Goodbye to Hounds

O

Orangehorse

Well-Known Member
Joined
25 November 2005
Messages
14,050
Visit site
That's it then folks. Having heard how the Prime Minister treated the NFU and farmer representatives at the meeting, where they were basically thrown out and told "we are the elected government, we are in charge and we decide on policy and we aren't going to even talk to you about the effects of our policies" there is no hope for hunting at all.

Banning trail hunting was in the manifesto, so it will be done. No amount of video recordings of trail laying, diary entries or reasoned debate will have the slightest difference. I even wonder if drag hunting with "the clean boot" will survive.

I know that there are plenty of people who were against fox hunting, but I would say that there are also plenty of hunts who do comply faithfully with the law and set trails and do everything correctly, and condemn those that do not.

Equestrian medalists from the Parish Olympics were ignored in recent honours list.

The Government seems to be at war with the countryside and those that live in it.
 
On the Honours thing - for someone to be honoured, they have to be nominated, and that includes the rich, famous, and sportsmen/women. The latter likely nominated by either their own federation, or something like Team GB as an organisation.
 
teapot said:
On the Honours thing - for someone to be honoured, they have to be nominated, and that includes the rich, famous, and sportsmen/women.
Click to expand...
Yes, I know. But in the past if you won a Gold medal then you got an Honour no matter what sport you took part in. It seemed like a snub.
 
The problem is the bad hunts are numerous and its very public now. The good hunts really messed up. They needed to come out quickly and HARD on the bad hunts, really draw a line between them. They might have had a chance then. Its too late now sadly and tbh having gone from having family who were masters etc and being pro hunting, I'm anti now. The behaviour of some has ruined it for everyone
 
They had 20yrs to get their act together, but those numerous arrogant idiots with a blood lust ruined it.
Digging out foxes and throwing them to hounds, whooping like apes. Bragging about how many they've killed. It's just disgusting.
I'm Dun is right, I was willing to let them show me their true colours and went with them on my Neddy once, NEVER again. I saw what they were up to and have since worked at a pro hunt yard. The lies are incredible. Thankfully that hunt have folded. Good riddance.

I fully support clean boot hunting.
 
I will be very sad to see trail hunting go but I have said many, many times on here that hunting needed to clean its act up from within. No point in people like me bleating on - pressure needed to come from those hunts that obeyed the law.

The arrogance has been outstanding - you only have to look at the behaviour of the Warwickshire to see why the full ban will come in.

But my views on this government aren't printable either!
 
Orangehorse said:
That's it then folks. Having heard how the Prime Minister treated the NFU and farmer representatives at the meeting, where they were basically thrown out and told "we are the elected government, we are in charge and we decide on policy and we aren't going to even talk to you about the effects of our policies" there is no hope for hunting at all.

Banning trail hunting was in the manifesto, so it will be done. No amount of video recordings of trail laying, diary entries or reasoned debate will have the slightest difference. I even wonder if drag hunting with "the clean boot" will survive.

I know that there are plenty of people who were against fox hunting, but I would say that there are also plenty of hunts who do comply faithfully with the law and set trails and do everything correctly, and condemn those that do not.

Equestrian medalists from the Parish Olympics were ignored in recent honours list.

The Government seems to be at war with the countryside and those that live in it.
Click to expand...
Like others have said, they've brought it on themselves with the appalling behaviour and law-breaking of some of the hunts. My local one allowed hounds to come all through my fields and my yard when I had a youngster on box-rest after surgery - clearly not following a laid trail. They wreak havoc on a regular basis and I dread the days they are out, my horses get so freaked out. Thankfully these days the field seems pretty small but I'll be damn pleased to see the back of them.
 
Do we have any idea of when this might actually happen though? I know it was on the manifesto but haven’t heard a thing about it since? The season is about to finish, you’d think if it was coming into effect in the immediate future they would start to discuss it now before the season is done? Lots of people are employed by the industry who may need to consider alternative careers!

Or am I just being naive? 😀 maybe they’ll bring it in with very little notice period?
 
Bobthecob15 said:
Do we have any idea of when this might actually happen though? I know it was on the manifesto but haven’t heard a thing about it since? The season is about to finish, you’d think if it was coming into effect in the immediate future they would start to discuss it now before the season is done? Lots of people are employed by the industry who may need to consider alternative careers!

Or am I just being naive? 😀 maybe they’ll bring it in with very little notice period?
Click to expand...
They don’t care about people that will loose their livihood. Just look at how quickly the pensioner payments were cut
 
fredflop said:
They don’t care about people that will loose their livihood. Just look at how quickly the pensioner payments were cut
Click to expand...
To be fair, they cut the cold weather payment to people who didn't actually need it, people like my parents and their neighbours, who just used to donate it to charity anyway. If you are in receipt of a benefit, you will still get the payment. Surely it is utterly ridiculous to go on making payments to, in one case I know of, a millionaire?
 
rextherobber said:
To be fair, they cut the cold weather payment to people who didn't actually need it, people like my parents and their neighbours, who just used to donate it to charity anyway. If you are in receipt of a benefit, you will still get the payment. Surely it is utterly ridiculous to go on making payments to, in one case I know of, a millionaire?
Click to expand...


IF you claim for benefits and are in receipt of a benefit, you will still get the payment.

Do you know how many people of that generation won't claim for benefits that aren't an automatic payment, because they were brought up not to ask for charity? That's why it was paid the way it was.

I'm in favour of it not going to people who don't need it. The way it was done, within days of election, within months of when it was due to be paid, stank.

And the fact that our Chancellor of the Exchequer either didn't know or couldn't work out that most of the savings would be wiped out by increased benefit claims raises a lot of questions.
.
 
Last edited:
Going back to the hunts, I'm on record on this forum from many years ago saying that if bone fide trail hunts didn't get their act together, speak out against illegal and "within the letter but certainly not the spirit*" hunting, and stop using fox piss as scent, then they would lose their sport.



*for those who don't know, the law was written to avoid criminalising a huntsman whose hounds accidentally latch onto a fox and they are unable to call them off before they kill it.

The result of this was that some hunts laid extremely weak trails in areas where they knew fox trails would be and made half hearted attempts to call hounds offgenuine fox trails, or none at all. Then claimed they had not broken the law, and the evidence was not strong enough to convict them.
.
 
Last edited:
I’ve never hunted (no balls) but I think it will be very sad to loose the whole lot and an entire breed of hound for a few who don’t want to follow the law.

But I also think they need a major rebrand, and they need to weed out the law breakers. The word “hunt” is just triggering to the masses. Team chasing is obviously not the same sport but it’s a similar concept of getting to run about the countryside and jump things.

Rebrand, turn clean and maybe just maybe they can save the sport.
 
fredflop said:
They don’t care about people that will loose their livihood. Just look at how quickly the pensioner payments were cut
Click to expand...
While I do not agree with what happened to the pensioner heating payments its a very different thing to hunting.
Hunting foxes with hounds has been illegal for years. Had trail hunts stuck to the law they wouldnt be here now.
The sheer arrogance of some hunts who simply carried on as before. Not to mention the sham of the secret deal with Warwickshire Police.
Yes, some people will lose jobs but that happens in all walks of life. There will be a public outcry about hounds being culled. Again that could have been avoided if the breeding of hounds had slowed right down when the ban was put in place. Dont forget that hunts do shoot hounds that do not make the cut anyway. Like a lot they do they keep that quiet though. Although hounds that have lived in kennels would make challenging pets there is no reason that the Foxhound breed should die out.
Otterhounds, beagles and basset hounds have all survived as pets.
 
Im neither here nor there on trail hunting, it seems too difficult to effectively separate the two - especially in the publics mind now. BUT I really worry about clean boot, our local pack are so innovative and trying to do so many positive “add ons” (for example search and rescue supporting other services) it would be such a shame to lose them not only as a sport but as a community good.
 
Boughtabay said:
Im neither here nor there on trail hunting, it seems too difficult to effectively separate the two - especially in the publics mind now. BUT I really worry about clean boot, our local pack are so innovative and trying to do so many positive “add ons” (for example search and rescue supporting other services) it would be such a shame to lose them not only as a sport but as a community good.
Click to expand...
They need to actively distance themselves from "trail" hunting if they are to survive. I fear its too late now.
 
Equi said:
1I’ve never hunted (no balls) but I think it will be very sad to loose the whole lot and an entire breed of hound for a few who don’t want to follow the law.
Click to expand...


To be honest it's not just about the few who don't follow the law. In our now over crowded countryside, any form of hunting can be very anti social. I write that as someone who drag hunted for years and felt uncomfortable about things which happened during that time.

There's a thread that's already discussed it in depth but some are hounds loose on roads, large groups of riders on roads, hounds taking pets, sending horses out in their own paddocks crazy as 100 riders pass, ploughing up bridleways, antisocial horse transport parking, going onto land they have been told to keep off (personally experienced this twice on drag hunts), shouty excited dirty people monopolising a local pub after a hunt.

And anyone who thinks the hounds are living a lovely life needs to see the concrete floored pack cages they live in and get close enough to the pack to see the scars.
 
Equi said:
I’ve never hunted (no balls) but I think it will be very sad to loose the whole lot and an entire breed of hound for a few who don’t want to follow the law.

But I also think they need a major rebrand, and they need to weed out the law breakers. The word “hunt” is just triggering to the masses. Team chasing is obviously not the same sport but it’s a similar concept of getting to run about the countryside and jump things.

Rebrand, turn clean and maybe just maybe they can save the sport.
Click to expand...

I agree, except it doesn’t seem to be ‘a few’ not following the law, but the vast majority.

Bloodhounds would also need a rebrand as to people unfamiliar with it, the word ‘blood’ means ‘killing something’.
I doubt the general public has any idea what ‘clean boot’ means.
What word could be used for a rebrand? ‘trail chase’?

It would be a shame if it was all lost: the benefit of the hunt in my area is that on some bridleways some gates are left open in winter when there is no stock in the fields, and some routes are maintained by them.
However that same hunt has no intention whatsoever of giving up its ‘traditional’ way of doing things. Its field too gets smaller.
 
Orangehorse said:
That's it then folks. Having heard how the Prime Minister treated the NFU and farmer representatives at the meeting, where they were basically thrown out and told "we are the elected government, we are in charge and we decide on policy and we aren't going to even talk to you about the effects of our policies" there is no hope for hunting at all.

Banning trail hunting was in the manifesto, so it will be done. No amount of video recordings of trail laying, diary entries or reasoned debate will have the slightest difference. I even wonder if drag hunting with "the clean boot" will survive.

I know that there are plenty of people who were against fox hunting, but I would say that there are also plenty of hunts who do comply faithfully with the law and set trails and do everything correctly, and condemn those that do not.

Equestrian medalists from the Parish Olympics were ignored in recent honours list.

The Government seems to be at war with the countryside and those that live in it.
Click to expand...
Not so much ‘at war with the countryside’, as completely off the agenda, and been the case for decades. Consideration is simply not there.
Less than 10% UK population are rural, the political class (ALL parties in UK) is urban - end of. To be fair, so are large numbers of foxes these days....
There are many concerns about this government and its Chancellor’s non-manifesto policies - trail hunting fairly low on the list, tbh.
 
No, I d
ycbm said:
IF you claim for benefits and are in receipt of a benefit, you will still get the payment.

Do you know how many people of that generation won't claim for benefits that aren't an automatic payment, because they were brought up not to ask for charity? That's why it was paid the way it was.

I'm in favour of it not going to people who don't need it. The way it was done, within days of election, within months of when it was due to be paid, stank.

And the fact that our Chancellor of the Exchequer either didn't know or couldn't work out that most of the savings would be wiped out by increased benefit claims raises a lot of questions.
.
Click to expand...
No, I don't know how many people of that generation won't claim it - do you? If that statistic is available, people are on the radar, and if social services do their job, they'll be picked up? I agree if was a sudden halt, but I do believe far more people were in receipt of it than actually needed it. Surely people of that generation are mostly the children of the 50's and 60's, and have been bought up with the benefit system? I believe there was an increase to the benefits which replaced, or more than replaced, the amount lost by the cold weather payment?
 
It was inevitable that it was going to go this way.
I did my dissertation on fox hunting and the Burns Inquiry. I was very much pro hunting continuing in whatever way it could, but having seen the behaviour of some and the way they openly flaunt what they are doing, I’m now of the opinion that the whole thing needs banning.

Such a shame for those doing it legally, of course, but it’s not the first time that the minority (or is it?) ruin it for the majority.
 
scats said:
It was inevitable that it was going to go this way.
I did my dissertation on fox hunting and the Burns Inquiry. I was very much pro hunting continuing in whatever way it could, but having seen the behaviour of some and the way they openly flaunt what they are doing, I’m now of the opinion that the whole thing needs banning.

Such a shame for those doing it legally, of course, but it’s not the first time that the minority (or is it?) ruin it for the majority.
Click to expand...


Burns, of course, didn't include cub hunting in his review of whether hunting was humane. It's a truly vile part of traditional hunting.
For those who don't know, cubs are trapped inside a piece of woodland by the field turning them back with noise every time they try to get out. And then the hounds are put in to slaughter them.
.
 
ycbm said:
You think social services have time to run round the country asking pensioners if they are entitled to claim benefits?
.
Click to expand...
If the system isn't helping those who need it, it's not fit for purpose.The generation who wont accept charity are being replaced by those who were young during the " world owes us a living" culture .
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top