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HORSE &
HOUND - APRIL 2005
So how many whelps
will you breed this year? In a normal year every hunt would have decided
how many whelps they wanted. The bitches would have been put to and
the whelps would already be on the ground, prior to their being sent
out to walk. The number of whelps bred would normally be decided by
the number of people who are willing and anxious to have ‘their’
puppies. There are the devoted walkers who, year after year, demand
their quota. In the second string come those who, in spite of having
sworn that they would never have another puppy ( the usual litany of
robbery, yobbery and muggings) can still be cajoled, or blackmailed
into taking one, or even two (much less trouble as they entertain each
other – an almost Jesuitical casuistry). A clever, not to say
cynical, Huntsman will know exactly which buttons to press. In a normal
season the Master / Huntsman will know exactly which bitches they want
to breed from and which doghounds they want to use. These choices will
be decided both by the desire to maintain working excellence and treasured
blood lines – strictly in that order. I enter that caveat because
I am mindful of a pack that would not put bitches to unless they had
a tail female line back to the famous Mabel ’02 (That is 1902)
– regardless of the sad fact that blood lines can wear out and
become distinctly threadbare. I remember watching two hounds running
shoulder to shoulder with a fox, one on each side and neither daring
to pull the fox down. In spite of the fact that they both had Mabel
’02 in their pedigrees, they both went to a better place that
night.
However we do not
live in ‘normal times’ and in many kennels there must have
been a lot of head scratching and soul searching when the time came
to decide which and how many bitches to put to; especially as the crucial
period would have been in the time of political turmoil when the Hunting
Bill had not become the Hunting Act. The Hunting Act is now in Law,
but as somebody said somewhere – ‘The show ain’t over
until the fat lady sings’ and she ain’t sung yet –
we have a General Election hull down on the horizon and so the political
turmoil continues. So does the uncertainty. Can we gamble on getting
a Tory Government? Mr Howard is on the record as saying that he would
use a Government Bill to pull down the Hunting Act, but could he deliver?
Even if we did get a Tory Government, it is likely to be a skin of the
teeth job and, sadly, I cannot conceive that getting rid of the Hunting
Act could realistically be high on its list of priorities. Even if he
did bring in a ‘get rid’ bill can we be certain that he
would get it through the Commons? We know that whilst being a Tory MP
does not necessarily make you a bad person, it does not necessarily
make you pro-hunting either. Old Mother Thatcher got rid of all the
‘Knights of the Shires’. As for the Lib Dems – how
many of them would you care to be in a foxhole (military) with? So to
put it mildly, Hunting in England faces an uncertain future and this
brings back to my starter question and leads into another question –
What is your pack going to do next season? The Young Entry for next
season will probably all be back in the kennels now. It is the ’06
entry we should be worrying about.
My Brother in Law,
in his prime, used to tell me that in hunting you must be ‘a hawk
rather than dove’. In the present circumstances, I would take
that to mean that we are experiencing a small belch in the ongoing feast
of Foxhunting. I sincerely hope that he is right. In the mean time we
must hope for the best and prepare for the worst. The worst being a
future of ‘Trail Riding’ and or ‘Draghunting’.
You do not need many hounds for either of those, no doubt excellent,
activities and, in the long term, neither would justify the keeping
of a full hunting pack in prime condition. On the other hand, if Foxhunting
does return in the near future (and I pray it does) you don’t
want to be caught with your knickers down and short of hounds either.
So if you were to put pressure on me to answer my starter question,
I would have to say that, at the time of writing, I simply do not know.
What I do know is that on the outbreak of the Hitler War, some packs
were put down and many were drastically reduced. To the best of my knowledge
almost all were resurrected when peace broke out. We are at war again.
We beat Corporal Hitler and we should certainly be able to see off a
pip squeak like Blair.
