opinion/foxhunting

Foxhunting

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I have limited myself here to talking about foxhunting in its traditional sense, ie hunting with hounds. I am aware that I haven't touched on deer hunting, for example. There's only so much one can sensibly cover at one go. I would suspect that, from what follows, my views on other forms of hunting will be quite evident.

I don't understand the debate about foxhunting. I don't understand quite why we're still having the debate. Foxhunting is a barbaric pastime, grown men and horses and hounds hurtling round the countryside with the aim of tracking down a fox, chasing it till it's exhausted and then killing it and smearing the blood onto the faces of the novices. If we'd never had foxhunting in this country, and someone proposed it, the outcry would be massive. So why the hell are we still talking about it? Why don't we just ban it, as any civilised society should, and get on with our lives?

The traditional answer, of course, is that foxes are vermin and have to be controlled. Now, I don't object to that statement, but I don't quite see how it leads to hunting them the way some people do. Sure, foxes kill chickens and sheep, and maybe their numbers do have to be controlled in some areas. But hunting with hounds must be the most inefficient method of controlling vermin that has ever been invented. How many men, horses and dogs does it need to track down one single fox? Wouldn't three men and three rifles do a better job? Or even, three men sitting down and thinking about more humane, sensible ways of either killing foxes, or protecting their livestock in other ways?

It has always seemed odd to me that anyone would suggest that hunting is necessary to control foxes. After all, each hunt kills at most one fox each time. I have no idea how many hunts take place each year in any given area, but I would be very surprised if the practice made a severe dent in the fox population. Farmers still kill foxes in other ways, too. Hunting can at best only be the tip of the iceberg, if the problem is as serious as its proponents suggest. Besides, they have foxes on the continent, in Germany and France - and you don't hear the natives there, not even in the countryside, clamouring for the introduction of hunting with hounds to assist them in their uneven struggle against the fox population.

There again, I have heard it said that hunting is actually the kindest method of controlling foxes. The healthy animals escape, only the weak are caught; and there is no danger of maiming, as there might be with shooting, and subsequent infection and the spread of disease. Death is quick and painless. Of course one shouldn't anthropomorphise, and it isn't possible to know what the fox really thinks, whether it really is in fear of its life when it runs. But - kind? Really? The fox certainly doesn't think, "hey, here are some friendly doggies, let's come out and play", does it? Besides, if this was really why people wanted to carry on hunting, you'd expect something rather more positive from them, wouldn't you - campaigns against farmers killing foxes in other ways, massive recruitment drives, many many more hunts, perhaps several on one day with the riders splitting up to ensure that as many foxes as possible can be killed in this humane way, rather than inhumanely by the bullet. And I haven't seen much evidence of that.

Of course, as soon as you say this, you're accused of launching an attack on the traditional British way of life, specifically in the countryside. Leaving aside the fact that most of the huntsmen and women, even if they don't live in the city, probably work there, this is still arrant nonsense. The traditional British way of life. So what would that be, then - women staying at home doing the housework and looking after the children while the husband works and then goes to his club? Women not having the vote? Ducking to test whether or not someone is a witch? Giving the local priest a tenth of all you earn? Feudalism? Slavery? We've done them all at some time or other, and think them rather outmoded now. More to the point for this debate, how about cock fighting and bear baiting? They were both very popular traditional pastimes - together with public hangings - which we have outlawed as a society because we are more civilised and consider them to be barbaric. There were people who defended each of those, too, because they enjoyed them and didn't see the harm in it. But they were wrong. Tradition cannot be defended merely on the grounds that it is tradition; only, at best, that it's harmless. Nobody is attempting to attack the country way of life, only one aspect of it which has no place in civilised society.

Some defenders of the indefensible have even tried to make out that hunting is essential for the well being of the countryside because it results in farmers leaving in hedges they would otherwise have ripped out, so that they can be jumped by the horses, and other such things. To call this disingenuous is to do it too much credit. It is nonsense on stilts. If farmers really leave their hedges there, all neat and tidy, for the Hunt, then that is simply ridiculous. Apart from the fact that the traditional way of farm life involved smaller fields, and more hedgerows - something which obviously was not an important tradition, from the fact that it has largely been discontinued - how much benefit do they expect to gain? How many times per year does a Hunt cross each farmer's land? How many foxes are killed? Over what sort of area? I would have thought that the return is pretty poor, to be honest; hedgerows and old stone walls are good things, I think they look great, but if the farmer is making an economic calculation, as this argument suggests, then I don't understand how he does his figures. If there is really profit to be made from ripping out the hedges, and the only reason he doesn't do so is so that some foxes can be chased over his land, it seems to me that his profit margins must be very tight. How many foxes have to be killed by the Hunt to make it viable, I wonder?

No. It's all so much hogwash. The reason why people go hunting has very little to do with any of the reasons they usually give. They go because they enjoy it. Because they love the thrill of the chase. Very, very few admit this, and they are the only few I have any respect for at all (and even then it's tempered with revulsion). This brutal, barbaric pastime is entered into as a sport. The stomach-churning truth is that these people wouldn't go riding across the countryside like they do if there wasn't the chance of a kill at the end. Suggest drag hunting, and see their reaction. And it has nothing to do with social conscience, and the need to defend livestock, it has to do with bloodlust. Everything else, all those other arguments, are just a smokescreen, a set of excuses which have been built up to defend the indefensible. We could pay the farmers to keep their hedges and stone walls. We could research other methods of controlling the fox population. But we cannot simply go on having this interminable debate about foxhunting and pretending it's a difficult issue. It isn't. It's as easy as the issue of universal suffrage, or slavery. Foxhunting is abhorrent, and it should be banned. No excuses. Do it now.

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Written by Jon Renyard
Last updated 11 August 1999