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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS
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MONTH: JAN-FEB 06
Non-enforcement erodes U.K. pack hunting ban
Red fox. (Todd Lawton/Quagga)
LONDON––Almost a year after the Hunting Act banned most forms of hunting with dogs in England and Wales, effective on February 19, 2005, pack hunting participation on Boxing Day was reportedly undiminished.
As many as 250,000 people either rode to hounds or followed the dogs on foot on December 26, 2005, the traditional peak of the British pack hunting season.
“Far from consigning hunting to history,” Times of London countryside editor Valerie Elliot claimed, “thousands more are in the saddle or on foot in pursuit of a fox scent, sometimes accidentally hunting real foxes.”
Entering 2006, there were still 317 active hunt clubs in Britain, including 184 that hunt foxes and 100 that hunt hares. The Aldenham Harriers, of South Hertfordshire, disbanded in mid-January, but hunting participation overall is up an average of 33%, asserted Elliot.
“Police have been told not to foil illegal fox hunts because of health and safety regulations,” Daily Telegraph political editor Melissa Kite disclosed in June 2005, after obtaining a 30-page set of enforcement instructions under the Freedom of Information Act.
“Guidance drawn up by police chiefs instructs officers to take the most cautious approach when investigating reports of illegal hunts for fear that they might injure themselves. They have been told not to go near hounds or horses and not to confiscate dead animals as evidence in case of injury or infection,” Kite continued.
“Officers are told to carry out risk assessments before embarking on an investigation; to ask farmers for permission to go on their land; and not to use helicopters in case they ‘cause alarm to horses,’” Kite added.
Through October 2005, according to the League Against Cruel Sports, volunteer hunt monitors documented 157 violations of the hunting ban by 79 hunt clubs, without obtaining any police prosecutions.
International Fund for Animal Welfare volunteer Kevin Hill, 55, a hunt monitor for 15 years who trains others to safely and legally document hunts, was allegedly beaten by stag hunters at Exmoor on October 27, 2005 while videotaping their activities. No suspects were charged.
The incident occurred nine days after Essex Union huntmaster Simon Upton, 40, was fined £1,555 for whipping protesters Tim Burn, 39, and Melissa Marr, 24, along with an unidentified man, while riding at one of the last legal fox hunts on February 9, 2005.
Discovering that the Hunting Act is not being enforced and that activist efforts to document violations are not being supported has encouraged open defiance, charged the League Against Cruel Sports.
“In February, hunts pretended to be drag hunting. Then they went out with two dogs, pretending to be flushing to guns. Now they have the full pack and look as though they are fox hunting,” League Against Cruel Sports representative Paul Tillsley told Owen Bowcott of The Guardian in November 2005. Stag hunting with dogs is also up, Tillsley said.
Fox hunting continues through exemptions in the pack hunting ban that allow hunters to use up to two dogs to flush a fox or other quarry toward a gunner. Hunts may also unleash a full pack of hounds in pursuit of a scent trail, or just for exercise.
“Other oddities include that rabbits and squirrels can be hunted by packs, but hares cannot,” explained Terry Kirby, chief reporter for The Independent. “The sole prosecution,” Kirby said, “has been against a man in Merseyside, Lancashire, who was accused of poaching rabbits.”
The Vine & Craven Hunt in October 2005 encouraged Freddy Tett, 12, Archie Rutland, 13, and Tom Small, 12, to form the Wormstall Rabbit Hounds Hunt. “Twenty children aged between 4 and 14 used six dogs and killed four rabbits” at their first meet, said The Times of London.
“Some hunts have been advised that several pairs of hounds can be used in different parts of the same field in the process of flushing a mammal toward a gun,” wrote Bowcott. “A number of hunts admit they have had ‘accidents’ when hounds out exercising or trail hunting came across a fox.”
Hunters are also allowed to use up to two dogs at a time to flush out prey for falconry. About 50 hunt clubs have reportedly acquired falcons as a pretext for pack hunting.
Moretonhampstead residents Paula McAlindon and Michael Mosforth alleged that members of the South Devon Hunt allowed hounds to kill a fox on their property on Christmas Eve. “We were flushing with a pack of hounds to a bird of prey and trail hunting,” responded South Devon huntmaster Ian Pease to the BBC.
A bird of prey does not actually have to be a skilled hunter to provide a pretext for pack hunting: the pack hunters can claim to be training the bird.
These dogs won’t hunt: lurchers rescued by the People’s Animal Welfare Society,
of Sallins, County Kildare, Ireland. (Kim Bartlett)
Enforcement of the pack hunting ban is further complicated, Bowcott explained, because while “The act permits the police to enter private land to seize items connected with illegal hunting, officers do not have an automatic right to access merely to watch or monitor a hunt.
“There have been no convictions of [fox] hunt officials or followers since the law came into force,” Bowcott continued. “A private prosecution brought by the League Against Cruel Sports against Exmoor Foxhounds huntmaster Tony Wright is to be heard in Barnstaple, Devon,” in early 2006. The original trial date was set for January 16. Wright allegedly illegally hunted with hounds on April 29, 2005. The private prosecution was initiated after police failed to lay charges, based on videotaped evidence.
Scotland banned pack hunting three years earlier, under the Protection of Wild Mammals Act of 2002, but enforcement of the Scottish law has also been weak. The first person charged with violating the act, Buccleuch Foxhounds master Trevor Adams, was acquitted in December 2004, but faces new charges, according to the BBC, “in relation to an incident on October 10 at a farm near Kelso. The Buccleuch hounds are alleged to have been seen pursuing a fox across a field before he was killed.”
Hare coursing
The British and Scottish pack hunting bans also apply to hare coursing, which was already somewhat more restricted than fox hunting. British and Scottish police in spring 2005 cracked down somewhat on illegal coursing with investigations called Operation Dornier and Operation Hartley, respectively.
Claiming success, Cambridgeshire police inspector Richard Lowings told the BBC that reports of illegal coursing fell from 150 in March 2004 to just 9 in March 2005.
Scottish police and the Scottish SPCA in April 2005 arrested five coursers at the Fasque shooting estate in Fettercairn.
Irish hunt clubs have made an effort to attract British participation––and money–– but so far appear to have drawn relatively few fox hunters, at least partly because the British ban is so weakly enforced. Sixteen British coursers, however, made up half the field at the January 14, 2006 Seamus Hughes Inter-national hare-coursing meet in Sevenhouses, Kilkenny, after the organizers made a point of inviting former competitors for the Waterloo Cup. The Waterloo Cup coursing competition, held annually at Alcar near Liverpool since 1836, was considered the top coursing event in the world.
British hare-coursing was usually done with unmuzzled dogs in open country. Ireland currently has 53 coursing clubs whose dogs chase hares in open country, and 76 who chase hares in enclosures, among 236 total pack hunts.
Coursing is not outlawed in Northern Ireland, but has been suspended due to a decline in the hare population, causing the two active Northern Irish coursing clubs to relocate their meets to the Irish Republic.
“Irish authorities have reacted to protests by imposing conditions on coursing, such as the 1993 muzzling of dogs and a ban on the use of pregnant or sick hares. There is no sign, however, that Ireland will outlaw it,” wrote David McKittrick, Ireland correspondent for The Independent.
Muzzling does not save hares, Irish Council Against Blood Sports campaign director Aideen Yourell told McKittrick, as the hares still “are battered and mauled into the ground. Any hare who gets a battering is likely to die,” Yourell said. “They’re just dying in a different way.”
“Now we see a sort of blood sports tourism moving to the Republic. I think it’s a great shame for a civilized country to be the last bastion for a blood sport,” League Against Cruel Sports chief excutive Doug Batchelor told the BBC.
The invasion of Ireland by even a token few British hunters has inflamed the small but fast-growing Irish anti-hunting movement.
Horse breeder Mick Farrell, of Pleberstown, Thomastown, fired two shotgun blasts into the air on St. Stephen’s Day 2006 to deter the approach of the Kilkenny Hunt. “They called off their dogs but over an hour later some of the hunting animals were still in the vicinity. I have no intention of hurting anyone,” Farrell told Jim Rhatigan of the Kilkenny Voice, “but I had no choice but to protect the horses that are my living.”
A tactical divide opened on January 8 at Jenkinstown Woods, Kilkenny, between British-influenced hunt saboteurs and rural residents who disapprove of both hunting and protest methods that likewise disturb the peace.
Jenkinstown horse keeper Jenny Matthews first organized and then tried unsuccessfully to halt a January 8 vigil against a killing contest held for more than 25 years by the Jenkinstown Gun Club. Claiming record participation in 2006, the contest targets foxes, squirrels, crows, and magpies.
Matthews was incensed in 2005, reported Mary Cody of the Kilkenny People, when gunfire spooked her five horses.
“I had planned to hold a peaceful and silent protest against the cruelty of the shoot, and to highlight the disruption and public safety hazard it causes, “ Jennifer Matthews told Dara Defaoite of the Kilkenny Voice.
About 30 demonstrators turned out, but approximately half were contingents from Cork and Dublin who thwarted Matthews’ plan, alleged Jenkinstown Gun Club secretary Canice Brennan, when they “went into the woods in small groups and set off a huge siren. The noise frightened the birds and animals and upset sheep and cattle,” Brennan said. “They talk about looking after wildlife,” she added, “and yet they scared the living daylights out of the locals. It seems to defeat their purpose,” and in Jenkinstown worked to the hunters’ political advantage.