england
The Hare that Must Be Fox
A third condensed installment from We Go Foxhunting Abroad: A First Venture with the Irish Banks and English Downs, Charles D. Lanier’s 1924 account of a father-daughter sporting trip to Ireland and England.
Irish hare
We decided that our new sensation would be a trial of Irish harehunting, so to Watergrass Hill we flivvered, to the meet of Mr. Robert Hall’s private pack of harriers. The Master was a slender, wiry, grey-haired man of seventy years, aquiline of countenance, with a singularly winning eye and smile under his velvet cap. He and his whipper-in were, of course, in green, and a dozen or so of the field of thirty or forty also wore the correct harrier colors.
Mr. Hall had the pride of an Irishman and a sportsman in his fifteen couple of huge Kerry “beagles,” and I think it would have been a hard blow to him if luck had been denied us that day. But it turned out to be a red letter day; I think we enjoyed having it so even more for the intense satisfaction it gave our enthusiastic host than for the sport intrinsically, which was of the very best and a revelation to us, who had not before followed a strong South Irish hare.
A Plan to Modify England’s Hunting Act
With Prime Minister David Cameron now leading a majority government, pro-hunting Conservatives are looking to him to make good on his pledge to bring a free vote to the floor in Parliament to repeal the despised Hunting Act of 2002. Despite his majority, however, Cameron is loath to risk a free vote. Too many members of his own party, not to mention the Liberal opposition, have pledged to oppose him on the issue. But the natives are restless, and he must do something. A potential solution has been announced that would, rather than produce a protracted battle for repeal, require only a statutory change in the existing law. This approach would involve only ninety minutes of debate as opposed to weeks. The proposal, if passed, will make it legal once again to use a full pack—as many hounds as deemed necessary for wildlife management—to flush a fox to a gun, rather than the current limit of only two hounds. This, pro-hunters will argue, will help farmers who need predation control and will also help sick and mangy foxes to a speedier and kinder demise. Such a change will also bring the English Hunting Act more in line with Scottish law, thus rendering the plan less objectionable to members of the Scottish National Party than would an outright attempt to reverse the Act. Cameron’s plan is to put the idea to the Conservative party this week. If approved, the statutory instrument could be debated in Parliament as early as next week. Click for more details in Melissa Kite’s article in The Spectator. Posted July 8, 2015
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Ten Years of the Hunting Ban in England
Liz Callar photoIt’s been ten years now since England’s Hunting Act of 2004 was enacted by the Labour government, and neither side is satisfied, says Stephen Moss in The Guardian.
To give the briefest of recaps, here’s what the law allows. Two hounds may be used to flush a fox to a gun; a pack of hounds may be used to flush a fox to a bird of prey; and/or a pack of hounds may follow a drag.
Most hunts in England and Wales opt for the drag. The problem comes when hounds find the line of a live fox and switch from the drag. At that point, huntsman and staff are supposed to stop hounds. The huntsman says, Easier said than done. The hunt monitor with his video cam rolling says, Not only did you fail to try to stop hounds, you even encouraged your hounds! There’s the rub, and there’s the basis of most of the prosecutions in court. In the end, it all depends on the persuasiveness of the evidence.
Tony Blair, prime minister at the time of the bill’s passage, later wrote that his support of the legislation was a mistake. When David Cameron, a foxhunter himself, became prime minister, he promised a free vote in Parliament aimed at reversing the ban. However, he has not been able to get enough support within his own government’s coalition to give him the confidence to push for such a vote.
The Foxes of England
Greyhound Fox / Courtesy New York Public LibraryFoxhunting Life reader Janet Clarke asks, “I was told a long time ago that there are different types of foxes in the UK. Is this true?”
We consulted Nigel Peel, MFH and huntsman of the North Cotswold Foxhounds, and Martin Scott, ex-MFH of the Vale of the White Horse. Both men are highly regarded foxhound breeders and judges of foxhounds in England and serve as members of FHL’s Panel of Experts. Their answers were not only surprising, but it appears that the story may be yet unfolding.
The Fell Foxes of Dove Crag
Dove Crag in the rugged Lake District of Cumbria, England
A sheep trod wove its way up the steep fell side, gaining height with an ease unmatched by any route a human could devise. Following it and climbing all the time I skirted small outcrops of rock, crossed a stream full of melt-snow water at the best point to do so, and finally arrived on the ridge. Stopping to catch my breath, for although the route to a sheep would have been easy this human was very unfit, I gazed at the view in front of me. My horizon was filled with snow covered peaks under a bright blue sky. Warm sunlight bathed the ridge and gave a small crag to my left a sharpness normally unseen.
The Coniston foxhounds had disappeared to god knows where, and had been gone for some time. I’d watched them climb the fell side I now stood on. It had been a beautiful sight as they climbed, in a line, like as someone put it “a hound trail.” Their music had carried down the valley, growing fainter as they crested the ridge and then as they dropped into the next valley it disappeared altogether, leaving an eerie silence.
