Nothing seems to make people more heated then discussing the pros and cons of hunting. Fox hunting is alive and kicking around Hay On Wye - at least four hunts span the immediate area - and in fact fox hunting is happening all over the countryside. Most city people I talk to think it is cruel and want it banned. Most country people think the opposite.
Tales of foxes killing entire coops of chickens and geese fuel the fire here in the countryside, meanwhile the townies talk of hounds ripping the throats of family pets in their crazed efforts to hunt down the "poor little fox". Whatever the argument, the sport is certainly not relegated to history and seems to actually be thriving and growing amidst all the ideological conflict.
Last Friday I had my weekly horse riding lesson with my instructor Charlotte in her outdoor school. I had just finished, and was quietly hacking home thinking of shoulder-ins and half passes when I suddenly heard the very thin but beautiful sound of a bugle in the local woodland area below the local common land.
My pony pricked up his ears and started to look about excitedly, and as I began to trot home I came across about 15 hounds, a jumble of vehicles and some men wearing Barbour-type jackets with flat caps and sticks. Very Down to Earth Powell and Pressberger.
The hounds were impressively polite and allowed my pony to walk down the lane unaccosted and I stopped to ask one gentleman what they were doing. "Cubbing", they answered.
Everyone round here knows what that is - rooting out the young foxes and preparing the hounds for the proper hunt. As I had just been in an outdoor riding menage littered with the droppings of over thirty foxes (each with big plumstones in them - they had obviously gorged themselves on Charlotte's plums the day before), I knew as well as the hunters that the area was teeming with foxes.
Nobody says much though. It's an official secret throughout the land - away from Westminster and all the townies - that fox hunting is going strong.
As I left the hounds, the cars and the men, with an invitation to the join the opening meet next month, I passed an elderly gentleman with a pair of binoculars and a walking stick. He stopped me and asked what the noise was. Assuming he was following the hunt I asked him if he had seen the hounds. He looked at me with a strange expression..."but I thought hunting was banned?" he said.
"It is" I replied, and trotted on.
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Have a look at this and see what you think about the brave band of hunters
What is wrong with humans acting upon nature as it does itself? Nature is necessarily cruel and if we can derive sport or anything else from it then so what?
Many hunters have far more respect and appreciation for nature than negative commenters here and treat it accordingly - hunters in its element, farmers squeeze more than it would ever give and scientist types rack up the process.
It's kind of what we do and it affords people freedom from its domination and the time to think and comment.
We will get there.
And I'm another country person born and bred who has never supported blood sports.
ps lived in the countryside all my life apart from 3 years when I was studying Zoology. Foxes regulate how many young they give birth to, depending on resources available, reabsorbing young before birth that they would not be able to feed.
If a group of kids on BMX's came up our street blowing vuvuzelas, encouraging their pack of baying pit bulls to chase a domestic dog that they'd found minding it's own business in a front garden, with a view to ripping it up if they caught it, people would talk about "sick" and "feral" and "out of control" youth.
But when it's a load of grownups on horses it's supposed to be OK ?
I don't care about "traditions". The slave trade was a "tradition" for quite a while.
But we've moved on.
And it's not a country vs town thing either.
Or a rich vs poor thing.
It's about some one actually enjoying something that is blatantly cruel.
Foxes are just as common in towns as they are in the country and there are plenty of urban chicken keepers. Having kept chickens for many years I know that foxes will only kill them if the owners have been daft enough to fail to make the coops fox proof. And the majority of chickens in the country are still being raised in battery farms, so foxes are hardly a threat.
Fox hunting is not pest control, it's not quaint and it's not legal for very good reasons.
I guess the question presented by the article is how are the authorities going to respond to this (illegal) resurgence? I'd like to see warnings given, then if necessary arrests made.