Cheers as the hunt goes out in Market Bosworth, Leicestershire
Some day Britain’s contemptible Labour Government will fall and the petty tyranny of its Hunting Ban, passed via the overthrow of the British Constitution and the usurpation of the authority of both houses of Parliament by a temporary majority in the House of the Commons, will end.
In the meantime, persecution of rural traditions and sport has backfired on the Left, awakening a new political consciousness and determination on the part of their victims. Hunting is stronger than ever in Britain.
Record numbers turned out for the Boxing Day hunts yesterday – adding fresh fuel to criticisms of the ‘ban’ introduced under Labour.
More than 300,000 people converged on the countryside to take part in or cheer on the annual events across England, Wales and Scotland.
Pro-hunt groups used the turnout to renew calls to repeal the controversial 2004 Hunting Act, backed by a petition with thousands of signatures and Conservative plans to end the ban. …
More than 300 hunts, including 194 fox hunts with packs of hounds, were held yesterday, according to the Countryside Alliance. More than 6,000 turned out for one in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire.
The majority used ‘trails’ in which a scent of the quarry is laid down artificially. A dead fox is often used as a reward for hounds at the hunt’s end.
But many took advantage of exemptions, including around 50 which used the ‘bird of prey’ exemption.
This involves a fox being flushed out by hounds into the path of a bird of prey. Many hunts now have their own eagle owl or golden eagle.
Other hunts use an exemption in which two dogs flush out quarry from woodland for shooting. …
A petition launched last week to repeal the ‘confusing, unnecessary and divisive’ Act has already gathered 7,700 signatures, the Countryside Alliance said.
Spokesman Tim Bonner added: ‘We believe that the evidence of the last four years is that the Hunting Act has just failed in every possible term.
‘It does no good at all for animals’ welfare, is a huge cost of police time, and puts innocent people at risk of prison.’
Mr Bonner claimed a low turnout of protesters yesterday was due to them being ‘drowned out’ by supporters in recent years.
The Hunting Act was controversially passed using the Parliament Act, which meant the approval of the House of Lords – which wanted to regulate hunting with dogs – was not needed. …
It came into effect in England and Wales in February 2005 and followed a ban in Scotland introduced two years earlier.
The Act was brought in to outlaw the hunting of foxes, as well as deer, hares and mink with dogs, as well as organised hare coursing.
But opponents have argued against it on grounds including there was no evidence of cruelty and it provided a means of controlling animals numbers.
Tory leader David Cameron has said he will offer a free vote on the matter if he becomes prime minister.
The Telegraph reports that turnout at this year’s opening meets and sales at hunt-oriented businesses are booming, despite the Labour Party’s Hunt Ban.
Part of the hunting boom is attributable to sportsmen’s success in devising ways of working around the Ban, such as a more realistic kind of drag hunting termed “trail hunting,” but resistance to the Ban is also a factor.
As the season gallops into action on Saturday, William Little finds that the post-ban hunting world is booming.
According to the Countryside Alliance, there has been a 10 per cent increase in people who pay full subscription – ie go out every week or more.
This represents an increase of 5,000 people on the number that hunted before the fox ban. On Boxing Day, popular with fair-weather riders, an estimated 30,000 more people take part than before the ban.
There is also anecdotal evidence to suggest a considerable increase in the number of people who follow hunts in cars and on foot. …
Instead of the law causing the demise of hunting and its supporting trades, such as farriers and liveries, the upsurge in newcomers has brought a rural economic boom.
One of the people on the Fox Hunting email list this morning posted a link to this project Gutenberg edition of the Caldecott Picture Book illustrating the old comic song.
But it’s no fun without the music, so here’s Peter Bellamy singing it, too. 2:37 video
The Fox Jumps Over the Parson’s Gate is one of many examples of popular humor exploiting the irresistibility to man or beast, without respect to age, dignity, or sex, of the impulse to follow hounds after the fox.
He was the most stylish horseman across a natural country you would ever see. …
Michael hunted hounds four times a week during long gruelling seasons and maintained a remarkably high standard at a time when the countryside was eroding and hunting was enduring growing political pressures.
Through it all, Michael remained a cool, calm figure riding Thoroughbreds, some off the racecourse, with extraordinary skill in front of hard-riding mounted fields.
Britain’s Government has banned ownership of pistols, rifles, self defense, and hunting. Participants in the Countryside March against the Blair Government’s Hunt Ban wish Britons had defended their liberties before it was too late. Tony Martin, the Norfolk farmer jailed for defending his home, certainly wishes so even more.
One highlight of the day on Sunday occurred late in the proceedings while I was sitting watching the English classes unfold. A Foxhound Club official approached me diffidently, and asked very politely, if I would be kind enough to oblige the Committee by making the award of the Cobbler Hunt Cup.
Of course, I realized some kind of mistake in identity was underway. So I laughed, and advised him that he was undoubtedly confusing me with someone else, as I was not actually a Master of Foxhounds, or anyone prominent in the foxhound breeding community at all.
Clearly, though, it had to have been my all around air of distinction, and my recognizable habit of command (what John Taintor Foote referred to as “the look of eagles”), along with my obvious close physical resemblance to the individual in the above picture that resulted in the gentleman’s perfectly natural confusion.
It did occur to me not long afterward that I could have simply played along, and when he introduced me with the wrong name and organizational affiliation, I could simply have corrected him, attributing to myself the mastership of an imaginary hound pack named for my Pennsylvania farm, and then people in Northern Virginia hunting circles would be laughing over the incident for weeks, but I expect that would have been going a little too far for a joke, and the chap they actually wanted might justifiably feel hard done by.
The wife and I attended today the Old Dominion Hounds’ Joint Meet with the Casanova Hunt (to which numerous other Northern Virginia Hunts –including our own Blue Ridge Hunt– were invited).
The joint meet was a fund raiser undertaken to support efforts to oppose Dominion Power’s plan to build 16-story 500-kv electrical transmission towers through scenic and historic Frederick, Warren, Rappahannock, Culpeper, Fauquier, Prince William and Loudoun counties.
And for what? To bring more electrical power to the District of Columbia to illuminate federal offices whose functionaries are busily employed drafting new regulations and spending more tax dollars.
If the evil federal government wants more power, let ’em build nuclear power plants in the District, or do without and borrow some cardigan sweaters from Jimmy Carter.
Not in my backyard, and not in my neighboring fox hunt’s backyard, say I.
We did not get our fair share of abuse, actually. But we did see some fine riding and some lovely scenery. The Blue Ridge really is blue down there in Fauquier County. And the natives are as charming and hospitable as in the rest of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Richard Newton, Jr., Major W. Austin Wadsworth, MFH, Riding Devilkin, 1915
John J. Head writes, in the Summer 2007 edition of the Social Register, an appreciation of the painting used to illustrate an article noticing the centenary of the Masters of Foxhounds Association of North America.
Often called the ‘Dean of American Foxhunting,’ Major William Austin Wadsworth –heir to a large land-holding in the Genessee Valley of western New York State and an 1870 graduate of Harvard with a degree in chemistry who pursued post-graduate work at the University of Berlin– was deemed by his peers, in 1907, to be suitable presidential material for the newly formed Masters of Foxhounds Association of America.
The American artist Richard Newtown, Jr. captured on canvas the qualities that so appealed to Wadsworth’s fellow masters, insofar as any painting can embody traits of character and breeding, in his 1915 oil portrait. … Amidst soft autumnal colors, under a steel-gray sky, we observe this keen judge of dogs and horses as he surveys the pack of foxhounds he has carefully and scientifically bred to hunt his ancestral territory of 60,000 acres in Geneseo, NY. Members of the Genesee Valley Hunt, which was founded on the centennial of the Revolution, wear unique attire. In a display of pastriotism, traditional scarlet coats are eschewed in favor of dark blue melton coats, buff collars and buff breeches, the colors worn by the Continental Army.
A British artist has eaten chunks of a Corgi dog, the breed favored by Queen Elizabeth II, live on radio to protest against the royal family’s treatment of animals.
Mark McGowan, 37, said he ate “about three bites” of the dog meat, cooked with apples, onions and seasoning, to highlight what he called Prince Philip’s mistreatment of a fox during a hunt by the Queen’s husband in January.
“It was pretty disgusting,” McGowan said of the meal, which he ate while appearing on a London radio station on Tuesday. Yoko Ono, another guest on the show, also tried the meat. …
Corgis are the favored dogs of the queen, who has owned more than 30 of them during her reign.
McGowan’s Corgi had evidently died of natural causes. One likes to hope of some particularly loathesome and communicable disease able to survive cooking.
Let’s hope that Prince Phillip will soon hunt another bold fox, and that the nincompoop McGowan will consequently get to consume some more dead dog.
