Man-Hunting Among The Mountains

By Sir John N. Barran.

What is a man-hunt? The title has something vindictive, almost blood-thirsty, about it: it suggests times of political and social disorder, of lost causes, fanatic loyalty, and iron repression: it recalls the days of Covenanter and Jacobite: it conjures up visions of deep-baying bloodhounds and of stern officers of the law tracking famished and despairing refugees into their remotest hiding places.

All such heroic attributes must in candour be disclaimed – reluctantly perhaps, for is there not romance in them?  Man-hunting, reduced to plain English, is in fact an unlimited paper-chase without the paper.

Whether any fancies, of the kind I have described and based on historical fact or tradition, floated across the minds of those who evolved man-hunting as a game, it is not now possible even for the inventors themselves to say.  All that is certain is that some six or seven years ago a small band of Cambridge undergraduates conceived the idea of making mountain, lake, and valley something more than the scene of staid exercise of limb and muscle.  They had walked there – they had climbed there – why should they not run there? The charm of the hills attracts the walker, their difficulties tempt the climber, why should not their wildness, their broken ruggedness, test the endurance and draw out the scenting qualities of hare and hound?

The plan thus formed developed on lines of natural of experiment.  Youth is fervid, and the early bands turned themselves loose on vast tracts of the most rugged country in England, with few rules of the game and excellent but quite inadequate winds.

In 1899, for instance, the hunt ranged over the whole Scafell Range, Bowfell, the Langdale Pikes, Glaramara, Brandreth, and Great Gable.  Even to name such an area takes the breath away.  The results were twofold.   In the first place, there was the risk of getting into trouble as trespassers, lunatics, or both.   This led to the restriction of the hunting-ground to the more solitary places.   And in the second place, meetings of hunter and hunted were comparatively rare, and good runs were few.  This led to a rigid definition of area and some formulation of rules.

These rules, although never set out in binding form, and being more in the nature of unwritten law, form a broad working basis, and may be summarised thus: –

(i).  A district is chosen suitable for the purpose, from the varied features of hill, valley, contour lines, lake, stream, and woodland which it presents.  It is most often found in Cumberland or Westmorland, but good country may be had in Scotland, N.  Wales, and even Yorkshire.^[1]  But wherever it be, and of whatever extent, its boundaries are carefully laid down beforehand, and are ‘taken as read’ on the one-inch ordnance survey carried by all who take part.

(ii).  Within these boundaries, for three consecutive days, and between the hours of 8.30 a.m. and 6.30 p.m. on each, the hunted men, three in number, are bound to be.  And further, they must not only be there, but be on the move within reasonable intervals.  For in theory – and in practice too – they have no store of either food or covering which would enable them to ‘lie low.’  They are, in fact, aiming at some imaginary distant point, but are hemmed in by pursuers to whom it is their constant effort to give a wide berth.  Outside the hours named they may exist where and how they please, living in the open, lying-up in caves, or seeking inn or farmhouse.  Each wears a broad red sash diagonally across the shoulders, and a touch disqualifies him for the rest of the day.  Next day the places of the captured, if there are any, are filled up from the ranks of the capturers.

(iii).  The pursuers are bound by even fewer restrictions than the men whom they pursue.  They need not at all times be within the hunting area.  There is no appointed leader, and therefore no centralised system of tactics or strategic discipline.  Beyond the one simple duty of going forth and running their quarry to earth they have no positive command laid upon them, but as a matter of fact some concerted action is usually arranged by mutual agreement, at any rate for the beginning of each day.  Two or more places on the extreme limits of the ground are hounds’ quarters, and from these they emerge at 8.30 in packs of three or four, sweeping up ridge and valley towards the high central parts, on which the main work of the day is bound chiefly to lie.  For the hare of spirit knows that the tops are his sanctuary and the bottoms a death-trap.  Each man goes as lightly accoutred as may be, boots – nailed or rubber-soled, map, sandwiches, and compass in pocket, and – most important of all – field-glasses slung over the shoulder.  Scouting, in fact, is half the battle, and Baden Powell’s maxims must be ever before his eyes.  While moving briskly he will from time to time sweep the horizon before and behind, to right and to left; noting his own tracks and picking out his future course; reckoning up every feature of rock, scree, grass-slope, bog, or the like which may serve or hamper his adversary or himself; maintaining a cautious connection by signal with his colleagues; keeping a hawk’s eye for the least movement on the sky-line; never showing on the sky-line himself if he can help it; dropping dead behind boulder or bracken if any form shows, till he has raked it with his glass; clinging to cover; and making fast over the open.  Truly there is a full day’s task for the conscientious hound.

But, meanwhile, he is giving the hare an even severer time.  For the hare, conspicuous already by his badge, is made more so by his motions, furtive, hurried and uneasy.  He hardly dares to stop and use his glass.  For his foot, except in inglorious lurking, there is no rest.  And even if he should drop into some nook, he can never tell whether he has been seen from afar and is being surrounded during his spell of fatal ease.  Then he may burst away and get clear of his pursuers only to run, breathless and harried, into the arms of an unconscious enemy hidden from view by col or headland.

Enough has been said to show that between gameness on the one side and esprit de corps on the other a man-hunt affords the amplest material for the strenuous life.  There is no room to tell of the many incidents which go to make it an instructive as well as an exhilarating game.  There are many exciting moments and hair-breadth ‘scapes.  A hare will dash down an almost precipitous steep and save himself by a smart double back: or, headed from above, he will race down through an enveloping chain of hounds, scour along the open valley and make for the opposite hills: some have escaped, or attempted it, by boat: some have been taken in puris naturabilis in a lonely tarn on a hot day.  But apart from the supreme moments of capture or escape, a man-hunt gives opportunity for qualities which are well worth exercising, and for knowledge of the fells which is well worth gaining.  It brings about the association of hill-climbing with a particular purpose: it cultivates the habits of map-reading, compass-steering and keen observation: and rewards the toiler incidentally by glimpses of nature in some of her finest moods and her most sacred retreats.

The particular man-hunt of which I have written is of a purely private nature.  There is at least one other: there might be still more.  For those who are prepared

“To scorn delights and live laborious days”

it may be commended as a sport which carries its own reward.  And is not that the best kind of sport after all?