91 Foxes: Ban Begins to Fail on Day One

Tally ho, the chase goes on
The Telegraph, Feb. 20, 2005
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Numerous police officers accompanied the more than 250 hunts which took place yesterday, the first day that the sport became illegal. Despite the friendly exchanges between officers and huntsmen and women, the presence of the police posed a question: what public good were they trying to uphold?

The question is made particularly pertinent because police resources are stretched to the limit everywhere, and placing hundreds of officers on duty around law-abiding men and women in the middle of the countryside guarantees that those officers are not available for the more urgent tasks that confront them – such as preventing and investigating burglaries, robberies and assaults.

The question of what public good is achieved by banning hunting with dogs is one that those who have made the sport illegal have never been able to answer. Banning hunting will not protect animals: foxes will die more painful, and more lingering, deaths when they are gassed, or when they slowly bleed to death after being shot but not instantly killed. Nature is not beneficent, and the natural life-cycle of rural foxes

Numerous police officers accompanied the more than 250 hunts which took place yesterday, the first day that the sport became illegal. Despite the friendly exchanges between officers and huntsmen and women, the presence of the police posed a question: what public good were they trying to uphold?

The question is made particularly pertinent because police resources are stretched to the limit everywhere, and placing hundreds of officers on duty around law-abiding men and women in the middle of the countryside guarantees that those officers are not available for the more urgent tasks that confront them – such as preventing and investigating burglaries, robberies and assaults.

The question of what public good is achieved by banning hunting with dogs is one that those who have made the sport illegal have never been able to answer. Banning hunting will not protect animals: foxes will die more painful, and more lingering, deaths when they are gassed, or when they slowly bleed to death after being shot but not instantly killed. Nature is not beneficent, and the natural life-cycle of rural foxes, which sees them dying of starvation when they themselves are too old to kill other, smaller animals, does not support the view that hunting produces a uniquely painful death. , which sees them dying of starvation when they themselves are too old to kill other, smaller animals, does not support the view that hunting produces a uniquely painful death. . . .

The essential thing for those who hunt is now to find a legal way to continue their sport and so preserve the infrastructure necessary for its survival. To judge by what happened yesterday, hunters are successfully achieving this feat: 91 foxes were killed, the majority through the legal method of releasing a terrier to flush a fox from its hole, then shooting the fox as it emerged, and throwing the carcass to the hounds. No one could claim that this is kinder to the foxes. When hunting with hounds was legal, the chased fox at least had a sporting chance of getting away; now it is illegal, it has none.

Yesterday, packs of hounds out trail hunting – following the scent of a dead fox laid earlier by huntsmen – picked up the scent of a live fox and gave chase, on occasion catching up with it and killing it. But although observers from the League Against Cruel Sports said such activity was "suspicious", it is not obviously illegal, and there were no arrests. It is difficult to see how a successful prosecution could be brought in such a case, for the hunters cannot be responsible for their hounds' sudden decision to do what comes naturally. No doubt, however, there will soon be a test case to resolve the issue. In the meantime, some form of the chase should continue within the bounds of the law – in the hope that, eventually, a less spiteful Parliament will see sense and repeal the ban.