TRUTHS ABOUT HUNTING (AND COURSING) IN GENERAL

There are four types of legal quarry in the UK : Fox, Mink, Stag and Hare. The first two are legally vermin, so that you can hunt them on any day of the week, but the latter two are classed as game and so it is illegal to hunt them on a Sunday (in England, at least).

If you've no connection with field sports, as I didn't have initially, you would probably think that the hunting of mink was by far the easiest to justify, followed by fox, then hare hunting (at least, if you knew how few were caught !) with stag hunting and hare coursing being just impossible to justify, barbaric and savage "an' that".

Well, you'd be quite right about MINK HUNTING, which I started off with. If you are already convinced of the virtues of mink hunting and want to go to fox hunting, then skip this paragraph. The anti's have a real job on their hands arguing against mink hunting, because even the most ignorant person knows that mink kill indiscriminately, are not native to this country and have no real predators over here. Funnily enough a lot of our call-outs are to people with a small number of otherwise very happy free-range chickens, guinea fowl, etc - the very type of farming that animal welfare people should be in favour of, but which is rather more difficult than it ought to be in Sussex where mink are the most numerous. The anti's have to rely on nonsense about disturbance to other wildlife - there is very little of this, and you can genuinely and easily detect the reduced number of other creatures on sections of river or small stream which a mink has colonised. I have had anti's say why don't we shoot them. If you are late to a meet, and have to walk along the river alone, you don't even see any mink, but if you have hounds with you, you often see half a dozen. I don't hear those anti's volunteering to spend long hours alone with a gun hoping to shoot the pests. The other argument is, "why don't you trap them". Yes, you can buy a trap, and the owners of small farms, fishing enterprises, people who've lost pets etc etc etc who call us out have ALREADY TRIED THAT - mink aren't exactly easy to catch in a trap, if they were then (like the Coypu) they would have been wiped out long ago. Sadly mink can easily get away up drainpipes etc, but an afternoon's mink-hunting in the summer sun alongside a Sussex stream with a steam train going over the viaduct above one's head, kingfishers to be seen everywhere, and the odd ghostly white barn owl silently putting out of the bank as we walk past - oh, what a glorious sport. You could be a million miles from the soot and grime of London, the mad politicians, the problems of the world. Children of all ages love it too. At lunchtime we stop for a picnic. To catch a brace of the vermin and know that you have helped the native English wildlife, oh, that's the icing on the cake. Detailed mink-hunting pages to follow

I said earlier on this page, that you'd imagine that STAG HUNTING is the hardest of all to justify and, in fact, quite beyond the pale. I used to think that too, and turned my nose up at it initially. How wrong can you be. It is a fact that the only remaining truly wild herds of red deer are to be found in the west country, where they are still hunted. You may not like this. But it is true, and it is no coincidence. When stag hunting went into abeyance for 20 years in the last century, because all the hounds died of rabies, the stags were almost all killed by poachers, and when a fresh pack of hounds was finally drafted, new red deer stocks had to be imported too. Each red deer can jump well over 6 feet (and it isn't exactly economic on somewhere like Exmoor to go putting up 8 foot fences everywhere, and maintaining them !), and eats the same amount as 5 sheep. And if you're lucky enough to have a bit of land that's better than just pasture, the stag will lie down in a field of turnips, eat the heads off all within reach, then move along a little and do the same. The only reason why local people tolerate them, protect them from poachers and do not cull them all themselves (which would not exactly be difficult with such large beasts) is that they are 100% supportive of hunting - the school children in places like Exford like to boast that they know the names of all their local hounds, this is almost unique apart from places like Threlkeld in the Lake District (where hounds also parade in front of the school at the opening meet) and some parts of Wales.

Bear in mind that the hounds DON'T kill the stag, he isn't called the "monarch of the moors" for nothing and could readily toss them 20 feet in the air if he wanted. They make him stand at bay and the hunstman, who rides close to the hounds, humanely despatches the stag with a large bore gun at close range in the neck. It must also be admitted that a stag is often hunted over a much longer distance than a fox - most foxes go to ground within a couple of miles or less, and the rules applying to all mounted fox hunts are now that foxes cannot be hunted on after that (they have to be either humanely shot, if the landowner insists, or left. Normally he insists that they are shot - more details anon). The thing about deer is that they have "evolved" over millions of years - evolution guided by God, if you prefer - to be hunted, whether by wolves, lions or whatever. If you've watched any TV at all, you'll know that wolves like to move packs of large game animal on for miles and miles until one tires and weakens, then take a bite out of its hind quarters when they can and wait for it to tire. Game animals have chemicals that block pain so that in such circumstances, not encountered on a stag hunt, the animal can continue to run at maximum capability. If any animal was created to be hunted, it was the stag. The hunted stag, once clear of those irritating noisy men and hounds, definitely does put his head down and eat - he really is not too bothered, to look at.

You'll also doubtless know that even "professional marksmen" frequently miss deer. I have been told that when this happened - it may still happen - with the (Roe?) deer at Petworth Park, the National Trust used to wet itself at the thought that an injured deer, with a broken front leg or its jaw blown off, might be seen by a visitor - in which case they would blame "poachers". There was also an article in the Telegraph in 1997 - date to be posted here shortly - regarding such a deer on the Quantocks, which wandered around for three days unable to eat or drink due to a botched NT "cull", and the NT (who have banned hunting there) had to call in the local stag hunt's emergency dispatch service. The National Trust are non too popular with West Country tenant farmers and land owners, as they banned stag hunting against the desire of almost all Exmoor's human inhabitants (speak to some when you are next there if you don't believe this !), since they commissioned a study that analysed chemicals in the stag's body, and argued that it suffered stress. Had they applied the same tests to the hounds, or the huntsmen, they would no doubt have had the same results. The research was not "peer reviewed", and the members of the NT council were only allowed a day before their meeting (at which stag hunting on NT land was banned) to see a 70+ page report. Further, the local deer preservation society argued that hunting should be continued, assurances were given to it by Charles Nunnely, NT chairman, that it's views would be reported to the NT meeting, and they were not.

Fox Hunting

Beagling

Hare Coursing

Falconry

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