Why is it that across the entire spectrum of classes, pockets and professions of people in this country there are those that support, and those that oppose hunting?
Growing up with a farming background the realities of life, real life, are made rather obious. We all know that farmers today recieve precious little for their efforts. The average farm income is, I understand, less than £8000 per year. Farmers work 70-80 hours per week, and livestock farmers put all their waking effort into looking after thier animals. Let no-one try to say that they don't care about their stock!! If they were in it for the money, then, well... they wouldn't be in farming, would they???? Any human being that eats meat accepts the fact that animals must die for our benefit. And seeing that vegetarians proove meat isn't necessary, then animals also die for our non-essential enjoyment. If anyone has an argument with that fact then they are clearly misguided! Unless they are into fried roadkill!!! Farmers spend their lives caring for, feeding and cleaning, their stock in order to have them killed to feed the nation. To provide the enjoyment of meat withut the need for Jo Public to even look at a knife, bolt-gun, or stun-gun. "We are proud to supply your food" read the banners at the countryside march. Proud they are indeed, and they have precious little time for time wasters. ...Bring on hunting. Without farmers' consent hunting could not exist in this country. Horses damage ground with their heavy feet, yet a very vast majority of farmers welcome hunting on their land. Why? Because it works!! Pure and simple - no timewasters please! I have shot several foxes, always at close range and with a a shotgun from the landrover. The fox is spotted, chased, and when we get close enough i.e. 10-20 yards, it is shot. Once seen, they rarely get away. Yet lambs still get taken by foxes, and chickens, geese, etc. Why? Because the foxes that we see out lamping are fully grown and fit - the ones that the hunts can't catch. These healthy foxes don't bother with lambs or chickens because they can catch their own wild prey, which is what they're up to when we shoot them. Old, sick and wounded foxes are rarely seen while lamping, but they are seen around stock. Hounds can catch these troublesome foxes because they are slower - the very reason why they prey on livestock. Hunting with hounds is an expression that is taken too seriously, it should read 'With Hunting Hounds' - because it is they who are hunting. All the chaps in red coats do is tell them where to start looking, and try their best to keep them from where they shouldn't go!! Of course the job of a huntsman is a little more complex than that, but essentially the hounds just follow their noses. As for the chaps in black, and the ladies in blue, and the children in rat-catchers coats, all they do is watch the redcoats watch the hounds. Tales of hunts chasing foxes for hours only to have the fox escape are true, but sound misleading when you understand why. The hounds are following the sent of a fox for a fair period of time. The fox can easily be 30 minutes hunting away from the outset - then as the hounds approch where the fox has been ambling about for that time, it puts a spurt on and runs like hell. If that fox is old, wounded or sick - it can't run as fast as the hounds, and they will catch it. If it is a healthy fox it will run faster than the hounds, get a good distance away, and then stop and rest. It will usually double back and then go under ground - hunting over, bring on the terriers (if the farmer requests). Hunt moves on elsewhere. A healthy fox has to make a real error to get caught above ground. Fox hounds are about five times the weight of foxes. If you were a lead foxhound, ahead of the pack, and at the heels of a fox - running at life-or-death speed, how would you stop it? The neck, or spine is the only place to go for. You can't get your teeth into anywhere/anything else. Imagine a preditor five times your size biting you on the neck while you were running at top speed - you're not going to last long are you?? Even with a shotgun at ten yards you can't guarantee that rapid a kill. Lucky for the fox that there's a second barrel ready in a second or so if the first one only manages to 'clip' it. It is, I'm afraid, a harsh reality. A shotgun can be lightening quick..or not. A long range bullet..well we've all had our unlucky shots with rifles, haven't we? My friends have had quite a bit of luck with snares - but there's never much need for shooting them, they usually save them the job and choke themselves. I don't think the answer would be to ban the killing of foxes - after all if only an insignificantt 16,000 are killed by hunts then the total number killed must be huge. And without that, overpopulation on such a scale would be devastating for wildlife, not to mention foxes. And if the illegal killing of foxes were the farmer's only method - then forget visible, traceable hounds, snares and shooting - its time to bring on the tons and tons of poison and gas. Far more difficult to trace, not too much fun for the badgers, deer and birds life that get caught up in the frey. I'll continue to shoot foxes to protect stock so that all you meat eaters out there can enjoy finest westcountry lamb, beef and poultry (on sale in all good supermarkets), even though 90% of those foxes are probably fit, healthy and pose no threat to livestock. I'm afraid that prevention is better than cure. And my friends better keep on with the wires, because - well, you never know - one of the ones they catch might be a lamb predator. But, if you don't mind - I'd like to continue to let my local hunt come and try to catch the troublesome foxes. After all, it provides local emplyment, and is a free service to farmers. At lambing time we're all too knackered and busy to be out lamping, and who wants to walk around checking snares and traps after being up all night with 30 ewes all deciding to lamb at once. Apparantly, according to the antis, if the costs are averaged out across the country, it costs those "rich toffs" £1000 per fox that they kill. What a wonderful round sum. It would be nice if the public realised that that £1000 is £1000 of the hunters' own money going into local businesses - helping to keep the last few of us in the countryside. Unfortunately, for every fox I kill, I only put about 10p into the local economy - cartridges aren't all that expensive, and landrover diesol is sold at near cost price - so the garages don't benefit!! Compare that to the squillions of pounds of public money that the government paid out during the Foot and Mouth disaster. But where are the so-called toffs? When I go hunting I see farmers and their daughters on horse back, and some local tradesmen. The redcoats look awefully posh, but the people in them are often farmers too. And when you consider that the average UK woman spends £500 per year on clothes that she will never wear (according to a TV programme I saw yesterday), the costs of hunting seem to deminish. Then there are the 'hunting townies' who are countrymen at heart - looking to escape the rat-race for a peacefull bit of riding throught the parishes and moors. Of course it does cost a lot of money to own and keep horses - but they can be hired and ridden out hunting for the day for a little more than the cost of a score of heroin or cocaine. Unfortunately, apart from the trouble caused by the antis, hunting doesn't provide as much work for the local constabulary as these drugs. Oh well, you can't have it all ways. Why go hunting? Riding out in the driving rain and cold weather, having to look after hounds all year round, phone around for permission, paperwork, bills, responsibilities, the threat of being made a criminal - all to try and rid some other bugger of his foxes, when a shot-gun in your cupboard could bag you far more..... Everyone who goes hunting has a different reason. Farmers allow it on their land because there's a chance that a troublesome fox will be killed, if not killed then chased off to someone else's land for them to deal with. And its free. The riders, contrary to popular belief, don't get to use their own God-given predatory skills and bare hands, to bag themselves a fox - all they get to do is ride across private land and watch some fast dogs follow their noses and look for often faster foxes. If they really wanted blood, then they could pay me to take them out lamping - there's a chase and everything. Of course, anyone who enjoys natural history on TV, knows that watching a predator is very interesting viewing. With hunting, you can watch via a horse to be sure of a good view - or hedge your bets with a motor vehicle, or trusty old feet. Why has hunting survived for so long? Becuase it provides a valuable service to the countryside, and helps to maintain a healthy fox population in the absence on natural predators. Farmers and country people have been managing this island of ours for centuries. Up until the demand for mass production of food, there was little damage done - farmers cannot be blamed from doing what the growing population have demanded of them. If farmers had it their way then there would be many more, smaller farms, without entensive mechanical and chemical processes that the hungry population have recently been demanding of them. Hunting is one survivor of that less intensive time, when it wasn't all about numbers and outputs. Just like the few other survivors - its all about quality and not quantity. Hunting with hounds is a sport, the people are there to watch the hounds hunt the fox. You can't say that the people are ganging up on the fox - they have no affect on it at all. As far as the fox is concerned, only the hounds are a problem - and a greater number of hounds only increases the chances of finding a scent, not catching the fox after finding it. The fittest, fastest hound will always have the advantage - but maybe not the best nose. The future is in the nation's hands. Nobody who has an opinion on hunting can really be swayed - those who don't can go either way if all they have is an earful from either side of the debate. The only way to know about hunting is to go about hunting. Go and watch, that's all anybody is doing at a hunt - watching. That's what it is about. The death of an animal can be a strange thing to see for the first time - farmers, the producers of your meat - have to live with it. Most hunters don't see it. This is where it gets difficult. To eat meat is to accept that animals must die for our benefit... For a fox, there are several ways to die... Disease, starvation due to old age, to be caught in a snare and choke, to be shot, to be poisoned, to be gassed, to be run over, to bit bitten on the back of the neck by a hound that is five times your size. Of these, there is one that doesn't pose the risk of a lingering death.
Isaac P, Smallville, Cornwall | 
