Penny Little argues that legislation needs tightening if foxhunters and others are not to continue to flout the law which banned their bloodthirsty pursuits
THE Collins Dictionary defines “reckless” as “having or showing no regard for danger or consequences”. A reckless driver would suffer the consequences if his or her actions resulted in injury to others and a reckless person in charge of dogs would have to suffer the consequences if those dogs attacked someone. No doubt, those guilty of such offences would say that they did not intend to cause harm. However, their reckless behaviour and their irresponsibility would be punished regardless. We all know this and live with it as part of the normal workings of the law of the land.
But if you are a foxhunter in this country, where hunting has been illegal since 2005, you need have no such qualms. This is because the Hunting Act does not include a reckless behaviour clause or contain those three magic words “cause or permit”, which are a feature of much other legislation.
Hunt monitors nationally have submitted many pieces of clear, filmed evidence of hounds chasing and killing foxes to the police. This evidence has been rejected by the Crown Prosecution Service, because the hunts have claimed the incidents were “accidents”.
As the foxhunts enter their fourth season since the Hunting Act came into force, the media is full of the hunters’ hubris. It is worth studying some of their claims.
In an article in the Daily Telegraph on October 30, the treasurer of the Exmoor Foxhounds said: “The art of the trail hunt is to replicate as much as possible an actual foxhunt. Four trail setters run across fields, through ditches and over hedgerows in an effort to mirror the movements of a hunted animal.”
The article continued: “On the morning of today’s hunt, teams are out laying a number of trails and [the hunter] has only a slight idea where they will start and finish.”
Hunters claim to mimic the traditional foxhunt by laying a scent through ditches and hedges – precisely where foxes are likely to be found. Surely, this is recklessness of a high order?
We further learn that the huntsman – the person actually in charge of a pack of around 40 unleashed dogs – has only a “slight idea” where these trails have been laid. So what if the hounds are running on cry, clearly hunting? Should they be stopped because they are onto a fox which they have found in these ditches and hedges? Or is it just a trail? The huntsman claims not to know. But this is utter recklessness, endangering not only the foxes, but also the general public, as hounds may career onto roads and into gardens after what proves to be – surprise, surprise – a fox.
Horse and Hound, the hunters’ bible, recently published an article entitled “What all huntsmen need to know”. In this, the huntsman with the Exmoor Foxhounds said: “Since the 2004 Hunting Act, I have to be confident before I leave the meet that I’ll have enough evidence to use in my favour should it be necessary to defend my actions in a court of law… A good way to end a line is to stuff the trail down a hole so hounds can ‘mark to ground’ at an old fox earth in much the same way as if a fox had been run to ground. Foxes will almost certainly be viewed on a day’s trailing and may be seen crossing or following a similar line to that of a trail before hounds arrive on the spot.”
We are told that a “trail” sometimes ends down a foxhole. It’s just tough luck if there happens to be a fox in it. Presumably it’s just another “accident”.
Readers of Horse and Hound were also informed that foxes dash around all over the place and actually run over the same area on which a trail has already been laid. It seems that not only are hunters reckless, but they claim that foxes can be, too.
In the Independent on Sunday on November 2, Julia Caffyn, master of the Southdown and Eridge Foxhunt said: “The whole thing is a farce…We ride according to the letter of the law, laying down a trail with a fox brush dipped in urine, but the law is unenforceable anyway.”
A “brush” is what foxhunters call a fox’s tail and the urine is a fox’s urine. This is no way to deter hounds from getting excited by a fox’s scent. Reckless? Of course it is. In the same article, an unidentified hunt regular from the north of England was quoted as saying: “Yes, foxes do get killed in the old way.”
The Master of Draghounds Association’s website defines the difference between drag hunting and “trail” hunting. Apparently: “Whereas most drag hunt lines start in open country at a known spot and follow a pre-determined route, trail hunting involves simulating the search in cover for a scent to follow.”
“Cover” means woods, maize fields, reeds and brambles. “Cover” is where foxes live. “Cover” has been where foxhunts have gone to find foxes since the practice began. “Cover” is not the place to lay a trail if you want to stop hounds finding foxes. But we are told that trails are laid in hedges, ditches, and fox holes. This is extreme recklessness.
It is worth noting that there is no known recorded incident of a genuine drag hunt being involved in an incident of “hunt havoc” – in other words, when hounds run riot over roads and so on – whereas such incidents since the ban which involve so-called trail hunts are numerous. (For details of these, see the Protect Our Wild Animals website on www.powa.org.uk)
There are two ways of looking at this. One is that trail hunting is a complete fiction used as a cover for illegal foxhunting, with the alleged similarities to foxhunting due to the fact that it is foxhunting. Hunt monitors are convinced this is the case.
The other option is to see that the practices of “trail” hunting as described by the hunters themselves are so utterly reckless that they are virtually certain to result in “accidents” – and many of them.
Either way, this outrageous situation can be resolved by amending the Hunting Act to ensure it deals with this reckless behaviour by making it an offence to “cause or permit a dog to hunt, attack, injure or kill a wild mammal”. That would remove the possibility of an accident being used as a defence and it would remove the need for intent to be proved in court.
It should be remembered that those who hunt hares also claim to lay a trail and any pursuit of hares is dismissed as the inevitable “accident”. Mink hunts can claim they set out to hunt rats (a preposterous defence, some may think) and that any mink pursued and killed by hounds was “accidental”.
When people pressed their MPs to ban hunting, they did not want a prohibition that would allow hunts to behave with such arrogance and deceit. They wanted the practice to be stopped, with genuine drag-hunting the only legal alternative.
At present, hunters as a group are behaving in a way that suggests they think they are above the law. They treat the law with utter contempt and seem to have a similar disregard for the democratic process that brought about the law.
It is time for MPs to revisit the legislation and make the small adjustment that would make the law fit for its purpose. Meanwhile, the proscribed quarry species continue to be hunted exactly as before the ban.
Penny Little is spokesperson for Protect Our Wild Animals
