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My Gran used to hunt when she was younger, her Father was master of the Local Hunt. I asked her about it and she said she stopped doing in her early twenties.
She loved riding horses but she thought hunting to be cruel.
As she described it; a load of very average riders got drunk and then rode horses beyond their capabilities. Huntsman would often injure horses trying to make impossible jumps or just riding horses into the ground.
She didn't like the fact that the hunt was essentially the landlords charging about on the land populated but the tenants. It was an imposition of the class structure reminding the tenant families that the landlord and his chums could charge through the land you worked or even your garden with a load of horses and a pack of hounds whenever they liked.
She said I'd you wanted to kill a fox, wait by a chicken coop with a shotgun.
So as she put it; cruel to horses, cruel to people, cruel to foxes.
I think it's the middle point that modern fox hunters miss, charging about like you own the place because you are the highest authority on the land...making it illegal reminds the hunters that those days are gone. -
It will be interesting to see if making hunting with hounds politically weaponised will benefit the left or the right. Will it benefit Corbyn to campaign on the message that May will bring back hunting, or would it backfire, or would many just see it as a non-issue? If hunting is really only supported by a few toffs, as seems to be the consensus on here, it would probably not help May to win any working class votes.
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I think it would back fire on Labour to use this. The uproar against the hunt ban wasn't by people who support hunting, many were opposed to it but still marched against the ban. The rallying cry that got them to march was "the interference of the liberal urban elite" with the way people in the countryside live. Most huntsmen live in city's so it was not a march defending their right to lord it over farmers but a marker to stop a creep of liberal ideas being imposed on rural people. The literature of the day suggested next on the list was shooting, fishing and even dairy farming. Using the repeal of the ban as a political weapon will reignite those fears and reinforce the view that the modern labour party is urban liberalism intent on telling people how they should live. Hunting is cruel and has no place anywhere but people like that it is something for people to focus on while they happily go about their own activity unmolested.
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Isn't it totally bizarre that "liberalism" can now be interpreted as telling people what they can't do.
I agree with your analysis of the opposition. I think most people didn't care one way or the other about fox hunting, but a substantial subset of that group were concerned that the ban was a reduction of people's liberty without any strong reasoning behind it.
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Whilst deliberate hunting is banned, packs of dogs can “flush” – chase out of cover – foxes as long as the intention is to shoot the fox once it emerges. “Accidental” killing of the fox by hounds is also permitted.
http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/sarah-moyes-snp-must-reopen-total-fox-hunting-ban-debate-1-4420807
seriously, it's fucked up. In Scotland why don't they just reintroduce wolves.
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Wolves hunting fox hunters would be awesome.
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As long as the wolves intended to shoot the hunters kinda, at some point, before they tore them apart maybe.
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And sharks, with laser beams on their heads.
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It will be interesting to see if making hunting with hounds politically weaponised will benefit the left or the right. Will it benefit Corbyn to campaign on the message that May will bring back hunting, or would it backfire, or would many just see it as a non-issue? If hunting is really only supported by a few toffs, as seems to be the consensus on here, it would probably not help May to win any working class votes.
I believe May could get anything through at the moment as long as she keeps pointing at Forrins and the EU
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He's gone for it. In general I don't think people care enough for it to do him any good.
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Hunting will gradually die as the urban sprawl extends, traffic increases and land ownership changes. The amalgamation of many hunts is less to do with any faux ban than a way to combat those issues (as well as rising costs)
The idea that a bunch of common latte swilling fixie riding web designers have a clue about the countryside is as valid as Etonians trying to run an industrial nation, wait a minute....
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The campaign to ban hunting was run with prejudice and classist attitudes as a significant component, as @ffm said. If you actually go on a hunt, it is not just made of 'filthy Etonians' and 'cunts'. It's a cross section of country society with a lot of ordinary people from all strands of country life participating. To keep blatting on about posh cunts is not an argument against hunting, it's just prejudice.
I appreciate that the general tone is very anti-hunting, but there are a number of arguments for it. Firstly, hunting with dogs means that the faster healthier foxes get away, whilst sick ones are culled, ensuring a healthier fox population. This is not a distinction that other forms of control can offer. Secondly, shooting requires trained marksmen and there aren't enough of them. As a result, people without the requesite skills try and shoot the foxes and do a bad job of it, leading to much more pain and suffering than if they were hunted (it's a very quick death). Finally, hunts themselves do a huge amount to maintain the countryside and promote biodiversity.Having said all of this, those people that breed foxes to kill them/throw cubs to the hounds etc ARE complete cunts, and deserve the same fate as those cubs.
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Fox hunting and other country matters
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@William.
Chester but Cheshire is so wonderfully flat for riding bikes everywhere!