Tally-ho!

!-----Warning. This post may divide opinions-----!

The Scottish Assembly passed a bill in early 2002 banning the hunting of foxes with hounds. The argument was that it was a cruel way to kill foxes, that it was barbaric to make a sport out of their suffering and that a modern society had no place for such practices.

On Saturday last week, the Fife Foxhounds met at my parents farm, as they have done once each season since we first bought the farm back in 1987. We served up port in stirrup cups and hunks of Dundee cake to anyone who wanted them, the hounds milled around for awhile and then with a blast on the master's horn, they were off. The only thing that has changed since 2002 is that now the hounds are only allowed to flush out the fox - men with guns then attempt to shoot it (and not the hounds).

It was a good turn out, the morning after the hunt dinner

I've never hunted. For a start I'm way too lazy to get up at crack of sparrow to go galloping over frozen fields. I was also put off by the old tradition of blooding riders on their first hunt - daubing their faces with the blood of the killed fox. That to me was a barbaric practice right up there with painting your body blue with woad and running naked into battle whirling a broadsword over your head (Gabriele will probably correct me here on the exact details of ancient British war practices).

There is a great deal of the 'yuk' factor about fox hunting. Killing any animal upsets most people, even if we are happy to eat animals that other people have killed for us. And we tend to anthropomorphise, putting ourselves in the place of the hunted. I don't suppose I'd like to be chased down by baying hounds until I was exhausted and cornered, then ripped apart by their slavering jaws. But is that reason enough to ban it?

If you are a vegetarian, and don't think we have the right to kill any animal, then no amount of argument is going to put you in favour of fox hunting. But most people are prepared to accept that some animals must be killed, be it for food, to control overpopulation where natural predators have been lost or to protect livestock. It then comes down to what method of dispatch is most acceptable in terms of limiting cruelty and maximising efficiency.

I would put it that hunting foxes with a pack of hounds is far less cruel than some of the things we do to farmed animals. It's not perfect, but no method for controlling wild animals ever is. At least the fox can (and often does) escape unscathed. Hunting tends to weed out the old and infirm animals first, keeping a population of healthy foxes in balance with the rest of the local ecology. And when a hound catches a fox it kills it almost instantly. The same can't be said for a snare, poison or an ill-aimed bullet. Nor, for that matter, for the cars which account for the vast majority of foxes killed each year.

only the master wears red these days

But what of these bloodthirsty aristocrats riding roughshod over the countryside, doing whatever they please in pursuit of the kill? Well, it's not quite like that. Hunting used to be the sport of the aristocracy, true, but nowadays you're as likely to find electricians, butchers, bank managers and doctors riding with the hunt as you are Earls and Dukes. You need enough money to either own or hire a horse to be able to hunt, so it's not a sport for the common man (that's more the foot packs, like we have here in Wales, and up in the Peak District - also banned). And anyone who rides with a hunt to see an animal torn apart by dogs is going to be sorely disappointed. Most aren't even anywhere near the kill. The enjoyment of the hunt - the true sport - isn't from the death of the fox, but from being able to ride pell-mell across miles of open country.

So, you say, drag hunts can do that. Set a couple of people off with an aniseed trail and we can all be happy. Toffs get to ride for miles and the foxes are safe. Well, yes and no. That land the hunters like to ride across belongs to people - mostly farmers. Letting the hunt through is a pain - it can damage fences, churn up good grazing grass and upset livestock. Many farmers won't allow the hunt over their land, and a competent hunt master won't go anywhere near a field he doesn't have permission to ride over. Farmers need to get something from the hunt to make it worth their whiles, and a reduction in the number of foxes around, especially at this time of year when the lambs are starting to be born, is just that thing. Hunts also take fallen livestock to feed to the hounds - an important service to poor farmers who are no longer allowed to bury carcasses on farm but have to pay to have them taken away and incinerated.

Fox hunting has evolved over many years into the sport we see today. It has survived the decimation of the aristocracy and the commuter infiltration of the countryside largely because it serves a number of useful purposes. To my mind it was banned not because it was unusually cruel or wasteful - the government's own enquiry proved that not to be the case - but because it was seen as a symbol of an old way of life, a throwback to an era of class-consciousness and cap-doffing, that had to be destroyed. Even though that was not actually the case.

It's a sad indictment of our eight year old Labour government that it spent so much time and effort (and money) in banning fox hunting when it should have been improving our schools, hospitals and transport infrastructure. Doubly so given that it has so singularly failed even in that one effort.

some of these hounds are Welsh, you know