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It seems at least one British newspaper has just discovered that we have fox hunting in America, except that our mountains might be a bit bigger in spots, and our "fox" might be a bit bigger in spots too, as it's often a coyote.
Now, will someone tell the Brits we also have terrier work, only ours is legal all over, and year-round on the East Coast. And yes, travel agents are standing by.
- Related Links:
** Fox Hunting Over the Globe
** Rudyard Kipling: The Fox Meditates
** Aldo Leopold on Gadgets and Fox Hunting
** The Fox Versus the Stork
** Virginia Fox Hunting Tours for the British
** Maryland Fox Pack
** Virginia County Raises the Bounty on Coyotes
** Monongahela National Forest Red Wolves?
** Comparative Demography, Geography & Ecology
** These Are The Good Old Days
** Coyotes Eat Ozzies Dog While He Watches Jacko
** The Geography of American Working Terriers
** Cacophonous Coyotes of Washington, D.C.
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6 comments:
"Red foxes are a rarity in the US"
Really? Not in my neck of the woods. What a weird, Hollywood spin the writer has put on this article. About the last place I'd think was related to "fox" hunting would be Cali. No wonder they don't catch any coyotes, just look at the wide-open terrain. Wily must see them coming ten miles away.
Seahorse
Most journalists are amazingly ignorant of wildlife, a consequence of so many being centered at urban newspapers and TV stations. I told one woman reporter she only needed boots to come into the field with me for a day -- she showed up (I am not making this up) wearing little leather GoGo boots with heels. Did she think we were going dancing? I was (for once) speechless.
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From what I can work out, the American hunts catch a lot less than UK ones do (even when said catches are the accidental result of using animals bred for tens of generations to hunt foxes to pursue a smelly rag), have far fewer mounted followers, and obsess endlessly about correct dress.
Over here in the UK, looking vaguely smart is about as far as it goes, and given that there's a crowd of fifty or sixty riders (this is an average for ANY meet, even a mid-week one, for a not-at-all posh pack) you can blend into the crowd quite easily.
Terrier work is legal here, given a few minor constraints, chief of which being that badgers must not be even mildly inconvenienced, despite the fact that sooner or later there's going to have to be an epic cull of the buggers to rein in endemic bovine tuberculosis (badgers are the main wildlife reservoir of this disease).
As for legality of hunting with a pack of hounds, I can merely report that the UK police at the level of beat officers have not the slightest, most molecular interest in the welfare of anything vulpine, knowing as they do that if a hunt doesn't thin 'em out a bit, high velocity lead will be used to do the same thing. Not that I would advocate breaking any laws, though; modern hunts are geniuses at making drag hunting looks quite remarkably similar to real hunting. I really don't know how they do it...
100% percent right on every point Dan!
Mounted fox hunting in the US is a dress up game for the most part. In the U.S., if we need to control fox we set leghold traps (gins) and the matter is sorted in a night or two. Our Gray fox bolt up trees if pursued, while the Red fox dive down groundhog holes (they are all over in the East) and only the sick or deaf fox get chopped above ground (very, very rare).
The rise of coyotes means there's more potential for a mounted hunt kill now (we have a bounty on coyotes in Virginia where I live), but it's also a huge problem for the houndsmen as the coyotes will run straight across the roads of four counties with the hounds hard behind them, while fox will eventually circle back to stay within a 400-800 acre (about one square mile) territory.
To be 100% legal in the UK with terriers, you have to paper up with a scrap that says you are doing fox abatement to prevent or reduce serious damage to game birds or wild birds that are being kept or preserved to be shot. That's permission that is not too hard to get, from what I gather!
P
Well, you'd be amazed how many farmers either have a few wild pheasants on their land that they'd like to preserve (under English law, a pheasant is a wild bird and belongs to whoever's land it is on, regardless of if it was bought from a game farm for a specialist shoot), or partridges, or even merely wish to cull foxes that might be eating gamebirds that aren't there now but might be if there weren't foxes about...
You get my drift, anyway.
Harking back to pre-ban times, the bulk of the fox-killing by hounds took place in autumn in the very early morning, for the most part in sugarbeet fields. Foxes love to lie up in sugarbeet; its nice cover, warm, and there's lots of fox-food in there, lots of earthworms and so on. Many an adolescent cub lives out its entire life never seeing anything but a den, then a sugarbeet field, then a very close look at a foxhound.
Hunt protesters and saboteurs almost never show up at cubbing meets; the early mornings and quiet starts tend to put the bulk of the lazy buggers off. The only occasion I have seen police attending a post-ban cubbing meet, said police took not the slightest interest in proceedings, not even at a couple of inadvertant kills (duly signified by the huntsman blowing for a kill, in case anyone was in doubt).
After the autumn hunting finishes, I'd say most fox deaths are down to the terrier men (or the Gardening Department as we tend to call 'em). This year they accounted for a fair number, but right at the back end of the season the farmers seemed to have a great purge of foxes, likely by shooting; it'll be interesting to see how many turn up next year. English foxes are ubiquitous, and nowhere is it possible to completely eradicate them. The Welsh gun-packs try, every year they try with all their might to locally extinct them to cut lamb deaths come spring, but they never quite manage it.
"Gardening Department"
Love that!
Might have to get a hat that says that ;-)
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