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HUNTING
Contemporary Review, May, 2000 by Allan Ramsay
As I understand it the case against hunting rests, the issue of cruelty apart, on its incompatibility with the values of an increasingly urban and multicultural public ethos. That there is a degree of subjectivity in such an opinion is undeniable and to allow legislation to be enacted on any such basis, even part, would be extremely dangerous because of the precedent it would set and because of its implications for personal liberty. Leaving aside the debatable claim that a child may be traumatised by being blooded, hunting harms no-one. Its nuisance value and threat to public order and security are a good deal less than those associated with football and are caused primarily by the activities of a minority opposed to hunting. On the other hand, though liberty rather than economics is the key issue, the defenders of hunting are undeniably right in claiming that the effect on local communities of a ban on hunting would be harmful, perhaps disproportionately so in those areas where the current agricultural depr ession is already most severely felt i.e. in the fringe areas of poorer farms and 'unsmart' hunts. Much else of value will be affected, not just the multiplicity of trades and crafts that depend upon hunting for at least part of their livelihood, but a whole nexus of interrelated activities which provide employment and enjoyment, not just for the countryman: the Pony Club, Point to Points, Hunter trials, horse breeding and showing and more besides.
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Above all I would regret the disappearance of the Hunt staff. Hunting with hounds demands great skill and the key to keeping your clientele as a hunt is to provide good sport. There is of course satisfaction over a kill at the end of a good run, and while this is the purpose of hunting there is, for those who take the trouble to study these things, an almost deeper satisfaction to be gained by watching a huntsman at work with his hounds on a difficult day when the prospects of a kill, or even a run, seem negligible. The best of them have a very real understanding of the animal they are hunting. One I remember, as a boy, going back after we had put the hounds in the van at the end of a bitter January day with snow threatening, to where failing light and scent had compelled us to call it a day. It had been a good run and we had hunted the same hare all afternoon. We searched, furrow by furrow with the aid of a torch, the plough where we had left her and eventually found her, lying soaked with sweat and so stif f she could barely move. 'We must tickle her up a bit' he said and picking her up, put her on her legs and kept her going as she hobbled along, pushing her on when she showed signs of stopping. Eventually she loped away, her ears up, her circulation restored. Had he left her, sweat-soaked as she was, she would have stiffened up and the cold would have killed her. That is one example. But I have also known a huntsman call off hounds that seemed certain to kill, and raise his hat in tribute to the stag that had given us a run to remember. 'In that word hunting what a ramification of knowledge is compressed.' But that is not all: it is unfailing courtesy, especially towards the very old and the very young, that makes association with such men such a privilege.
