talk till morning
For the Love of Ideas
'townies' are not the only ones who despise this pastime
- response by john king to the hunt: didn't we make this illegal?
I wish to quell the Hunting types' argument that it's only townies who disagree with their vile pastime that simply isn't true.
Beautiful countryside playing host to dark activities
Foxes generally fall out of favour with people for killing their fowl; ducks and chicken. This is usually because they've made a very poor effort in safeguarding them. Indeed next door's cat or dog are likely chicken killers, but there's no doubt that Reynard does commit such crimes. And that's made all the easier by these birds having their wings clipped. The case against him for lambs is a lot less certain.
For a start ewes with young will try to face me down when I approach them and when I had my much-missed collie too. I've seen foxes pass through flocks of sheep & lambs, neither sheep or fox bother by the presence of the other. And lambs at birth are not that much smaller than foxes. Lambs fall into ditches and rivers, as do the occasional sheep and are killed that way. And anyway, farmers tend to take their sheep into sheds for lambing nowadays. And were red foxes a real menace to sheep, would they really have been introduced into Australasia where there are more sheep than people?
Farmers that sympathise with the hunt either tend to be hunters themselves, or they tolerate the hunt as they are a means of ridding themselves of dead animal carcasses. Getting rid of dead animals unfit for human consumption is otherwise tricky. I've seen two dead sheep dragged well away from the public view and left to rot before now. These dead animals get fed to the hounds as do old horses. But not all farmers tolerate the hunt. Some are decent people and realise what an evil thing hunting is; others have suffered the rude intolerance of the hunt and their trespassing, and have banned them from their land.
The hunt ride with an air of mediaeval monarchy expecting all that they meet to pay fealty to them. I met them last year while passing through the lanes just over the border into Kent around Chiddingstone (a favoured haunt of theirs). To drive around a corner and have a wall of horses, dogs & people coming at you (backed up by the evil quad-riders) at a trot is quite an experience. That is the vanguard. The stragglers ride across the road three or more abreast, and one is expected to stop and allow them to pass. It is you that must get out of their way ... or so they think. What you won't see is a trail runner. They are rarer than the proverbial rocking-horse shit.
Nearly two years ago I caught the hunt for the first time in years. I was just finishing a job at a small timber yard, again just over the border into Kent. I saw them and immediately felt like remonstrating with them. But I then came over with a feeling counter to my usual cynicism, and thought I should give them the benefit of the doubt. It took them less than two minutes to disabuse me of any notions I had about them doing anything legal as the fox shot out and passed me with three or four feet, pursued by the hunters on horses (whom I tried in vain to stop) up the lane that is the Queen's highway. The hounds and rest of them followed and I heartily abused them; the lot of them, and with my finest Sussex expletives. They looked like admonished school children.
I reported this to the police immediately. Nothing. I then reported to the Kent police commissioner, whose secretary was very helpful. She forwarded my e;mail to Kent police, who were not (helpful). They gave a load of meaningless guff about policing priorities. I contacted my MP, who forwarded my very sarcastic e;mail to the Kent MP (Tugendhat, in whose area it happened in) and ... nothing. I later learned that hunters had been through my home village of Hartfield and I did the same with Sussex police, and again excuses and nothing.
Sussex police prosecuted me as a fourteen year old for the heinous crime of two on a bicycle and insufficient brakes. Kent police stopped and searched me in Tunbridge Wells' shopping precinct on my fifty-eighth year. My life of crime includes one case of speeding, one of no current MOT certificate & one case of going the wrong way down a one way street. I very much know how rigorous they can be in pursuing people for very minor offences and for doing nothing other than being there when they've nothing better to do. And yet the hunt. who display themselves in red mounted on horses, abuse every rule of the road & ignore the hunting act, were back at the same location I had seen them chase a fox exactly two weeks later, evidently quite unconcerned of the law intervening in their "fun".
So clearly it's alright to break the law....just a case of who you are and which law you're breaking. And having a fox (or hare, stag and up until fifty years ago, an otter) ripped to pieces by dogs is just participating in "tradition". And so emboldened are these people by our pusillanimous police forces, judiciary & elected representatives, they are now a sight I see regularly about these parts too.
Finally, these people are accomplished liars. One would doubt the veracity of them bidding one "good morning". They are from all social strata, from council house to castle. They feed disinformation such as the rural economy being reliant on hunting (utter crap), land otherwise having to be taken under the plough that isn't at the moment or horses being slaughtered as redundant beasts. The one creature who might suffer were the ban actually enacted would be the hound. But then they don't get to live too long either.