Boxing Day hunt draws the crowds (From Chard & Ilminster News)

Much is made about the fox being a pest and the damage it does, but again there is no reference to the ill fated Masters of Fox Hounds Association letter to 800 hunt masters warning of the nationwide shortage of foxes to hunt and urging landowners to breed more foxes to solve the problem. This was just before the ban in October 2004. This letter came to light when reporter Grant Hodgson of the Sunday Mirror 3rd Oct 2004; obtained a copy of an email sent in response to it by Countryside Alliance chief Simon Hart and resulted in the MP for Newport, Paul Flynn’s Early Day Motion (EDM 438) in parliament on the subject. So we have conclusive proof that fox hunting is purely for entertainment, with paying guests subscribing to the event rather like theatre goers to a show and has nothing whatsoever to do with pest control.
But what about stag hunting, stags eat grass and bend trees so they are a pest also but here the stag hunts who usually trophy hunt the biggest and best stags use the excuse of scientific research and observation to hunt them down and all this with around 95% (from last months MORI poll) of the population against this type of hunting. Then we have hare coursing and mink hunting. With mink hunts reports showing that they are very few minks left to hunt, so perhaps its back to hunting otters as they are starting to make a recovery and share the same river environments as minks. The hunters switched to mink when otter numbers declined and the otter then became a protected species. Perhaps the reason for hunting otters again will be ‘they are a pest and they are damaging fish stocks’, now does that old argument sound familiar?
I am just waiting for reports from the hunting fraternity informing us about the groups of carnivorous hares that are decimating the lamb population on moorland sheep farms, they may even be reports of sheep farmers being attacked and mauled by these carnivorous hares hunting as packs while they attend their lambs and sheep!
But to return to foxes, they can be a pest for anyone breeding pheasants in such the large numbers as is the current state, with some 40 million game birds reared each year. Here the landowners have to adopt the Cambodian Khmer Rouge approach to the land management for the safety of these birds. This is where every living creature that could possibly affect the pheasants is destroyed on a ‘Cambodian killing fields’ scale. This extermination would include foxes, badgers, ferrets, crows, ravens, magpies, buzzards, owls, harriers and even rats. The methods used would include snaring, shooting, poisoning, gassing, setting dogs on them, clubbing them, trapping them and stamping on them. All this so that a few wealthy ‘guns’ can go out and have a pop at these semi-tame birds and feel like a macho Rambo man, in tune with nature in the raw, well that’s what is will tells his friends down at the local.
Hunting never was about class war, it was about who runs this country and indeed why should a very small but highly vocal minority ride roughshod over the vast majority. They are many good honest valid reason for the introduction of the hunting act and the protection for people who like to live in the countryside and enjoy nature free from the trespass that hunts often partake in, safe in the knowledge that there pets or small livestock will not be killed by a pack of hounds out in full cry of a fox with the huntsman left far behind as the hounds run riot in small hamlets and in rural villages.

The political polarisation that is evolving around hunting will became more to the forefront as we approach the next election with Lord Mancroft, Vice Chairman of the Countryside Alliance and riding chum of Prince Charles, making his thoughts known in this years spring edition of the Hunting Magazine:-
The reason that we shall win the battle to preserve hunting and our way of life for future generations is simple. We will outlast our enemies. We will keep our hounds and horses, keep our wonderful staff, keep our communities together, keep our farmers’ and landowners’ support, and we shall put together the necessary resources, both financial and otherwise, to achieve all of this, and we shall continue to do this until this Government falls. Then there is Simon Hart the Countryside Alliance Chief Executive and now the Conservative candidate for Carmarthen West & South Pembrokeshire, this is further proof of the political polarisation in hunting. We also had at the Peterborough Festival of Hunting in August 2007, David Maclean, the Tory MP for Penrith and the Border, was one of those who addressed the rural crowd. He said the Hunting Act “will be toughened up if Labour wins another election. It is essential that we get political and help Vote-OK to get pro-hunting MPs into Parliament.”

But the overarching reasons that the hunting ban must stay is that the will of the majority must be respected and on the global stage this country; home of Blue Planet, Natural World and many more ground breaking nature programs; needs to play a lead role in the preservation of world wildlife. Japan still hunts dolphins and whales, the Spanish still undertake bull fighting and the Maltese still shoot migrating birds during the spring migration and many poor underdeveloped countries offer ‘canned hunting’ of big cats and bears and even elephants to supplement there income. Even now we hear that in the USA, candidate Senator Sarah Palin supports the hunting of wolves from a helicopter, just so that moose numbers are protected for the enjoyment of man to hunt them in the Alaskan ‘Palin’ managed environment.
How can we as a nation have a voice in all these events if we allow hunting purely for a cruel entertainment event within our own shores?

The hunting act must stay and be properly enforced by the police, it is will of the majority of the people who live and populate this country.