Fox Hunting.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIIC, Issue 14211, 28 May 1910, Page 2 (Supplement)

Fox Hunting.

Is Our National Sport on the Decline? CBy Sydney Brooks in the '-Chronicle.'".) J On March 31st fox hunting ends its j live months' reign. It has been on the | whole a reign or unusual prosperity and I success. Against it, the imnv waves of j the General Election beat iii vain. The ; J-.ii.yhsh, who carried a pack of hounds i witli them right through the Peninsular ; V>av. are not likely to be cheated of j tlieir sport by any mero strife cf words . at home. Society electioneered, but it also hunted as fervently as ever. I And so, I suvmose and hone. it ; always will he. On November Ist all j will fro on again as before. No one can i imagine an England without at leas: ! one hundred and iifty packs of fox- ; ':'. ni!K ' s .-. a or so of harriers, fifty of beagles, and some fifteen or twenty of staghounds. And as for an England that had iinallv turned its back oil the chase—the thing is flatlv inconceivable. None the less a huntsman who looks hack on the last fiftv years and forward to the next fift'v must admit that all is not quite as well as it looks with his favourite pastime. And yet at first sight any misgivings at all seem almost ridiculous." Was "our national sport" ever more popular or more lavishly maintained Do not the shires still hold their own for n unique combination of stout, strahditrunning foxes, high scent,' difficult variegated jumps, thrilling fortvminute hursts, superb horseflesh, and expert huntsmen r Look at the veaily outlay on fox-hunting, some £lO.000,000 a year—what other sport can bring out_ such practical •enthusiasm? Look at its indirect benefits to the railways. hotelkeepers, the village tradesmen, and so on—what other sport fills the pockets of a whole countryside ? Or think of the numbers of those who hunt themselves or follow the chase on foot., on bicycles, in trans and motors—l doubt whether in any" given season they can be put at less "than a million and a half. Think, too. of the social influence and effects of the sport—how a meet gives the signal for an informal holiday over a radius of ten miles, how all people, rich and poor, men and women, are on an equality at the covert side, and what fellowship and good humour the healthiest of all exercises induces among those who indulge in it and among the classes and interests affected hv it. "With such wealth and enthusiasm, such a wholesome, snorting and levelling spirit behind it. "the future of foxhunting, would seem to be secure enough. And yet the end., of every season brings up the old ' torturing whether, in spite of everything, the chase may not be on the decline, may not even in the long run be squeezed out of existence. It is only when we look at other countries that ive realise what a. miracle it is that in this small, overcrowded island fox-hunting should flourish so umbragously ; and it is only when we cast our minds back half a century that we realise how completely all the conditions under which it scarred on have been revolutionised. Picture a hunt as it was in the days when railways were few in the land and before the game preserver had arisen to prefer the pheasant to the fox. First of all it was an affair of neighbours. The intruding freelance,' appearing from Heaven knows where and disappearing nto equally recondite recesses when the day's run was over, breakfasting in Loudon and reaching a Leicestershire covert-side in time for I first draw, was absolutely unknown. I everybody was acquainted with every- | bodv else, and all were interested, as | landlords or tenants, in the soil. A /'imnt in those days had a compact t-er-

ritoriai bnsis. a frioridiv cxcbc.iveuoss ; •"! almost all the forage, most oft.hu bar!-::, and not a lev. of the hunters were purchased locally. But to-day we find the. railways im- ' purring an entre.ly new etass of metv j into the hunting-field, townsmen for tho j most part, who know little of hunting j and less of agriculture, who do not re- ; side in the district they patronise, who ! pay no subscriptions. and make no ; donation to the upkeep of the pack, ■ who are quite unaffected by what is 1 said or thought of them in" a locality they only visit once or .twice a season, who swell the fields to an uncontrollable size, spoil sport, and are either careless or ignorant of how much damage they inflict. _A few hunts have made a practieo of "capping" these marauding strangj ers to tho tune of a couple of pounds a | day. In time the stratagem may become the universal rule, for I venture to predict that if ever a movement is agitated among the farmers for the extraction of a hunting; rent, or if over an epidemic of fox-trapping breaks out in the Shires, these unwelcome freebooters will be mainly responsible. Tho M'.F.H. of to-day, instead of knowJug everybody, knows hardly ten per cent, of the huge fields that turn out for a popular meet. The difference is one of some moment. A farmer who will not object to having bis land J'idden over, his fences damaged, and his crops cut up by the local squire, and parson and doctor —provided, of course, duo compensation is paid—will he violently and not unreasonably irritated when the depredations are the work of a complete stranger. And when, as often hapoens, the stranger is a townsman, with a cockney's contempt for the bucolic way of looking at things, and a, cockney's innocence of agricultural knowledge. the sort of man who tramples soring wheat and leaves gates open, irritation quickly passes into active resentment. To keen the farmer in good humour is. indeed, the first of the many tasks of djnlomaev that devolve upon the M.F.FT.: and probably there are few difficulties that an M'.F.'H. who knows the value of persuasion and the folly of any appearance of compulsion, who will take the trouble to visit the farmers in his district during the spring and summer mouths, and who is well provided with a compensation fund, cannot smoothe away. Still, the farmers as a class, though their sporting instincts are probably as strong as ever, no longer have the same personal interest and parth-ipa-tion in fox-hunt-ing. They are no longer the backbone of the hunt as their predecessors were. The disappearance of the large farmer of the 'fifties and 'sixties, the gap in the old semi-feudal relationship, the rise of the small-holdings man who is 100 poor to hunt, the inroads of the "big store'' upon the rural breeder and provision merchant, and the greater attention that is now paid to special, subsidiary branches of agriculture, and especially to poultry-rearing, lrave brought about a vast change*; ,and, the symptoms of the change are to be seen in the wiring of hedges, summonses for trespass, a quite novel, though by no means universal, spirit of grumbling and ill-will, and increasing, and almost overwhelming demands, upon the compensation funds. And besides nil this there is the railway, at once reducing the area within which hunting is practicable, and largelv adding to the numbers of those who follow the hounds; the builder and speculator, continually opening up new districts and so suoiling another stretch of country for the chase; and above all. the pheasant-preserver, who wars —or at least bis keeper does—troon the fox relentlessly, who often forbids his coverts to be drawn until the first "big shoot" is over—and that may not be till the hunting season is half ever —and whose rivalry <=o*-n=times makes it necessary for an M.F.M. to rent coverts on bis own account to save thorn from the shooting tenant. There really may be a time —say about 2110 ■—wlien we shall hunt no more.