BAN ON FOX SHOOTERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 77, 31 March 1928, Page 1 (Supplement)

BAN ON FOX SHOOTERS.

LORD DALUENY. WON T MIX WITH SUSPECTS. Because lx>rd Dalmeny. Master of the Whaddon Hunt, does not wish to sit at table with certain farmers who are suspected of shooting foxes, he has refused to preside at the annual dinner of the Winslow branch of the Farmers' Union. Lord Dalineuy told "The Sunday News" that his difference was entirely with these particular farmers. "I have no quarrel with the Farmers' Union, of which I am a. member, and with the farmers generally I am on very' good terms. But in view of the circumstances I am. very sorry that I cannot take the chair at the annual dinner of the branch."

Lord Dalmeny's popularity led the 'local farmers to ask him to preside, and in a letter to the local secretary declining the invitation he said that, while any farmer had the right to shoot foxes on his own land, or to warn the hunt off his farm, anyone else was equally entitled to refuse to dine with people to whom he objected.

He suggested that if the local branch of the Farmers' Union would care to ask another chairman, he would not take it amiss.

It is said that the shooting of foxes] in the Whaddon country has been going on for some time, and that recently, with the pack in full cry, a fox mysteriously disappeared, coincident with two I gun reports.

In recent years public attention was] directed to the hunt over the question of the mastership, but since Lord Dalmeny took over there have been no personal differences, and relations between the hunt and the fanners have been, on the whole, cordiaL j