There’s a grumble, often repeated among country folk, that ‘hunting people got hunting banned’. What they mean (I think) is that a combination of complacency, arrogance and the failure to get the public onside is what did for hunting.
It’s not really fair: arguably, without the disaster of the Iraq war, Tony Blair may not have felt he needed to chuck a piece of legislation at his backbenchers, like a juicy bone to a pack of hungry hounds. The hunting ban never was about animal welfare, but class hatred, Dennis Skinner declaring that the bill was ‘for the miners’. The ban, Blair later admitted, was ‘one of the domestic legislative measures I most regret’. (I didn’t have to look this up: it’s on a Countryside Alliance postcard that’s been stuck to my fridge for years.)
The thrilling, sociable and bloodless sport has, I fear, perhaps one more season at best
But now, 20 years after the Hunting Act became law, hunting people – despite hard work by some decent campaigners – are on the verge of getting trail hunting banned. The thrilling, sociable and bloodless sport that I and so many others live for during the long winter months in the countryside has, I fear, perhaps one more season at best. Labour’s manifesto promised it would ‘ban trail hunting’, in which hounds chase a laid scent rather than live quarry. Opponents say it’s often used as a ‘smokescreen’ for illegal hunting.
Increasingly, following a series of scandals and convictions, I find that if you mention trail hunting to non-horsey people they will roll their eyes and make bunny fingers around the word ‘trail’. Privately, one huntsman tells me that word is tainted irrevocably. ‘In order to save hunting with a Labour government, we need to go to them and say that we recognise the term “trail hunting” has become toxic,’ he says – ‘and that there are people who have let the side down.’
‘We’ve had 20 years to change public opinion,’ says one master of foxhounds, ‘and all we’ve done is repeatedly shoot ourselves in the foot.’ Certain hunting people do the League Against Cruel Sports’ work for them. In July, just after Labour was elected, the huntsman and a whipper-in at the West Norfolk, Britain’s oldest hunt, were found guilty of two counts each of illegal fox hunting (they are appealing their convictions).
In one incident a fox was chased through a garden and killed on the patio by the house. In a witness statement read out in court, the homeowner said: ‘The hunters kindly left us the pleasure of removing the intestines, kidneys, fox fur and blood from our blood-stained patio.’ Even before a ban comes before parliament, it seems the government may be moving against trail hunting. The Royal Artillery would not have been able to host a meet for National Trail Hunting Day held earlier this month – put on to show politicians and police that hunts have got their houses in order while enjoying popular support in the countryside – because their licence to trail hunt on Salisbury Plain (Ministry of Defence land) has been withheld. The Royal Artillery hounds joined other local packs at a meet hosted by their neighbouring pack, the South and West Wiltshire. To date, no licences to trail hunt on Ministry of Defence land have been granted for the 2024/25 hunting season at all, which affects several other hunts, particularly the Staff College Draghounds, who are kennelled at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst.
A government spokesman says: ‘This government was elected on a mandate to introduce the most ambitious plans to improve animal welfare in a generation, including the banning of trail hunting. Licences to trail hunt on MoD land are currently under ministerial review.’
Nevertheless, Charles Carter, master-huntsman of the RA, is upbeat about trail hunting resuming on the Plain. ‘I don’t see this as anything other than a momentary hold-up,’ he says, ‘and I don’t think there’s any justification for stopping hunting on MoD land. My feeling is that ministers have no idea about [what to do about] hunting on military land and have bigger things to deal with – hunting falls pretty low down the agenda.’ He has been given no timescale for the review and in the meantime has had to obtain a special licence in order to exercise his hounds. Under its three-month terms, expiring in November, only six people are allowed out with hounds and they are not allowed to use horses, so accompany them on bicycles or quad bikes.
Oliver Hughes, managing director of the British Hound Sports Association (BHSA), also believes that a full ban is not imminent (it was absent from the first King’s Speech of the new government). On the immediate issue of hunting on MoD land, he thinks that: ‘It’s probably quite difficult for whoever grants these licences to risk going up against their [new] political masters without getting guidance – and I would suspect there’s been no guidance either way.’
The lack of a time frame from the government on a ban ‘gives us the opportunity to continue to demonstrate that [trail hunting] is legal, legitimate and well-regulated,’ he adds. Hughes estimates that 30,000 people turned out for the trail hunting day at 27 venues around the country. He directs me to a Facebook post by Lincolnshire Police Rural Crime Action Team, which reads: ‘All we want is for the hunts to follow the laws and today was an excellent example of how it can and should be done. Interestingly we saw plenty of hares in the fields today. With numerous hares being put up by the hounds following pre-laid trails. No hounds showed interest in them.’
Hughes, an affable, intelligent man, was brought in to run the BHSA in 2022. The body was set up to replace the old Hunting Office in the wake of its leaked webinars in 2020, in which members including Lord Mancroft, chair of the Masters of Foxhounds Association, appeared to advocate the laying of trails to cover illegal activity. Although the only man convicted, Mark Hankinson, later won his appeal, huge damage was done.
Hughes argues that while ‘we can’t revisit previous incidents’, the new disciplinary arm, the Hound Sports Regulatory Authority, chaired by the retired High Court judge, Sir Gerald Barling, ‘isn’t afraid to take swift and robust action against hunts that contravene the law’. In the most high-profile case, the BHSA closed down the Avon Vale hunt after footage of a fox being thrown to hounds was posted online.
We now live in a world where the question of whether it is ethical to ride horses at all is discussed seriously
I very much want Mr Hughes to succeed in the PR battle for trail hunting but fear that his is a Sisyphean task. Attitudes have moved on. We now live in a world where the question of whether it is ethical to ride horses at all is discussed seriously in the Daily Telegraph and the new Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Steve Reed, has no connections, as far as I can make out, to any rural way of life.
Despite Labour’s landslide majority, hunting does still have friends with good contacts. Viscount Astor, the BHSA chairman, is in the House of Lords but, as Hughes notes ruefully, ‘Labour have said they want to get rid of hereditary peers too.’ Back in Wiltshire, Charles Carter hopes to have the RA’s licence reinstated by the opening meet on 2 November, so horses and hounds can gather in front of the officers’ mess at Lark-hill, as they have done for decades.
And yet… efforts to regulate and promote the legitimacy of trail hunting make me think of a phrase coined by Lord Astor’s son-in-law, Lord Cameron, when he was PM. ‘It’s not so much that they’ve shut the door after the horse has bolted. They’ve shut the door after the horse has won the 3.20 at Uttoxeter.’
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