Government ‘Committed’ To Banning Trail Hunting
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on the BBC.
This is the sub heading.
The government has committed to a trail hunting ban as hunts gather across the UK for traditional Boxing Day meets.
These three paragraphs introduce the article.
Trail hunting – a practice where a scent is laid out for the hunt to follow – was introduced as a “cruelty free” replacement for fox hunting, banned by Labour in 2004.
Animal rights campaigners have urged the government to deliver on its manifesto promise to ban trail hunting.
The Countryside Alliance, which represents hunters, has criticised the decision, and said it would be “extraordinary” for Labour to focus on the ban given the poor state of its relations with rural communities.
Hunting of all forms and that includes shooting and angling is not a simple black-and-white issue and it supports the employment of large numbers of people.
So if you ban hunting, where do you stop?
Some at the extreme, would ban all sports involving animals and make their eating and use for clothing and other products illegal.
Blair on Fox Hunting
This is in the Guardian’s report on Tony Blair’s new book.
He regrets the hunting sort-of ban, incidentally. He hadn’t understood how important it was to many people. Careless Tony; he should have known. But banning hunting is a class issue of great totemic importance for parts of the Labour tribe and he went along with it. Typical Tony in his early years: inexperienced, ill-read and eager to please.
In other words he didn’t let the truth get in the wayof his gut feelings. How many other decisions he took would have been different, if he’d properly researched the subject and also listened to those with alternative views?
The Car Park at the End of the World
Or should I say the end of Suffolk?
To many it would be an odd place to go for a walk. But the beach is pleasantly part-sand, you have lot of birds, including kittiwakes nesting on the rigs, interesting plants and protection from the wind because of the dunes. There is also a nice cafe and toilets.
Who would have expected it all, in the shadow of two nuclear power stations?
In the 1980s, I went over Sizewell A, which is the square station in the front. It is a Magnox station, was built in the 1960s and will soon be completely decommisioned. To plan their annual shutdown, they had one of the best planning systems, I have ever seen. It was a long white perspex wall, where the critical path network was drawn and updated. Different colours meant different things and through the months before the shutdown, all information was added in the correct place. Like everything I saw on that visit, it was all very professional.
I must relate a hunting story about Sizewell. We were hunting from Knodishall Butchers Arms and were about a couple of kilometres from the sea with Sizewell A in the distance. You might think that we were all against the station with its environmental implications. But being on the whole practical people we realised that you have to get electricity from somewhere and that the plant was a large local employer in an area of the country, that had suffered large job losses with the closure of Garretts of Leiston. But what really annoyed us, was the fact that the local farmer had grubbed out all of the trees and hedges. It was like riding in a lifeless desert.
I feel that we must build more nuclear power stations, but perhaps more importantly, we should be more economical with our energy use. Incidentally, as Sizewell is well connected to the electricity grid, from works we saw yesterday, it is being used as a ditribution point for the electricity generated by offshore wind farms. But I for one would not mind seeing Sizewell C and possibly D added to the Suffolk coast
The Kettleburgh Chequers
Yesterday, we went for a trip to East Suffolk, an area I know well, as I used to live at Debach. It was also an area, in which I followed hounds for seventeen seasons with The Easton Harriers. If you want to read more about those days in the 1970s and 1980s, read Tony Harvey’s book, Not a Penny in the Post. Hunting in that part of Suffolk, was as much about the community as it was about the hunting. Everybody, and I do mean everybody was totally welcome. It has to said that in those yeas, I learned more about the countryside, famring and wildlife, than at any other time in my life.
We passed the Kettleburgh Chequers.
The Kettleburgh Chequers
On the 10th of February in 1981, we held a gentlemen’s day in this pub to raise money for hunt funds. We met at the Kettleburgh Chequers at eleven and started hunting at about three, after quite a few drinks. C had dropped me and my horse at the meet and in the end, I hacked home to Debach, so there was no danger of drinking and driving. But when you hunted, it wasn’t always like that, but I can’t ever remember anyone getting into trouble, except from falling off a horse.
That day for a bet before hunting, Jimmy Wickham, the kennel-huntsman, actually brought the hounds into the bar.
As Tony says in the book, it wasn’t the best days hunting, but after a meal at Snape in the evening, it will be one of those days I’ll always remember.
For those who criticise hunting remember this. The hunts in those days used to collect and often humanely destroy all those animals that had died or needed to be put down in the countryside. We all come to our time in the end.
I always remember Tony Harvey once saying after a day, when we had hunted three packs of hare hounds in one day; harriers on horseback before breakfast, bassets in the morning on foot and beagles, again on foot, in the afternoon, the following. “We’ve had a very good day, but we haven’t caught anything. Ask a shooting man, if he’s had a good day, when he hasn’t shot anything.” That is the difference between hunting and shooting. I am passionately anti-anything to do with guns, as they kill people. It needs skill and in some cases courage to ride to hounds.
The last epitaph on hunting, is that on my stud since the hunting ban, I never see or even smell a fox. The ban has done nothing for the fox. All sorts of things can be postulated, but remember our foxes are rabies free, so have they been trapped by those who don’t value the countryside for their fur. I don’t know, but they have all disappeared. Or perhaps they’ve all gone to London, where they are a true menace.
Note that in Suffolk, you always name a pub with both the village and it’s actual name. This avoids mistakes, as there are numerous White Horses for example.
Hares in the Snow
I have about forty hectares of land by the house and today, I could see how many hares there were.
Hares in the Snow
Note the two brown piles are not hares! They are molehills.
These tracks though were everywhere and as we had had snow last night, these were just the tracks of a single day.
To me, the hare is the most interesting of all of the animals that inhabit our countryside. I say that too with a lot of respect, as for seventeen seasons I hunted with the Easton Harriers in East Suffolk. You get entwined with them and those who are anti-hunting will never understand the respect hunters show.
The snow reminded me of one day at Tannington, where the weather was so cold, that we hunted hounds on foot. Tony Harvey was at one end of an immense field and Jimmy Wickham was at the other with the hounds working between them. It was a memorable day.
There was also the day when I was privileged to follow three packs of hare hounds in one day. Few have done that.
It was at Tannington again, and we started with our own harriers before an alcoholic breakfast. We caught nothing. I remember, I hunted one of my son’s ponies called Bluebell. She was a mare and I always found them a better mount for my skills. In later years, I used to hunt a thoughbred mare called Censella and she never dropped me. But could she go if you asked her!
In the morning it was hunting bassets on foot. It is strenuous work, even if bassets are slow. But once on a hare, they never give up and just keep going. Well some do. My solitary example might follow a scent for twenty metres or so and then it’s time for a snooze or the next meal. She’s never caught anything and we didn’t on that day either with the bassets.
Another alcoholic meal was followed by beagles in the afternoon. Now these were small and angelic beagles, but they were serious too. After perhaps two hours nothing had been caught, although we had seen a few hares.
The day finished with a formal dinner. Tony had suggested that we all go ratting round the stackyard to finish it off, but it was assumed he was joking.
One thing that sums up the day is Tony asking, if we had all had a good day. He got a resounding yes. He then said that is the difference between hunting and shooting and asked how someone would feel if they had gone shooting and hadn’t killed anything!
The Anonymous Widower 