Flawed attempt to defend indefensible
I FIND it astonishing in the first decade of the 21st century that there are still correspondents writing to this newspaper in an attempt to justify the killing of foxes for sport, the latest of which is Jonathan Higgins, Points of view, March 25.
But, lacking now any convincing argument for the re-introduction of hunting live quarry with hounds, Mr Higgins is reduced to resorting to the old Windscale versus Sellafield trick to try to pull the wool over our eyes; thus for Mr Higgins hunting a fox until it is exhausted and overtaken by hounds or digging a fox out to kill it after it has escaped hounds and gone to earth is in fact 'wildlife management'; how could we have been so silly as to miss this?
So, in previous decades otters were not in fact killed but were 'managed' to death before that practice was banned and I suppose a Master of Foxhounds in Mr Higgins' view should really be known as a wildlife management operative!
Come off it, Mr Higgins, like the post-war hunting press who abandoned the word 'kill' and adopted instead the word 'dispatched' in hunting accounts, you cannot believe surely that a little tinkering with the words is all it takes.
When I was growing up there was a popular saying 'the truth hurts'. The hunting fraternity simply cannot bear to accept the truth that pre-ban hunting was carried out for sport and your desperate attempts to claim otherwise are laughable, none more so than in your last paragraph where you claim that writer and journalist Rupert Issacson is not, as I described him, Points of view, March 11, a huntsman.
Issacson's book, The Wild Host, is as honest an account of hunting as one is ever likely to read. If you did you will find that Issacson quote: "...started hunting at the age of 13 and has followed a huge variety of both live and drag packs in the UK and USA."
On page 244 of his book Issacson openly and honestly admits that the practice of fox hunting and all that it entails "...is for sport". Yes, the truth hurts doesn't it, Mr Higgins, and so you choose to ignore it and then try to foist your word games on the rest of us in a flawed attempt to defend those sordid hunting practices which have rightfully been banned.
Dr John P Salvatore
Clyst Heath, Exeter
(by email)
4 Comments
by Will, Dorset
Friday, April 03 2009, 4:22PM
“Just because you go hunting, that does not make you a huntsman. You are a hunt follower. There is only one huntsman who hunts hounds! You, Doc?, clearly do not know much about it.
You say that otter hunting was banned. No, it was not. In fact the otter hunts saw a decrease in quarry numbers (due to run off from fields were fertilizers had been used) and the hunters paused hunting to allow the population to recover. Mink hunting was taken up to wipe out this non-native pest that kills everything in its path. The water vole will go extinct in the next 10 years due to mink but labour banned the only sensible serious method of control i.e hunting mink with hounds. Crazy!”
by bj, swindon
Friday, April 03 2009, 1:03PM
“Anon which hunt was that?”
by Anon, Exeter
Thursday, April 02 2009, 5:58PM
“I used to own a farm, and the local hunt would approach us before the hunt season and ask if they could put food down for the foxes so that more would survive and, as a consequence, there would be more to chase. They also asked whether they could hunt on our land. We said no. They did so anyway and caused a tremendous amount of damage. You cannot call this 'wildlife management'. This is not an isolated incident - I know of many farmers that have similar problems.”
by bj, swindon
Thursday, April 02 2009, 4:40PM
“The Doc confuses motive with method. Hunting is a field sport or country pursuit, which people follow for its wider enjoyment. Watching hounds work, access to the countryside and it is a social activity. The fact that people enjoy an activity does not make it cruel and the reason hunting has so much support and continued for so long, is because it has a purpose... PRACTICAL HUMANE wildlife management. That is why the Hunting Act has failed and the sooner it is repeal the better.
Conservation has always been about management, be that of wildlife or habitats”