King James VI
and I., the latter of whom prohibited under substantial penalties the killing of otters other than by hunting them with hounds, and compelled all millers to stop their mills and to raise or lower their water, as might be required, during the progress of a hunt. In some places-notably at Norwich-corporate bodies were compelled to contribute to the maintenance of packs of otterhounds, and to hunt otters TRUE OTTER HOUNDS. as being the finest form of hunting: not only because the quarry is a genuine wild animal to be sought and found with difficulty in haunts of his own choosing, and to be hunted in an element native to him but foreign to hounds, so that the odds are always very largely in favour of the otter; but also on certain specified rivers so many days in a season. Formerly, the season opened at Shrove Tide, and was continued until Midsummer; now the season commences in April, and lasts until October, varying a little between the north and the west . In the former a beginning is sometimes delayed by "snow-broth" rendering the water too cold for hounds, but hunting can often be continued into October. In the south and west, though an earlier start may be made, hounds have to be stopped for a month or more during the time when the grass is growing. The actual period of hunting for killing the otter being left entirely to the hounds and terriers as handled by the huntsman, who is also usually and advisedly the Master. Human assistance is practically confined to the watching of the water by the hunt officials and the members of the field, so that they may "gaze" the otter A MIXED PACK TRYING A LIKELY ROOT. packs in either part is about the same-five months; and in a wet season all packs are equally liable to be stopped by floods.
Anciently, the method of hunting otters was very different from that now employed.
Our ancestors, judging from contemporary prints chiefly, employed very few hounds, two or three couples only, and that merely to find and put down the quarry. Once this was done, the otter hunter's business was to dispatch him in mid-water by harpooning or transfixing him with a barbed, single-, or two-pronged spear. This system of hunting otters required skill and endurance, and was akin to the sport of pig-sticking in India to-day. Nets were also used to prevent the otter from getting into deep water or to catch him when forcing a shallow. When the spear and the net were abandoned, "tailing" or catching a beaten otter by the rudder, and forming " stickles" by placing sportsmen leg to leg across the bed of a river, were resorted to instead.
Nowadays even these adventitious methods are passing out of vogue, the work of trailing, marking, putting down, swimming, and when he comes to the surface to "vent," and may "tally" him for the information of hounds and huntsman when they do sc.
Under special circumstances stickles and tailing are still in some countries justifiable and occasionally even necessary.
Otter Hounds and Terriers. - Several species of hound have been and are still employed for hunting otters. The true best suited in every way for the sport, and otterhound, however, is undoubtedly that probably only his scarcity at the time when established is responsible for the use of many of the modern packs were regularly draft staghounds, foxhounds, and even harriers in some hunts. Welsh brokenhaired foxhounds and harriers, as well as bloodhounds, and hounds cross-bred between the otterhound and the foxhound, and even otterhounds with a remote cross of the wolf (Canis lupus), are all used to-day for the pursuit of this quarry. The advantage formerly claimed for the foxhound was that, standing higher than the true otterhound, he was able to wade in water in which the latter was compelled to swim, and did not, therefore, tire so soon.
Now, however, that, thanks to the energy and science of Mr. Wilson Davidson, for more than twenty years honorary huntsman to the famous Dumfriesshire pack, otterhounds have been bred up to twentysix inches and even more, this argument no longer applies. With packs like the Wharfedale and the Bucks, as well as in a lesser degree the Dartmoor and the Culmstock, and several private breeders producing otterhounds of a fine type and good working qualities, the output is rapidly increasing, and the need for employing hounds HOUNDS MARKING. of other breeds may be confidently expected to disappear. Lambeth Public Libraries The origin of the otterhound is unknown, and beyond helping us to the conclusion that the breed contains a great deal of bloodhound blood conjecture can do little towards settling the question. The points for which an otterhound should be bred are: a head resembling that of a bloodhound, but flatter and harder, with a long narrow forehead, dark eyes, large, but sunken, and showing the haw, black nostrils, and rough-haired muzzle, with full hanging lips and large, thin, pendulous ears, well coated with coarse hair, but with no tendency to feather. The neck should be throaty, the chest deep rather than wide, the back strong, long, and straight, and the ribs deep, rather loose, but strong. Powerful sloping shoulders, elbows well let down, perfectly straight legs, and muscular thighs are indispensable. Formerly the feet were large and well-webbed, with, of course, firm, hard soles, but of late years otterhounds have been bred with the cat-foot of fox-hounds. The stern should be carried in a sloping position, and be well coated with hair and tapering. The coat should be dense, hard, and of a fair length.
Otterhounds are of several colours, browntan and grizzled being the commonest seen; but grizzled-pied, cream, white and cream, black and white, black, buff, brown, and cream-tan are all found. Height for dogs, not less than twenty-five inches, and for bitches not less than twenty-three. Many otterhounds are still too small to work properly and effectively on a long day without becoming fatigued.
The terriers are a very important section of a kennel of otterhounds. Various breeds are employed, wire-haired fox terriers and some smooth-haired being most frequently seen. But Sealyhams, Border terriers, white West Highland, and pure Highlanda sort hard to come by-have figured and do figure in many packs. Terriers must be small, or they cannot negotiate the drains and roots frequented by otters. They must be hard enough to tackle an otter in his holt if he cannot be got to move otherwise; but, as in badger-digging, not foolhardy enough to go in to an otter until they have tried whether "speaking" to him will not prove equally effective, as is usually the case.
Terriers, in countries where otters are plentiful, and where it is not suspected that young cubs are about, should be allowed to run and work with the pack. They will often find an otter that hounds racing on a hot drag have passed. Where there is any chance of their getting into a couch and killing small cubs, however, they should be kept on leads at a distance from the riverside where they cannot see what is going forward nor tire themselves by straining at their collars and whining themselves hoarse throughout the day. The theory that otters bolt better to white terriers than to those of any other colour cannot hold water, since all terriers must be much the same colour in a dark drain, and when coated with mud and blood.
The Various Hunts and their "Countries." There are now no less than thirteen established packs of otterhounds in England, with seven in Wales (three of which hunt also in England) one in Scotland, and one in Ireland. At least two of the English and Welsh packs pay Irish waters an annual visit, following an oldestablished precedent. These are-when one remembers that otters are equally distributed throughout the rivers of the United Kingdom, and where least suspected are often most numerous somewhat curiously grouped. In the south of Scotland and north of England there are no fewer than seven packs. In Wales and the Marches there is a similar number. In the south-west five hunts cover five counties, three of them with kennels in Devonshire.
The rest of England, nearly one-half of the kingdom, is claimed by three hunts, one of which nominally covers nearly a dozen counties. It is obviously impossible for any one pack in any one season to hunt effectively such an extent of territory. But the one blot on the escutcheon of the otterhunter has always been the petty jealousy that has operated to prevent the foundation of fresh packs to hunt waters never visited by the hounds whose masters claim entirely and between them kill fewer otters in a season than many single hunts.
Facts such as these speak for themselves, and unless there is a change, and many other packs are established in "countries" now only nominally hunted, otters will be trapped and shot, subscriptions will fall off, and the sport will presently die an unnatural death in that part of Great Britain where it most should flourish.
The Otter and his Habits. - The otter (Lutra lutra) differs from all other beasts of chase in that he is of an aquatic habit, HOUNDS SWIMMING THE FOIL. fictitious rights over them, or at best visited but once a year or even less frequently.
These claims, which derive from the ignorance of these masters as to the number of otters using their streams, and as to the best way of hunting them, are detrimental to the true interests of the sport; and there can be no doubt whatever that there is room for at least half-a-dozen new hunts within the territory claimed by the three packs indicated. An unworthy spirit of aggrandisement coupled with a desire to collect a larger subscription than the sport shown can justify, is also partially responsible for this unfortunate state of affairs, which will, if it be not remedied, eventually destroy the sport entirely in middle England.
Two packs between them claim no fewer than twenty-five counties of England and Wales: a claim on the face of it absurd.
These two packs collect in subscriptions a sum equal to that collected by any other four packs-with one or two exceptionsand is as much at home in the water, whether it be fresh or salt, still or running, as he is on land. Although, of course, as a member of the weasel tribe, he can run, swim, or climb at will, he is of them all the best swimmer and the worst climber, though his pace on land when pursued by hounds is for a limited distance equal to that of a fox. He differs also from his congeners in that he finds his food supply in or near water, eels and frogs forming the chief articles in his dietary, varied by fish-— coarse fish in preference to game fishfresh-water mollusca, crayfish, water-voles, moor-hens, and dabchicks. In hard weather, when the water is frozen and the fish are buried in the mud, otters will doubtless take ducks if they can get them, and young rabbits are a favourite food with bitch-otters that are suckling cubs.
In the above list are many enemies of fish spawn and fish-food which only the otter may keep within bounds. The otter, therefore, does more good than harm to the rivers he frequents, so long as he is himself kept within bounds. This is best provided for by hunting him regularly with A-STICKLE. recognised packs of hounds, which judiciously diminish his numbers without any risk of exterminating him.
Another point of difference between the otter and other beasts of chase lies in the fact that he alone among the mammals in the British fauna possesses no fixed home.
All the weasel tribe are of a wandering nature, but none is so abandoned a vagrant as the otter. He has been rightly dubbed "the gypsy of the animal world." A dogotter seldom sleeps two days in the same holt, and a bitch-otter only when she has cubs laid up in her couch. Otters are always on the move, now here, to-morrow ten or even twenty miles away. Yet they invariably lie in holts-when they are not 66 lying rough" as is frequently the case in fine, warm weather-that have been used by their forbears for countless generations.
Otters are found to-day in drains, rockholts, and tree-roots where there is recorded evidence of their having been found a century since. There is no doubt that, like deer, they have an intermittent desire for salt water, and work up and down to the sea. In short rivers they are constantly travelling to and from the tidal water and the coasts, varying their journeys by crossing overland to some neighbouring watershed, and descending the streams to another estuary. In such a country otters spend a portion of the winter in the caves by the seashore, and resort to them again in summer if drought affects the water in the upland streams. In flood-time otters leave the big rivers for the tributary brooks.
When on the sea-coast otters live on rockfish-including conger eels-salt-water molluscs, and crustaceans; they have even been caught in lobster pots off the coasts of Cornwall. An accusation has been brought against the otter that he kills more fishwhen he does kill fish-than he needs for food. A long and close observation of the habits of otters has led me to the irresistible conclusion that the real reason for this apparent destructiveness, which, however, has been much exaggerated, is that the otter in a natural state prefers his food alive. He eats a fish from the back of the head down the back, carefully avoiding the vital parts.
When the fish dies under this operation it no longer possesses any flavour for the epicurean otter, who leaves it to find another. It is the same with eels and frogs, which he deals with somewhat differently, but always so as to keep his prey alive as long as possible. With a mussel he bites a hole at one corner of the shell and sucks the bivalve alive into his mouth. The otter, like the salmon, the red mullet, the woodcock, and the golden plover, is gifted with a marvellously quick digestion, and in all the otters-a great many that I have seen slit open to be thrown to hounds, I never saw any traces of food in the stomach, even when evidences of a recent meal lay on the river bank hard by. Hunted otters have been known to catch and eat eels and dace with hounds in full cry close to them.
Otters hunt and travel by night, lying up A KILL IN THE WATER. for the day in some holt well known to them. This may be merely a recess under an over-hanging bank, a rabbit-burrow, a tree-root, a drain or culvert, a faggot-heap, weiring, the bucket of a mill-wheel that is not working, or the hollow trunk of a pollard willow. They will also lie in thick heather, cairns of stones, and often in dry ditches, among bracken, rushes, reeds, and undergrowth in covert, sometimes at a distance from any water. They are, however, cleanly beasts, and naturally avoid sewers, though they will use polluted water-as from mines and factories-to pass from place to place on their travels. A bitchotter in season has means by which she notifies her whereabouts to any dog-otters that may be within reach. She often lies among reeds that are just awash, and when travelling up or down a stream bites off pieces of rush and lays them cross-wise on the banks to denote the direction in which she has travelled. The otter appears to be polygamous; at any rate, he is not monogamous, and is rarely found with the bitch two days running. A bitch with cubs is rarely found in the vicinity of a dog-otter. The cubs appear to remain with their mother until they are from ten to twelve months old, which seems to indicate that otters breed only once a year, if so often.
The cubs are born at all times of the year indifferently, having been found of all ages in every month in the calendar. Otters are not only pugnacious, but playful, and will romp together both in and out of the water, and in suitable circumstances construct slides in mud or snow, down which they will toboggan into the stream. They are rather silent beasts, as a rule, but make a sound between the mewing of a cat and the hissing of a snake when excited, and use a peculiar flute-like whistle as a call A KILL ON LAND. note. When angry or alarmed, they alternate this with a blowing sound somewhat resembling the noise made by a grampus, but of lesser volume.
The physical description of an otter may be given as that of a magnified ferret as to shape, with the following modifications:
The head is proportionately broader and blunter across the muzzle, the legs and feet A BIG DOG OTTER. -which are webbed-are shorter and stronger in proportion, and the tail is broader at the base, flatter and very much longer, being nearly half as long as the head and body together. In colour the otter is of a rufous brown, with greyish-brown hairs intermixed, especially on the underparts of the body. White or cream-coloured otters have been killed, but are not common, and there are two examples of otters spotted with white, one in Paris, and another trapped on Lough Sheelin, co.
Cavan, and now in the National Museum of Ireland at Dublin. The record weight for an otter is 35 lb. killed on the River Deben, near Kettleburgh, by the Essex O.H. in September, 1909.
The weight of an otter is independent of his length, and is chiefly regulated by the thickness of the layer of white fat found inside his skin, as is the case with seals.
The Cost of the Sport. - Otter hunting need not be a very expensive sport either for the master or his followers. A fifteencouple pack hunting a reasonable country (where there is not a vast tract of territory to be covered, with the resultant expenditure on railway and hotel expenses) two days a week or five a fortnight, the master acting as huntsman in the field, and the kennelman assisting to whip-in, can be run for £300 a year, or £20 per couple per annum.
The cost of feeding hounds works out at half-a-crown a couple per week, and wages average £1 a week. Subscriptions vary with different packs, ranging from a minimum of IOS. 6d. to five guineas, and a cap of 2s. 6d. is taken with many packs.
Payment of the maximum subscription usually entitles followers to wear the hunt uniform. Beyond his subscription the otter-hunter's liabilities are limited to the cost of his railway ticket and his luncheon.
His equipment is also inexpensive. The uniform may cost £5 or £6, but should last two or three seasons; a proper pole, properly shod, something under half-a-sovereign; and good brogues, or shoes sewn with rotproof thread, and having eyelet holes in quently lands and runs the banks or crosses the bends, leaving a drag or trail of scent which hounds are able to follow. Otters, however, go down-stream as well as up, and therefore hounds should be first cast in the opposite direction from that in which it is intended to hunt, in order to make it good.
If there should be a drag, they are held down until it is either worked out and thus proved to be "heel," or until the otter is located. If there is no drag for a mile or so below the meet, they are brought back and cast up-stream. Sooner or later, if THE WORRY. the heels to let the water out, are procurable for thirty shillings.
Blue relieved by red is the otter-hunting colour, though some packs wear green and red, and one retains the scarlet coat that was formerly worn by several. The grey "bowler" hat is still worn in several hunts, but ordinary flannel caps are chiefly in use.
In some hunts these are red, while others have scarlet or crimson stockings to relieve the blue uniform.
The Science of Hunting the Otter. - Otter hunting is obviously a sport conducted on entirely different lines from those governing other forms of the chase. The usual method of procedure is to meet early in the morning-before the sun has had time to burn up the drag left by the quarry during his overnight journeyings at a mill, or bridge over the river to be drawn. The common practice is to draw up-stream, as an otter travelling against the current freotters are working the river, hounds will begin to feather on a drag, and presently to open on it and run it in full cry above the banks, crossing from side to side, and puzzling out the line across the water meadows into back-ditches, runners, marshes, ponds, and wherever the otter has been in quest of frogs or eels during his nocturnal ramble.
Other signs of his presence may now be looked for by the huntsman and the forward whippers-in on either bank. Where he has landed on a sandy spit or patch of mud he will have left his " seal," the imprint of his feet, easily recognisable from the fact that it has five toes and no heel. This will show approximately his size, the direction in which he has travelled, and by its freshness or otherwise afford a clue to the length of time that has elapsed since he passed. On the banks, too, or on boulders and large stones in rocky rivers, may be found his "spraints" or "wedging," which will help the master in the same manner to determine something as to the character and movements of his quarry. If he is laid up not far away, further indications-apart from the eagerness of the hounds-may be discovered in the remains of freshly killed eels and fish, or the skins of dead frogs scattered about. It now behoves the huntsman to draw warily and make every possible "holt" and "hide" good, or he may very easily draw over and pass his otter. Should the drag suddenly end and hounds draw on in silence, this will almost always prove to be the case, and he must without loss of time " try back" if he is to find his quarry before the increasing heat of the sun has destroyed every vestige of scent and rendered the attempt abortive. Some huntsmen will in this case draw on hoping to hit the drag of a fresh otter; but it is a poor plan, and seldom pays. a When hounds finally arrive at the holt where the otter is concealed, there can be no mistake about the savage roar of voices with which they proclaim a " mark."
Directly this happens the master should blow a distinctive call on his horn to let his field know that the quarry has been found; the Veline, which resembles the Gone away reversed, is the proper call to use for this purpose. The hunt officials and those members of the field who know an otter when they see him, should watch the water for signs that he has left his place of refuge.
Usually he will move at once, but often it takes one or more terriers to shift him. An otter frequently slips away unseen, but hounds speedily discover that he is gone, and it is then that the Gone away should be blown to announce that he has been "put down," and set the field on the look-out to gaze " and "tally" him as he makes his way rapidly up or down stream. 66 The cry now used for a view in otter hunting is "Tally-ho," though "Heu Gaze" is the ancient and proper cry. "Toho" is still employed in Cumberland. The fox-hunter's "View holloa" is out of place in the otter-hunting field. Once he "beats the water," and realises that he is pursued, an otter will swim from hover to hide, often showing himself but little, and then only exhibiting the point of his muzzle under a floating leaf or some bit of flotsam when he is compelled to "vent" or take in fresh supplies of air. All otters do not behave alike when hunted. Some will swim without ever taking to the land until they are finally worn down by the persistence of hounds and compelled to do so. Others will only creep about under overhanging banks, seeking refuge in every possible root, until they are caught by a terrier. Yet others will scarcely go near the water, butin carrs, reed-beds, and osier plantations, chiefly-will run the covert again and again with hounds in full cry, while some few will occasionally race away across country, over arable land, roads, and through woods, perhaps for two or three miles, in an endeavour to reach some distant lake or river. There is more variety in otter hunting than in any other field sport, and a very different description of hunt is to be witnessed, say, in Cumberland or the south of Scotland from that seen in Devon and Cornwall, or, again, in the south and east of England. It follows that the methods of hunting the otter must be different in every country, and may differ, too, in neighbouring waters in the same country. The aim, however, should be similar in every place: namely, to kill the otter in a fair and sportsmanlike m manner by the aid of hounds and terriers alone. This accomplished, the trophies are cut off and distributed, and the carcase thrown to the hounds, who will eat it with gusto, the "Rattle" being blown, and the "Who-whoop" given at the worry and kill.
OTTER-HOUND PACKS. 1910.
Border Counties (N. Dumfriesshire.
Wales).
Bucks.
Cameron's, Mr. L.
Carlisle.
Cheriton.
Clay's, Mr. Hastings.
Conyngham's, The Marquis.
Crowhurst.
Culmstock.
Cumberland, West.
Dartmoor.
Davies's, Mr. David.
Eastern Counties (late Essex).
Hawkstone.
Lake District.