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HORSE AND HOUND FEBRUARY 2005

The bad legal ban on Hunting comes into force on 18.2.05, but as Molesworth 2 would have put it – ‘any fule kno that’, and if you don’t then you don’t then you are indeed a ‘fule’, or you have been on holiday on the Planet Zog. The Big question is ‘what then’? And the answer is that no one really ‘kno’. The Act that enshrines the Ban is so badly drafted that it creates an area of varying shades of Grey – some darker than others – but absolutely no clarity. The Act poses more questions than it answers. We shall get no answers until various aspects of the Act have been tested in court. The results of these trials are unlikely to provide definitive answers and are more likely to produce yet more grey areas and unanswered questions. The problem will be that every hunting country is likely to have different situations and these situations will produce their own legal problems. As I understand the position of the MFHA is that each hunt will have to decide what to do in its own particular situation.

Everyone is agreed that existing hunt establishments must be maintained in their existing states for as long as possible. We are heading into the uncharted and definitely choppy waters of a General Election. All hunting people will be hoping for a change in the political tide that will carry the House of Commons into a more rural-friendly situation and in particular a Conservative administration with a working majority. If I were a betting man, which thank God I am not, I think that the odds offered on such a happy outcome would be pretty long ones. But in politics, as in Racing, there is always the chance of an outsider sneaking home. I remember backing a horse called ‘Paddy’s Profit’ in the open race at the Chiddingfold Farmers’ (that dates me) point to point at 20 – 1. My choice was based on the fact that I had taken a certain amount of whisky on board and that my companion at the races was called Paddy. At the 4th fence from home there was a pile-up of Foinavon proportions, which Paddy’s Profit, being well tailed off, was able to avoid. He came home at a rather tired trot, but the winner none the less. It is possible that the next election might just produce a similar ‘stramash’. We can but hope and work towards a satisfactory political result. This would certainly put a different slant on the hunting situation, but what would that changed situation be? We all know that Mr Howard has promised to reverse a hunting ban, but whether he would be in a political situation that allowed him to do that is another story. The restoration of the ‘status quo ante’ for hunting would not be high on the wish list of the bulk of Conservative voters and it would be very foolish of hunting people to think that it might be. Even if the right to hunt were to be restored, I feel certain that it would be in a different form, beset with new rules, regulations and licenses. Make the most of the traditional style of hunting, whilst you can – I hardly think that you will see its like again. Just remember the old saying – “Hunting isn’t what it used to be, but then it never has been’.

So what will your hunt do after the ban? I do not have the faintest idea. It will depend on your local situation. The local situation of our little hunt is a strange one. We actually hunt on both sides of and across the Anglo Scottish Border. When we cross the Border which can happen several times in a hunting day, we have to instantly transmogrify – whipping out our shotguns on the ‘Scots-side’ and putting them back in their sleeves, when we cross back into England. The core of our English side is 54,000 acres of MOD land. To hunt this wonderful wild bit of country in the future, we shall have to be hunting either a drag or the ‘clean boot’. We also have a large wedge of Forestry Commission land. What we can and cannot do in the Forest is a matter of ongoing negotiation with the FC. It is small wonder that our Master is rapidly turning grey.

My understanding of the rules according unto DEFRA is that if you are exercising your hounds or hunting a drag and said hounds ‘unintentionally’ riot on a fox and kill it, then no legal offence will have been committed.

Those of you who have read ‘The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam’ will remember Bahram, who was a great hunter of wild asses in ancient Mesopotamia. As far as I can see the law does not forbid the ‘hunting with dogs’ of wild asses – we just don’t have many in the Border Hills. However there are plenty in and around Westminster – perhaps we could bring some in and hunt THEM. They would sharp become wild then.

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