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I spent the first few years of my childhood in
rural England on a farm in Wiltshire. My parents were
farmers; or, to be more exact, my father was. My mother
was a vet and spent her time patching up or healing farm
(and other) animals. My own conscious memory goes back to
1954. I can put a photograph, a date, a place, a memory
and a scent to it. I was surrounded by animals, crops,
farmers and field sports. Fox hunting was one of these. A
Field Sport with I am not about to launch into a defence of fox hunting; but neither am I going to condemn it as the worst example of barbarism. Humanity pursues its own peculiar brand of field sports in the self-destruction it practises - on a daily basis - without my needing to draw global comparisons. No, when it comes to fox hunting, I have to admit to being firmly impaled on the horns of a dilemma. In later, adult life, I have come to have some
sympathy for those who perceive it as "the pursuit
of the uneatable by the unspeakable" (Oscar Wilde) -
the ones who rail against that group of supposedly
wealthy men and women who have a vested interest in their
rural estates and their stables full of fine, expensive
horses that need exercise from time to time and who breed
and train hounds expressly for the purpose of hunting
foxes. In 1955, my parents moved from Wiltshire to Herefordshire. My mother was still a vet but they became Masters [equity of terminology did not exist then - and even now, if it did, it might be misconstrued(!)] of the North Hereford Hunt. The kennels were at Bodenham and we lived, for a while, in the Home Farm adjacent to Hampton Court - the country seat of the Devereux family. The Home Farm was not littered with bale-elevators nor were there dangerous bulls in the yard. For me the move meant a great deal more freedom. I was all of five years old and had my own wheels - a tricycle, which I rode everywhere and sometimes dangerously close to the River Lugg - and I could bound and leap all over the huge wool sacks in the otherwise empty stables - until Her Ladyship caught me and chided me in no uncertain terms. I have since discovered she was a relative so I don't know what all the fuss was about. As far as she was concerned back then, I guess I was just the reprobate offspring of the local huntsman.
In the late fifties, my parents moved to West
Wales and re-formed the Teifiside Hunt near Cardigan. I
grew up watching hounds At the other end of the spectrum, the sheer size and magnificence of the adult mountain foxes was something I remember to this day. A small wolf would not have been an unreasonable size comaparison. Needless to say, a few vixens with litters of cubs on the Prescelli foothills could wreak havoc with winter lambs and many of the smallholders could ill afford the loss of one, let alone weather a series of attacks, when every animal successfully reared was counted in the battle to eek out just a meagre living under such harsh conditions. As I was able to manage more powerful horses so
I found I was allowed to spend longer in the hunting
field and the more time I spent in the field the more I
enjoyed the extended riding experience. The challenge of
the riding and the exhilaration of galloping and jumping
with a really trustworthy hunter under the saddle had
much to recommend it. Besides, the day's hunting was an
important social occasion, not to mention being One of the inevitable results of riding up with
the the field was to Even now, Frequently the fox would get away - I think that it was this close-quarters, human involvement which turned my support for fox hunting into one of ambivalence. My father gave up fox hunting in the mid sixties. In much the same way as he'd been concerned with the hunting lines of the hounds and the breeding of his hunters, he remained eternally involved with and fascinated by the breeding of dogs and horses and with the choice of genetic lines to produce the best progeny in all things canine and equine. In later life he became involved with a novel and humane form of hunting which provided the equestrian thrills and exercise (not to mention the social benefits) for all who followed the hunt but without the culmination in death for the quarry. |
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capital letters. 
But I also empathise with the farmer who stands
looking at a pen of shredded chickens or a field of
ragged lambs - dead or dying - after a fox attack. And I
have seen a fox dying from lead poisoning after it has
been shot (several days previously) by a so-called humane
farmer who refused to allow the hunt on his land for
"cruelty" reasons. He shot the fox himself -
badly - and it died a slow, cruel and painful death
despite the efforts made (by fox hunting people) to save
it.
Of course, there
were meets at the estates of the landed and the titled.
The Opening Meet was an occasion for everyone's social
calendar - like the annual Hunt Ball, the local
Agricultural Show 
or the Point-to-Point
Steeplechases. In the meantime I grew up to ride my own
pony out hunting, learned the rules and the traditions
and went through the "right of passage" of
blooding. At the time, I thought nothing of it other than
to feel I'd reached a new, important level in the society
in which I moved. It wasn't until later that I began to
question the status quo.
hunt in all weathers and
across all terrain - even over the cliffs and along the
beach and I watched and helped my mother, the vet, with
her favourite brood Dachshund, bring up orphan fox cubs
while the adults of the species were hunted. It didn't
seem overly strange at the time and, truth to tell, it
doesn't now either. The care of the small and the
helpless - no matter it's adult disposition - is an
instinct difficult to ignore.
something of a
dating agency for hormone-smitten youth. The process of
controlling the local fox population may well have been
uppermost in the mind of the men and women in the pink
coats but they were also providing an important social
function in a rural area where families (as opposed to
the adult males) might not otherwise have seen each other
from one end of the month to the next. 
be close to - if not near -
where the kill occurred. Kills were actually seldom seen
in a straight contest of speed and cunning and, before
going on, I have to say that I have considered
the moment of the kill. 
I can only come to the
conclusion that it is quick and immediate; animal on
animal, neck snapped and it's over. Not gas, not shotgun
pellets, nor traps - it's the animal hunter and the
animal hunted; we see it every day on our screens - the
hunting prides and packs - from the plains of Africa to
the rivers and bilabongs of Australia. Only, in this
case, there's overwhelming human governance and guidance.
the tales of the
one that got away are as many and varied as the stories
fisherfolk tell - and it would reach the supposed safety
of its own (or a borrowed) earth. Then, for the hunters,
it became necessary to bring in terriers and to dig or
bolt the fox 
out for the hounds to pursue again or to set
upon.