The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1903-03-14
REYNARD NOT SO SLY.

REYNARD NOT so SLY.
When the Lord changed the color
of a fox's fur from red to black or
gray" said Jason Norton, the aged
fox hunter of Penobscot Valley, che
gave the favored animals new skill in
self-protection and fitted them out
with brains of larger capacity.
II have hunted foxes for more than
forty years and I have killed more than
a thousand. Of this number seventy
five or eighty were cross foxes, whose
pelts are worth from $40 to SIS to-
day, fourteen were black foxes and
eight were silver grays.
eff 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 a 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 day that the hun
ters could not see him again for a
week.
"But a red fox hasn't learned that
a straight line is the shortest distance
between two points, which shows that
he has never studied geometry. AS
soon as he hears dog yipping be-
hind him he sits down and studies
bit to make sure if he is the fox that
is picked for the chase.
IF 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
rivals trail and trying to confuse the
dogs.
No sooner is a red fox sure that
he is selected for the hunt than he
ergies to having fun with the dogsA
He climbs up the trunks of leaning
trees for the sake of leaping off into
distant snowdrifts, he teeters along
the top of rail fences and sneaks down
the channels of running brooks, hop
ing that the water will kill the scent.
"After being funny for time, he
will sit down on a 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 earshot all the
time.
411s@ x,1,o% G&,seI1oc IL
for as soon as the hunters learn that
he is moving in a 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 charge of dou-
Bile B shot and he never laughs again.
"No one ever knew a black fox or
silver gray to be guilty of such
folly. AS soon as fox with costly
overcoat On his back hears the dogs
believing behind him he shifts around
bit to learn the direction of the wind
and is off to windward at the rate of
thirty miles an hour.
"As he keeps his nose to the wind
all the time, he can smell out any dan
ger that may be ahead of him, and so
long as he keeps running he is sure
that nothing can overtake him from
behind. If the dogs happen to be of
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 set
ties down to 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
the grow tired and go wandering
about in the woods trying to make a
shortcut for home. They haul up at
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 will have returned to
his old feeding grounds and had a nice
long rest, SO he will be ready for an
other run.
cit 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 shoot
them is because they are wiser and
less h morous than their red
| cousins -