Hunting Act needs a fresh set of eyes
IT STARTED, as so often, with a centre-page snippet, easily overlooked. Then its real meaning became clear. An alliance of 103 vets countrywide wrote a joint letter to the Government saying that our population of wild red foxes has plummeted since the introduction in 2004 of the Hunting Act which banned their hunting with the use of hounds.
Then the very barrister who drafted the act, Daniel Greenberg, concurred that its passage was driven by “moral outrage” rather than concerns for animal welfare, let alone any informed knowledge of it. Let me add something to that; it derived overwhelmingly from “townies”.
Still, it does not seem to make sense. Surely fox numbers should have burgeoned, not the reverse? Let me, as a yokel, explain.
The fox is nocturnal. He hunts, kills and eats at night. In the day he finds deep cover in dense undergrowth, hides invisible to all, and dozes the day away. In the old days that is what the hounds did. Started from his lair, the fox sped away. So how did they follow him? Because with every footfall Brer Fox left a minuscule aroma of himself on the grass.
He could not see the pack behind him but he could hear them baying. They could not see the fox but only smell where he had trodden. Right up to the last 50 yards. Then he died in seconds – and that, by Nature’s norms – is humane.
The crouching fox was not torn apart by the pack; his neck was snapped fast and clean by the Lead Hound, trained from puppyhood to that task. Nor were the whooping riders participating in any way. They were just (literally) following the hunt. The actual hunt was carried out by two paid employees of
the hunt – the Huntsman and the Whipper-In (controlling the pack).
What the townie fanatics never told the MPs who passed the act was that about 75 per cent of foxes chased got away unharmed. These were the young, and fit, vital to the gene pool. Those who died were mainly old, frail and sick.
The MPs were never told the traditional fox hunt was not a barbaric indulgence; it was actually a scientific cull. So why have fox numbers,
without hound-hunting, nevertheless slumped?
Because farmers of chicken, ducks, geese, turkeys and lambs, who used to leave the balance of predator and meat-source to the hunt, have got their guns out.
Cruising his farm at night, the farmer scans the land with a flashlight. Two red pinpoint lights show the eyes of the fox. But few farmers are Olympic marksmen. Hence a high level of wounding and slow
death in agony. That’s humane? It really was better, and more humane, in the old days.
The Hunting Act needs to be repealed and replaced with a science-based, not emotion-based, measure. But that means doing something which is not going to happen with either Tories, LibDems or Labour – none of whom give a stuff about the countryside. They only want to woo the cities and the media.