Ten Years After the "Ban"

Over Horse and Hound they give a short look back at "the ban" on hunting fox with dogs that passed 10 years ago in the U.K.

It was not, of course, an actual ban on hunting fox with terriers or hounds, nor did it prevent the killing of fox with snare or gun.

So what was it about? 

Students of history and fox hunting will tell you it was little more than nattering nannyism based on vestigial elements of class warfare left over from the last throes of the Enclosure Movement some 120 years earlier.

Horse and Hound notes that "Since the ban was enforced on 18 February 2005, registered hunts in England and Wales have carried out more than 150,000 days hunting."

Over the course of the first nine years of the law, only 341 people were convicted of Hunting Act offences, and just 21 of those people involved with registered hunts; the others were, for the most part, folks poaching or engaging in offenses that were illegal under the law that existed prior to the Hunting Act (i.e. disturbing a badger sette or hunting badger).