Hunting wild animals is hardly fair game
Sir — It is the season to be jolly... but not for the wily fox, the gentle hare, and the majestic stag. They, alas, will not be basking in the happy glow of a winter wonderland.
The hare will, after his weeks of captivity compliments of the nearest coursing club, have to run from a pair of salivating greyhounds across a frosty, rainswept, or water-logged field, and if he’s unlucky his bones will be crushed or he’ll treat spectators to an involuntary somersault or two before alighting on the “sporting” venue to continue his performance, the choreographic dicing with death that some human beings find amusing and that 114 TDs approved last June in a Dail vote on hare coursing.
The fox which, unlike a domestic dog, has no legal protection, has to put on a show for us humans, too.
He certainly impresses with his performance, zigzagging all over the scenic attractions our countryside has to offer, with scores of mounted riders and 20 or 30 hounds in pursuit.
The hunters have nothing against him, they stress, and only wish to have a jolly good day “riding to hounds”, and if foxy gets caught, as happens quite often, and has the skin ripped from his rib cage, that’s just nature, old boy.
Nothing personal, they assure us.
The hunters only want a spanking good ride and a stirrup cup of brandy or punch at the end of the chase.
Stag hunting was banned in 2010, but some hunters haven’t heard the news yet and still pursue with relish those magnificent animals that once adorned the face of our pre-euro pound coin.
Recent weeks have witnessed numerous breaches of the ban agreed by the Fianna Fail-Green coalition, so I hope that a certain jolly philanthropist traversing the skies over parts of north Co Dublin and Co Meath will take care not to fly too low when the ghosts of hunters past are out haunting the countryside.
Donner, or Blitzen, or even old Rudolph himself, might have to resort to emergency procedures to evade costumed ladies and gentlemen blowing horns, and large numbers of brooding doggies aching to sink their teeth into protected mammals. Deer oh deer. Maybe the phantom hunters will come around to accepting that the law applies to them as it does to the rest of us.
Some day, maybe, the creatures of field and forest will be allowed to run free at Yuletide, unfettered by man’s blind ignorance and inhumanity.
As the song says: “All God’s creatures have a place in the choir.”
John Fitzgerald, Callan, Co Kilkenny