The hunt lives on
Boxing day is still the biggest day in the hunting calendar. The Hunting Act was introduced in 2004, but supporters are claiming it is now more popular than ever before.
Today I went to watch the hunt set off from Ludlow, in Shropshire. It was the first time I had done this, and was blown away by the amount of people that came to see the oldest country tradition.
The hunters, horses and hounds were following the scent of a fox that had been layed. There are however loopholes in the law. If a pack of hounds is following a scent trail and accidentally runs into a fox, and the dogs then kill the fox, it is not against the law.
Animal rights campaigners say the use of foxes’ urine – rather than an artificial scent – and the laying of trails through areas foxes are known to frequent, enables such “accidents” to happen regularly.
The Independent reported today that the picture is unclear whether less foxes are now being killed since the ban.
The Telegraph asked, “Has the hunt outfoxed the law?”. With so many of these loopholes, it looks like the ban will never work. And with so much coverage, campaigning and complaining about the ban in 2004, it looks like the hunt is now more popular than ever.
“It is one of the ineffable paradoxes of British life that hunting has actually become more popular, in terms of numbers of participants, than it was before the 2004 Act that sought to ban it. Far from dying, the sport now attracts droves of young people – 19,000 of them aged under 19, according to the Countryside Alliance.”
Today in Ludlow, there were about 500 members of public watching the riders and hounds wait for the trumpet to sound, to mark the beginning of the chase. Some of the riders taking part were as young as five.
But despite the being able to continue to carry on with the tradition, the hunts are still not happy.
As the hunt set off, there were cries of “Tally ho!” from the crowd, and the field cheered, showing their support.
January 13, 2009 at 6:55 pm
Wonderful article! Keep up the good work!
January 13, 2009 at 6:58 pm
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January 21, 2009 at 9:28 am
Agreed – good article. I could never report something like that with such balance because I feel so angry about fox hunting.
Why do they not just chase cross country runners instead of foxes?
How in any way can someone argue that dressing up, drinking wine, prancing about on horses, tearing a fox to shreds benefits the economy or animal welfare in anyway?
I understand that foxes kill live stock (savagely too but we have encroached on their natural habitat – there wouldn’t be chickens for them to kill if we hadn’t reared them there)
But if this is the case then why not cull them humanely?
What an aboslute idiot Simon Hart is to say that animal cruetly leads to animal welfare. The pompous fools are savages.
And do they still have that delightful tradition of rubbing the fox’s blood on their face?
January 21, 2009 at 9:31 am
have you heard of urban fox hunting?