The first thing to be done on taking a country is to get the land and covert owners on your side. Write to all of them asking leave to draw their coverts, and express a hope that they will extend the same kindness in the preservation of foxes to you as they have always done to your predecessors.
I would advise as much compliance with the wishes of game preservers as is consistent with hunting the country fairly. But there is one thing I could never find it in my heart to do, which is, to stop the hounds when running hard for a game-preserver’s covert. If you are Master of a pack which belongs to the country, I say you have no right to spoil the hounds belonging to the county gentlemen by disappointing them in this way. No; by all means steer clear of the shooting-parties, and meet the shooter’s wishes as much as you can, but by no means, and for no man, stop your hounds when running.
I should never advise anyone to take a country in which there is an old-established huntsman, a favourite with everyone, and one whom it would be something like high treason on your part to dismiss. He will be master, not you. You will simply be a paying machine to settle all the bills and mount him, and he will constantly be grumbling about his horses, and perhaps will even give vent to his feelings in his speech at your puppy-show luncheon. Far the best plan is to start fresh with your own man, keeping perhaps one of the old staff to show the rest the way about at first. Choose a man of fair experience, and above all do not listen to the accounts of hunt-servants’ riding, and be led into taking on one of the boys who get huntsmen’s places in these modern days. The majority of hunting-men seem to think that, if a man or a boy will only jump big places, he must be a good huntsman, and boys get pitchforked into good places as huntsmen before they know how to whip-in or even to behave. When I began hunting, whippers-in did not look to be huntsmen before they were well past thirty. Nowadays it is no uncommon thing to find the huntsman the youngest of the three servants. I do not mean to say that a huntsman should not ride; of course, he should ride up to his hounds and see how far they have carried the scent, but everyone can ride if he only gets a horse good enough; the difficulty is to get a man who knows when to ride, and will do so only to get to his hounds, and not to win the approbation of an ignorant field. But always mount your men well, if only for economy’s sake; they will take care of good horses, but will not do so of bad ones.