HUNTING DOOMED

Evening Star, Issue 19786, 9 February 1928, Page 13

HUNTING DOOMED

CHANGING SENTIMENT THE SPURT IN ENGLAND. It seems safe to predict that English blood sports are doomed. One ol the most deeply entrenched and picturesque privileges of " country ” people _in England, the riding to hounds, is being ! Ted by public opinion (says a writer in the ‘New York Times’). Many signs point to this, chief among them tlie fact that the sportsmen themselves arc on the defensive.

.During the hunting season just ended the correspondence columns ot the newspapers hero have seldom hcon without letters from people of all classes protesting against alleged cruelties in stag and fox hunting. .These letters, and still more the faeb that masters of hounds all .over the country have felt it necessary to reply to them in defence of the sport, make it evident that there is a widespread movement in England to abolish a, form of-hunting (hat, however useful it may have been at one time in ridding the country of pests, no longer serves that purpose. As, naturally, the strongest protest comes from people of Liberal and Labor sympathies, it is not improbable that legislation may be introduced to abolish the sport altogether under the next Labor Government. FEELING AROUSED.

Several incidents during the hunting season this .vear have served to rouse this feeling to aif unprecedented pitch. In Somerset a stag, after being chased lor (seventeen miles, leaped in desperation from a cliff into tho sea. Hounds and huntsmen raced up and down the beach in hopes that it, would return, but the animal swam straight out through tlie breakers. One of the hunt finally went to a telephone box on tho moor and ordered a motor boat, in which the huntsmen chased the stag through the water, am! roped it over its antlers. Then tho animal was hauled aboard and its throat cut. In another one of the hunts a slag was chased a score or so of miles beioie it stopped, covered with sweat and exhausted, in the main road at Preston. Then, frightened by a passing mof m. it jumped a 6ft wall into a cottage garden, where it stayed, too exhaust'd to move. This stag had been roused at Punster by tho Devon and Somerset staghounds, who, having lost it, wont home. But a passing motorist told members of the (Jjuantoek staghounds, who were returning after a day's hunting from their Triseombo meet, '■bout it, and they went to Preston to find is in the garden. It was too exhausted to put up anv resistance, and a knife ■soon finished it. 'flic villagers, who had gathered to photograph and pet it, made angry protests against its being killed, for its helplessness and beauty had endeared it to them. FARMERS’ TROUBLES.

The indignation n .‘m cminlJy .sc. ms to he based on the fact tint .stags are carefully protected throughout the greater part of the year in order that in the autumn they may he run nearly ‘■o death and then knifed. The farmers, on the whole, would bo glad to have them all killed off at once, since they do a great deal of harm to crops during the protected season, tor which the hunt pays inadequate damages. The* same reasoning applies to fox hunting. Poxes arc vermin of no good to the country except as they provide .sport for a small number of people. Until the last generation or two country people were only too glad to have huntsmen kill them off, and acquiesced in the tradition that to shoot a fox was a social crime. It was an understanding acceptable to both sides- the gentry killed the foxes, and the farmers returned the favor hv nob interfering with the sport by killing them in any other way. Tim fanners’ attitude has changed of late, however. To the consternation of the hunters they are exterminating the foxes ruthlessly in defiance of tire unwritten law of sport. Especially is this so in the home counties about London, where there is much poultry-raising. Hero the foxes are exterminated almost openly by the fanners, who say that the’ compensation the hunt allows them for damages covers the hare value of the fowls, with nothing for their own labor and time, nor for the potential value of eggs and chicks. Tn the shires the work of extermination goes on more secretly, since in the great, hunting counties*to kill a fox other than by running him to death is considered an nngentlemanly thing to do.

Since the war the antagonism between sporting people and farmers has grown nioiv and more acrimonious.. The fact that a large number of Norwegian vixens were imported a few years ago into the country for the pur-

poso of sport has nullified the plea that the hunters are the fanners’ friends in that they rid him of his pestiferous enemy. CENTURIES OF OPPOSITION. For several hundred years in England there has been opposition to blood sports on the part of people of outstanding intelligence. Sir Thomas Moore said that I he place for the limiters was in the ahhatoir. in the eighteenth century Lord Chesterfield wrote to his godson■ “I think yon are above any of those rustic, Illiberal sports of guns, dogs, and horses, which characterise'our English bumpldn country gentlemen, who are the most unlinked creatures in the world, unless, sometimes, by their hounds. “ All these country sports, as they are called, arc the effects of tho ignorance and idleness of country esquires who do not know what to do with their time.” Thomas Hardy lately referred to lox and stag hunting as one more proof that the human race is still largely barbarous. It has taken time for this attitude, always field by emancipated thinkers, to penetrate to the mass of people. The scores of letters on the subject in the papers during the season show that people in general attack blood sports from three points of view. There aro the sentimental ones who consider that it is wicked to kill animals for sport, and say the English had better look to their own sporting honor before criticising the bull fights of Spain. Hunters, in defending their sport, argue that if stag hunting were abolished the wild red deer of Exmquth would be wholly exterminated within a few years. The farmers would shoot the deer on sight, in season and out, if compensation were no longer given by the hunts in protecting them. The hunters also say that stag hunting gives employment, directly and indirectly, (o thousands of people. It is hard to say how much weight the sentimental objections will _ have when the time conies for legislation on the subject. The people who would like to see stag and fox hunting abolished because it is not within the reach of tho poor arc many. There arc still more who would do away with it because they believe it is wrong to make animals suffer And, lastly, there aro many people who pride themselves on their sporting instinct, and who believe that the chasing of a stag into the sea by a crowd of 500 horsemen and a horde of hounds and bringing it back in u motor boat to cut its throat on the quay is a travesty of sportsmanship and fair play. This last point of view was responsible for a strange scene at a famous sports club in Loudon the other night. At a dinner of sportsmen the health of tlie Devon and . .Somerset staghounds was proposed. Tliereunnn all of those at the table arose, solemnly filed out into tlie street, and poured their wine into tlie .gutter.