Monday, February 21, 2005
Serious about the law
So fox hunting and hare coursing have been consigned to the same social dustbin as badger baiting and cock-fighting. Unfortunately for rabbits and rats, they remain on the “wanted” list, but maybe their time will come.

On the day after the Hunting Act 2004 came into force, an estimated 270 ‘hunts’ convened across the UK. Many met up, had a sherry or two, a bit of a whinge, then headed home; some exercised packs of hounds, others hunted foxes within the law.

Joining the sherry-quaffers, hundreds of volunteers also turned out for the occasion, armed with cam-corders and cameras, encouraging huntsmen and women to operate legally, in the same way speed cameras discourage drivers from speeding.

During their show of strength, many monitors were abused and intimidated, at least one was assaulted and another group were lucky to survive when their van was shunted off the road by one of the ubiquitous 4WDs which seem to accompany hunts.

In their show of strength, huntsmen and women killed some 91 foxes on the first Saturday. According to the Countryside Alliance, this is ‘business as usual’; according to the League Against Cruel Sports, this is quite a respite, if you are a fox. (It suggests that normally up to 400 foxes are killed each week.) As this activity has never been regulated no one knows how many foxes get killed and the truth is probably lies somewhere in the middle. But as more hunts met last weekend than normal, the kills-per-hunt rate was probably much lower.

The 90 or so animals killed legally were killed through ‘modified hunting’. This practice involves ‘stalking or flushing out’ a fox for reasonably swift dispatch by a competent marksman. This falls within the allowed exemptions in the Hunting Act. But this can only be done by up to two hounds at a time and only to protect property. However, the statute is broad in this area, effectively allowing any landowner to have a fox flushed and shot to protect – say – game birds, being bred to be shot themselves.

The Countryside Alliance maintains that most of the 91 foxes killed were done so legally, with only ‘one or two’ killed by hounds ‘accidentally’ – though of course, this is still against the lawⁱ. One incident in East Yorkshire is likely to see police investigation after one hunt allowed its pack to get out of control after it picked up a fox’s scent trail, chased the creature for 2 miles and then tore it to pieces.

Of course, not being in control of an animal is not an excuse in law. If my Rottweiler savaged a small child’s face, my lack of control over my dog would actually contribute to my culpability. To allow a pack of hounds to get beyond control and to kill a fox is no different. Investigations in East Yorkshire should hopefully lead to prosecutions which will discourage more people who are out ‘exercising’ (‘exercising’, please!) a pack of hounds, which have been bred to kill foxes, from breaking the law again and again and again.

So who won this first round? Against all odds, it was probably the law. The Hunting Act 2004 is not a law designed to protect foxes from being killed. It is a law designed to protect wild mammalsⁱⁱ from being killed inhumanely – such as by being chased until exhaustion and then ripped apart by dogs, for the simple pleasure of simple people.

The foxes killed over the weekend would have suffered considerably less by being merely flushed out into the open and promptly shot dead.

For those people intent on galloping around the countryside on horseback dressed in red and black coats, bleating on a horn and exercising a group of hounds, the Hunting Act 2004 would have had little impact.

The only area where law enforcement would have been difficult is when the suspect activities take place out of sight, on the huge sprawling rural estates that belong to the very Lords who resisted the Hunting Bill in Parliament for so long. Out of range from the monitors - unless they are trespassing - this could be the last bastion of law breaking – but then it often has been.

We do not live in a perfect society. As a result, there were a number of gratuitous incidents involving violence against wild animals on the first weekend, such as the incident in East Yorkshire. But another incident, this time in Shropshire, when the carcass of legitimately killed fox was simply tossed into a pack of hounds in front of hunt monitors will keep tempers warm. Was this against the law? Perhaps not – but it maybe contributing to the law being broken, the next time that these hounds are taken out for innocent exercising with the scent of fox blood in the breeze.

There will always be those who choose to be cruel to animals. In the same way that traffic legislation does not prevent everyone from speeding and killing, the Hunting Act 2004 will not prevent everyone from being cruel. Laws in a democracy tend to frame what most people see as unacceptable behaviour; of course, they never actually stop it. Laws also take time to become part of the fabric of society. Everyone thought seatbelt legislation would be ineffective, but now buckling-up is second nature. Owning a slave, I am sure, once felt natural. Hunting mammals with dogs for pleasure will soon be considered similarly alien.

Violence and intimidation against those out filming the exercising hounds will win few new friends for the hunting fraternity. Hunt saboteurs are used to acts of aggression perpetrated against them, but on the first weekend of the ban a number of hunts were enthusiastically attempting to obstruct people going about their lawful business and filming the hunts’ activities. If hunts are serious about staying within the law, they need to build greater trust with those monitoring them.

But of course hunts are not serious about acting within the law. Huntsmen and women – and a fair proportion of the UK – not only think the Hunting Act 2004 is a bad law, but they wish to see it buried and hunting for pleasure reinstated. Hunts are quite open about attempting to find loopholes in the law in an effort to continue to hunt foxes with dogs, the way they have always done. Where loopholes cannot be found, they will simply break the law and front up the ₤5,000 fine. Cannot they be content with the more humane killing of a fox, as enshrined in the Hunting Act?

That hunts are openly seeking to exploit loopholes - in the cruel killing of an animal for pleasure - is akin to taking their anger with the government out on the foxes, out of nothing more than vindictiveness.

Say heaps, really.

Endnotes

1. It is only a defence if a person charged under the Act can demonstrate “that he reasonably believed that the hunting [being undertaken] was exempt.


2. Apart from rabbits and rats.

---