Saint Mary's beacon. [volume] (Leonard Town, Md.) 1867-1983, 1903-03-26

When he Lord changed the color
Of fox fnr from red to black or
gray. sad Jason Norton, the aged
fox hunter Of Penobscot Valley, ''he
gave the lavored animals new skill
in self-pfQtection and fitted them out
with braios Of larger capacity.
l have united foxes for more than
forty years and have killed more
a. fhousaz6 OF this number seven
ty-five Or lightly were cross foxes,
whose peI1s are worth from $40 to
s75 today fourteen we're black foxes
and esEion sre silver erays. =
III q red fox was half as cunning
as they say he is, he would never be
shot ahead Of the dogs. So long as
there is plenty of room for fox to
run in and the room is in a direct
line. he can distance the best dog
living at the quarter post and get so
far away in half a day that the hun
ters could not see him again for a
week.
But red fox hasn't Z learned that
a straight line is the shortest dis.
tance between two points, which
shows that he has never studied
geometry. As soon as he hears a
dog yipping behind him he sits
down and studies a bit to make
sure il he is the fox that is picked
for the chase.
Ii he finds out that the dogs are
after another fox, the chances are
that he will be envious and will
spend lot of time in cutting across
his rival trail and trying to confuse
the dogs.
No sooner is red fox sure that
he is selected for the hunt thcn he
loses all caution and devotes his en-
ergies to having fun with the dogs.
He climbs up the trunks of leaning
trees for the sake of leaping off into
adistant snowdrift, he teeters along
the top Of fences and sneaks down
the channels of running brooks, hop
ing that the water will kill the
scent.
After being funny for a time, he
will sit down on sunny knoll and
listen and laugh TO himself to hear
the dogs swear about him. He will
do these tricks until the dogs are
tired and mad clear through, and
then he will begin to run in circle
so he can keep the dogs within ear
shot all the time.
And this is what finishes him up,
for as soon as the hunters learn that
he is moving in curve, they calcu-
late the diameter of his circuit, cut
across to head him off, and the next
time he comes around smiling at the
joke he is playing on the dogs, he is
met in the face with a charge of dou,
BILE 3 shot and he. never laughs
again.
No one ever knew a black fox OF
a silver gray to be guilty of such
folly. As soon as fox with a costly
overcoat on his back hears the dogs
believing behind him he shifts
around a bit TO learn the direction oi
the wind and is of to windward al
the rate of thirty miles an hours.
AS he keeps his nose to the wind
all the time, he can smellout any dan.
ger that may be ahead of him, and SC
long as he keeps running he is sure
that nothing can overtake him from
behind. IL the dogs happen to be ol
the long legged kind, such as they
use in England, the fox has to stir
his feet pretty lively for few hours,
but when the dogs grow tired, he
settles down an easy lope OF twelve
or fifteen miles an hour and does not
stop until he is 100 miles away.
Meantime the dogs drop out as
they grow tired and 60 wandering
about in the. woods trying to make a
shortcut forshome. They haul up a,
farm houses along the way to rest,
and the last one is not captured and
brought home for a week. By this
time the fox win have returned to
his old feeling grounds and had q
nice long rest, so he will be ready
for another run.
Ii is my candid belief that if all
the foxes in Maine were put together
SO we could look them over, the blacks
and silver grays combined would
equal the number of reds. They are
gaining in numbers every year, too
The reason why we do not shoI
them is because they are wiser and
less humorous than their RED
cousins.