Northern Wisconsin advertiser. [volume] (Wabeno, Wis.) 1898-1925, 1903-02-05
Fox-HUNTING IN ENGLAND
Decline of an Oid-Time Sport in Fa-
vor of Pheasant Preserving.

vor of Pheasant Preserving.
Fox hunting in England is no long |,
er on the firm footing it held % years |
ago. Ever since the middle of last the
century, when as sport it reached |
its hight, it has been declining. The
railways are partly responsible fol
this. For one thing, by opening up
new parts of the country and encour-
aging building, they have greatly de-
creased the hunting area At the
Same time, travelling now being both
cheap and quick, they have doubled
the number of men who hunt. The
fields are too large, and therefor.
more destructive, and therefore more
expensive, than they used to be.
Moreover, the ever increasing agrl-
cultural depression, the disappear
ance of the moderate-sized farmer
who was the backbone of the old
hunt and the appearance in his place
either of the absentee tenant who
preserves game or of the small-hold-
ings man who is too poor to hunt
himself, have led to rather strained
relations between the farmer ana the
NJ. F. H. The barbarous wiring or
hedges, summonses for trespass ana
refusal TO permit hunting over Ger
| tain fields, are symptoms of this.
Formerly the farmer knew all the
members of the hunt personally and
joined in the sport himself Nova
! days the M. f. H. himself is hardly
acquainted with more than 10 pen
cent. of his field. Men run down
i from town for a few days hunting,
pay no subscription and make no do
nation toward the maintenance of the
pack, and being for the most part
townsmen and ignorant of agricul-
ture, do an enormous amount of dam,
age. The presence of this class is a
/ thorny problem to the M. F. H. and
a constant irritation to the farmer.
OF course, all damage done is paid
for literally and promptly. If a
farmer loses a chicken or finds a
dead lamb or broken fence or some
trampled wheat, in goes his bill TO
the M. H. f. The hunt, moreover,
pays him to take down his wire Oh
November l, and puts it up again at
it's own expense when the season
closes. Everything is done to keep
him in good humor and on the whole
with success, for though the old re-
lations have disappeared, the average
farmer is still a sportsman at heart
and if his outlook were only little
wider, would recognize that the con
tinuance of fox-hunting with all the
purchasing of forage and horses it in
wolves and all the employment il
gives to the neighborhood, is a side
issue of no small Importance to him
: self
The real enemy of the fox-hunter il
not the farmer, but the game preserv
er 1t is he who encroaches on tn,
\ sport and threatens in the long rul
to sacrifice it to the pheasant. TIL
conditions of pheasant shooting hav
I been revolutionized within the last 2
t years In the eighties 1t would hav
, been thought worse than unsports
manlike had six or eight guns kille
700 or 500 pheasants in single day
diversion, and the man who is cor
/. tent to potter behind a spaniel or
pointer and plaster half a dozen coci
pheasants as they flop up has all bu
vanished couple of "big shoots
is the present-day ideal. Moreover
is an ideal that is peculiarly attrac
+ tive to the successful city man VIII
, has made his pile, knows nothing o
a hunting and is too old to learn, bu
Y who likes to give his friends week
2 sport at his country place. Foxe
and pheasants go i'll together, and tn
e ordinary keeper is vulpicide by in
> stinct and conviction. That is on
: ground of complaint. Another is tina
e the game preserver, not wishing t
g have his birds disturbed and the bi
: shoot spoiled, often forbids his &C
n verts to lie drawn till Christmas
when the hunting season is half ovel
G The consequence is either that tn
= hunting area is still more circun
scribed of that the M. F. II. has t
rent coverts on his own account t
prevent them from falling into tn
+. hands of the game preserver. Tha
y adds enormously to the expens
. which is already mounting up at
!, prodigious rate. Between the raj
n ways. the farmer and the pheasar
e one of the grandest of all Englis
sports seems likely to be squeeze
n ont of existence New York CONNIE