Waterbury evening Democrat., 1904-12-19
WARTIME SPORT IN RUSSIA
Country Gentlemen Hold Fox Hunts. on Their Estates Near
 Moscow.

Although the calling out of the re- serves had made some reductions in she staff of household and farm serY-s ants on the estate that I visited last August in Russia" said 8 young New Yorker on his return from abroad, ac- cording to the New York Sun, Il met with the same hospitality and found every other condition about the same as when was there the year before, when war with Japan was the last thing expected.
 "The estate was some 200 miles from Moscow and the life seemed to me much like what it must have been In the south before the rebellion, the country houses being maintained on. Iarge2and semi -aristocratic scale, and tying about 15 or 20 miles apart in the center Of great expanses of titled land. My object was to get some hunting in the Russian style and had plenty of novel and exciting sport.
 "It was something in the order of English fox hunting. for the sports. men are mounted and the quarry is run down by dogs, the guns not being in use at all There was plenty of hard riding that tested the jumping liabilities of the horses, but no regular |. fences as in England. We hunted foxes and hares, for the greatest sport sof the Russian country gentleman, wolf hunting, may only be had in the cold months
 The hunting was on broad stretches of grass land, resembling the western prairies with here and there at patch of woods as coverts. Three or four made up each hunting party and we would take places at intervals apart about the covert.
 "A mounted keeper stayed with each sportsman, holding three wolf hounds on 8 leash. Other keepers on foot, ] with pack Of fox hounds, went ] through the woods to drive out the game.
 Wolf hounds hunt only by sight and the fun would begin when fox or a hare broke from the covert to make a dash across the prairie to the next woods, perhaps two or three miles off, The wolf hounds would catch sight of the quarry and strain at the leash, but the keeper would 1 hold them until the flying animal got a good start.
 Then if the game should be hidden in the grass, the wolf hounds would zigzag like flashes of lightning until i they set eyes on 1t, when desperate race would ensue with the fox or hare doubling when hard pressed and the hounds darting along in gigantic leaps with the speed of racing automobiles The prettiest sight imaginable is to see 8 huge wolf hound, when first slipped, spring up in the air far high CT than horse and rider, to get line on the game.
 Poised in the air, they suggest biz flying squirrels and they mount and descend as lightly Although in the air for only an instant, they have such keen eyesight that the fitting and dusky foxes or hares are at once picked out, and, giving tongue with bell like barks, the team of hounds is of in chase.
 "Once run down. the rider peitfna after the hounds sometimes for 2t minutes or half an hour, one snap ,o the jaws ends the life Of fox or hare The wolf hounds do not mangle ol bother with the dead game and ar, soon again on the leash, ready for an ] other dash. The wolf hound will TUT down a western coyote, so 1t can b, imagined how fast they get over til, ground in their native country. !"