"Ban hunting with dogs," declares the advertisement in British newspapers from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The advertisement says that most huntsmen (no PC person-speak here) will tell you that the death of a fox is swift and painless: "A quick nip in the back of the neck, and he's down."
If only, laments the RSPCA's copywriter. "Foxhounds tend to go for the softer option. The belly. This brings the fox down but doesn't immediately kill it. Death is usually by disembowelment." Tomorrow week, the sentiments which motivated that advertisement could well bring about the virtual ruin of the Irish horse-breeding industry, as the House of Commons votes to ban the use of dogs in hunting, effectively ending fox-hunting in Britain.
The British market is perhaps the most important of all for the Irish brood mare, one of the equine miracles of man's creation, just as the countryside both here and in Britain, and anywhere in Europe, is man's creation. Virtually everything we see when we enter the countryside is an artefact devised by human beings: the hedges were planted by us, the trees were cultivated by us, the moors were grazed by us, the fields were shaped by us, the environment managed by us. It is all ours. We made it; and we can unmake it. It is not natural. Without us, it would vanish.
Urban fools
Much of the anti-hunting lobby seems to be composed of urban fools who think that the countryside is something given to us by Providence. It is not. It is a carefully composed symphony which without the hand of man would soon be a discordant cacophony.
The fox in Ireland, as in Britain, fits into an entirely artificial wildlife hierarchy. It is the highest mammal in the food chain, the two species which would threaten its hegemony, the wolf and the bear, having been eliminated. It needs to be controlled, yet preserved. This is an entirely contrived relationship.
Maybe, as the RSPCA declares, a fox is disembowelled before it dies. Maybe it is not. Maybe dogs quickly break its neck - pack-killers prefer not to have a prey which can damage them while they eat. But one thing is fairly certain: a fox which dies what the RSPCA regards as a natural death is one that dies by starvation, caused by loss of teeth or slowness through age or disease. Take your pick. You have two choices, and only two, and neither includes being ministered to in a hospital bed with intravenous drugs while nuns chant melodiously beside you as your fingers flutter on the sheets.
Lingering death
You can die in a moment or two, being attacked by dogs, and probably going into shock without noticing very much; or you can die a slow, lingering death in a ditch, bluebottles laying their eggs in your eyes and rats nibbling at you. Which would you choose?
To clarify your thoughts, let me quote a recent account by a woman who was attacked by a hyena. "The mind, I found, is strange. It shut off during the attack while my body continued to act, without thought or even sight. I don't remember him sinking his teeth into my arm, though I heard a little grating noise as his teeth chewed into the bone. Everything was black and slow and exploding in my stomach. Vision returned gradually . . . I saw at a remove the hyena inside my right arm, and my other arm banging him on the head. My body, in the absence of a mind, had decided that this was the best thing to do . . . My mind was so calm and remote that I frightened myself."
Worse follows. The point is that she felt no pain, even as the hyena began to eat her, even though she was screaming throughout. Hyenas are wretchedly slow killers. Even when, part of the arm consumed, it started to eat her leg, she felt no pain. None. Is it not possible that her experience is no different from the sensations of other prey-victims, such as foxes? So think again and choose: the bluebottles, the cold, the rooks and the rats, or the pack of dogs: which is to be?
Joy of the hunt
I do not say that hunts exist to put foxes to death humanely. They exist for the joy of the hunt, which is great whether or not a fox is caught; as is the joy of rough-shooting dependent not so much on the bag but on the thrill of wading through scrub on a winter's morning with a couple of working dogs flushing the cabbage field or scouring through babbling water-courses.
The hunting lobby did itself a terrible disservice with its claims that it keeps the fox population down. It doesn't. If a fox is young, it will outrun and out-wile any hunt. Only the halt and lame and ill fall prey to hunts. Shooting and baiting are still necessary to control foxes; uncontrolled, they will exterminate the pheasant (another of man's additions to the Irish countryside).
In the short term, the death of hunting in Britain would wreak havoc on the Irish horse industry. Just as bad is the threat of a witless sentimentality about animals infecting our attitude to the countryside. Still, I can't help thinking that a lot of Northern unionists might be a little less unionist when hunting is criminalised there, while in Free Ireland, the hunt gathers still, thank God.