Foxhunting has finally been banned, and the last hunt ever (possibly) happened yesterday. If you're a fox, this is great news, assuming you're a clever enough fox to read and understand any newspaper that you may have come across while ripping out the odd chicken's throat.
It's not the event itself that's fascinating, so much as the ideas and arguments that have come out of the woodwork ever since it happened.
Anti-hunters are rejoicing that no more foxes will be killed by being chased for up to two hours until they're exhausted, and then being ripped apart while alive, which strikes me as a fair enough comment. Others rejoice that animals are not being killed for human enjoyment, which I can also subscribe to. However, the idea that we all rejoice in animals not being killed at all strikes me as slightly stranger. Should we, for instance, kill or imprison all lions now so that innocent zebras don't pop their clogs?
Pro-hunters have a range of arguments just as interesting. One is that their enjoyment is being interfered with, and I hope we can write that argument off straight away; similarly, it can't carry on simply because it's traditional, like witch-burning. A more convincing version is that dogs finish the job, whereas a marksman (or is it a marksperson?) might leave a wounded fox trotting around. Is this sudden concern for the fox's welfare?
The main question to be asked is why people hunt in the first place. If it's for exercise, it can be done in other ways; if it's for excitement, other things are exciting; if it's doing the farmer a favour, it's a pretty inefficient approach to take twenty horses, twenty people at goodness knows what nominal rate per hour, and fifty dogs to run around for half a day and perhaps kill one fox.
If it's because they enjoy killing things, then there are institutions for such people.
Over to you: is it defensible or indefensible, or don't we really care?
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