How far will the British Labour Government's inclination - it is hardly more than that - to ban fox-hunting go? If the ban went on, wouldn't the gentry on the grouse moor be next? And what about the village Bobby and his pals going after a few woodpigeons at the weekend? And then the patient line of fishermen along the canal with their keep-nets and maggots?
As far as keeping the fox population down, the hunting crowd can't be very effective. In fact, genetically educated naturalists tell us that the more foxes you kill, shoot or otherwise, the more the remainder bring up the population again. They have the ability to exercise real birth control. Anyway the Terror of the Henhouse is a thing of the past. Fowl, nowadays, sit behind wire cages in huge concentration camps. The bets surely are that the banning idea will drag on to a slow kill.
But if it comes to a wild animal that really does damage crops and fences and generally causes disruption it's the wild boar, subject of a series of articles in a French hunting magazine. In 1996 compensation for damage to crops and otherwise, was paid out to the tune of £20 million - well, 155 million francs. Damage done, that is, by wild animals, of which eighty per cent was attributed to boars. The rest to deer and other game. It's not clear how this sum is divided between the hunting federations and the government, but there must be some governmental backing. And the thing is, that the wild boar is increasing in numbers and very rapidly. Six-fold in the last 20 years, the magazine states.
Last year there were 250,000 of them; the previous year 230,000. The boar is big enough and tough enough to have no predators, isn't put out by bad climatic conditions and, in short, is thriving. For, while you might think that shooting young females might keep the numbers down, in fact the older females produce twice as many young. Hunting the boar, of course, is by shooting. It is said that the cost of leasing a piece of boarrich forest is rising, which means the gun-clubs have to increase their membership fees. They also, in some cases, have to put up electric fences for farmers in bad cases.
Shooting in forest can be tricky. On the first day of the season, in particular, regular accidents are recorded. One thing you can say for boar hunting, as against the fox crowd, is that the boar makes tasty eating. Elizabeth David gives a recipe.