or hunting rig. It must be said, however, that in all probability
cowboys would learn to ride well across country much sooner than the
average cross-country rider would master the dashing and peculiar style
of horsemanship shown by those whose life business is to guard the
wandering herds of the great western plains.
Of course, riding to hounds, like all sports in long settled, thickly
peopled countries, fails to develop in its followers some of the hardy
qualities necessarily incident to the wilder pursuits of the mountain
and the forest. While I was on the frontier I was struck by the fact
that of the men from the eastern States or from England who had shown
themselves at home to be good riders to hounds or had made their records
as college athletes, a larger proportion failed in the life of the
wilderness than was the case among those who had gained their experience
in such rough pastimes as mountaineering in the high Alps, winter
caribou-hunting in Canada, or deer-stalking--not deer-driving--in
Scotland.
Nevertheless, of all sports possible in civilized countries, riding to
hounds is perhaps the best if followed as it should be, for the sake
of the strong excitement, with as much simplicity as possible, and not
merely as a fashionable amusement. It tends to develop moral no less
than physical qualities; the rider needs nerve and head; he must possess
daring and resolution, as well as a good deal of bodily skill and a
certain amount of wiry toughness and endurance.