Hunting
Excellent story about hunting on the Beeb website today.
In the aftermath of the Scottish ban, “in a test case a court ruled that Trevor Adams, 46, from Melrose, was not ‘hunting’, but ’searching’ for a fox.”
No doubt there’ll be a parliamentary bill passed to ban “fox searching” too (probably using the Parliament Act again), and it’s only a matter of time before “fox pursuing”, “fox chasing”, “fox finding”, “fox tracking”, “fox seeking” and eventually “doing any verb in category 619 of Roget’s Thesaurus to a fox” are all outlawed. A similar legal challenge in ten years’ time will probably be overturned because the defendant “was not, ’seeking’, ‘tracking’, ‘looking for’, ‘chasing’, ‘pursuing’ or ‘running after’, but ‘hunting’ a fox.”
The loophole on which this bloke got off was that he sought to drive the foxes into the open and then shoot them, which under the new laws is perfectly legal. “In a separate development, it emerged that a North Devon landowner, Giles Bradshaw, has been allowed to use his four dogs to ‘chase away unwanted animals’, including deer and foxes.”
I thought it was exactly the chasing to which animal rights types objected?! I think most would agree that the rapid death at the hands of the hounds, while some might argue a gun would be preferable, is not the worst part of the experience.
As regards enforcing, all the hunters need do is have a man with a smelly bag or some marksmen drifting about the place, and when the cops turn up they’ll claim they were drag hunting or fox searching, and get off scot-free!
What a silly business.
December 11th, 2004 at 00:09
Trouble is, that’s only the case under Scottish Law. In England, it’s going to be illegal to wander about with dogs, and horses and look for a fox, even if you then plan to shoot it. In Scotland, for some reason, you’re OK if you’re not going to do the messy death thing (which is why this bloke got nicked) and you’re planning to shoot it instead (which is why the bloke got off; he’d booked a man with a gun)! Strange people, the Scots.
The stupidest bit of the whole story, that I’ve heard, was the now-obligatory-outraged-comment-from-the-hunter, which went more or less as follows “Well I think this is ridiculous, and it just goes to prove how stupid these laws are to anyone who hoped the ban meant they’d never have to see a dog or a horse in the countryside again!”
Since when did the ban include “The Putting of Horses Into a Country Or Rural Setting”? Stupid man… Not, perhaps, quite as stupid as “texas hold ‘em”; who the Hell is she?!
December 11th, 2004 at 00:12
Texas Holdem are the ‘blogspam I put in the code to stop. It seems not to have worked!!
I wasn’t aware that English law was any different to Scottish on the ban front…where did you read that?
December 11th, 2004 at 00:23
I think this ambiguity serves to reinforce the case for the ridiculous nature of a ban. To quote Lib Dem MP Lembit Opik (find the full story here), member of some group called “the Middle Way”, “How is the village bobby who sees a group of people with dogs supposed to distinguish between illegal hunting, exempt hunting, drag hunting, unintentional hunting, a hunt exercising hounds or simply chasing away?”
Irrespective of precisely what is legal or illegal in England and Scotland, there is no easy way to tell these activities apart. If I were so inclined, I could just change the line in the entry such that the hunters only plant men with smelly bags, and not marksmen.
And what if the dogs you are exercising, or using to bark at wild animals on your land, sets upon one, in line with its natural instincts? To hold the owner responsible for something daft like “putting the dog in a tempting situation” would be ridiculous. Doubtless a good number of cowboys would claim that they were ‘exercising their dogs’ - but what of those who genuinely were?
Irrespective of views on hunting, this ban is a shambles.
December 12th, 2004 at 01:20
Scottish ban has been in for a couple of years; they brought it in under whatever the Scot’s equivilant of the WA is… Hence the random difference (again!) between British and Scottish laws. I’m assuming it’s true, ‘cos PM generally know what they’re talking about…
December 12th, 2004 at 10:40
Yeah, I’d trust Radio 4. If I ever find myself in a life-threatening situation where only use of knowledge of Radio 4 could save me, I’d certainly go with it.
The British hunters will need to find a subtley different synonymous loophole…
December 12th, 2004 at 19:35
Yes it’s me the famous Giles Bradshaw (well for a day that is)
What I was trying to highlight was the absurdity of a law that allows me to ‘flush out’ animals but only if I shoot them. I flush out deer all the time but just let them go. Defra have invented this whole ‘chasing away’ business.
Hunting is more welfare freindly than shooting because it kills 100% of animals caught. Shooting leaves up to 60% wounded which then die over seberal weeks in terrible pain.
Animals like foxes need to be controlled and always have been. If they werent controlled then their populations would escalalate until the only control is starvation or disease.