Autumn 2002 No. 14

Page 5

A hunting pack was made up of at least twenty hounds and these would usually include a mixture of pure bred otterhounds, rough-coated Welsh foxhounds, cross-bred fox and otterhounds and harriers. Apart from the ability to follow a scent, the qualities looked for in a good hound included stamina, marking ability and a good voice – ‘a really good otterhound can tell the huntsman by the quality and intonation of its cry how long ago an otter has ‘passed this way’. Size was also very important; swimming tired the hounds more quickly than running and wading ‘the taller hound being able to walk in water so deep that a shorter hound must swim’. It was suggested that some hounds be kept in reserve to replace those exhausted by a long hunt, a form of relay race the benefits of which the otter did not share.

Once an otter was found and its presence ‘marked’ by the cries of he leading hounds, terriers were used, as in fox hunting, to make it bolt from its refuge. They were small enough to negotiate most drains or holts where an otter may be hiding. Fox-terriers were often used for this purpose but whatever the breed it was important that ‘they had no fear of their foe and were clever enough to tackle it in a fashion that will save them from punishment’. As in fox hunting a savage fight was sometimes inevitable. If the otter refused to leave its holt a crow bar could be used to encourage it or it could be dug out with a spade.

Once the otter had bolted the real hunt would now begin and it could last for up to six hours. Whippers-in, stationed along the river bank, helped to guide the hounds to their prey while other members of the field watched the water for any signs of the otter’s presence – ‘the chain of air bubbles arising from the otter’s fur as it swims under

water, the V-shaped ripple as it comes towards them in a muddy stream where the chain is difficult to see, or the whiskered muzzle of the beast showing beneath a lily-leaf or a bit of flotsam under the bank as it comes up to vent’.

It was also their job to form a human chain across the water known as a ‘stickle’ when required to do so. This was ‘formed by the field standing leg to leg across a shallow to keep the hunted otter from passing to unhuntable water’. However Captain Cameron considered it very bad form and ‘unsportsmanlike’ for anyone to actually touch an otter with the pole which they were using to churn up the water in order to turn it back. The members of the field described in Tarka the Otter were clearly unaware of this particular point of hunting etiquette.

The author of Otter Hunting admits that it was sometimes considered necessary ‘at the end of a long and arduous day in order to terminate a good hunt handsomely’ to grab an otter by its tail or ‘rudder’ and throw it to the hounds. When ’tailing’ was impractical it was permissible ‘for the Huntsman only to place his pole gently under the quarry and lift it as it swims so as to show it to the leading hounds’.

Captain Cameron clearly felt the need to defend his activities when he wrote ‘Otter hunting is the pursuit of a genuine wild beast in an element native to the quarry but foreign to hounds an terriers, and conducted under such entirely unartificial conditions that the sporting odds are on average more than three to one in favour of the otter – which, if killed, dies fighting, and if not, escapes unharmed’. In truth an otter may have been badly bitten by hounds before it manages to escape and Henry Williamson described the end of an otter hunt in which Tarquol, the son of Tarka, dies fighting’: