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Anorak News | The Hunt Is Over

The Hunt Is Over

by | 18th, February 2005

‘POKE your head out of the window this morning and chances are that the first thing you will see is a fox casually strolling down the street seemingly without a care in the world.

”A pet fox makes a great draught excluder”

And well he might for from today it is illegal so much as to say boo to a goose (proverbial or otherwise), far less set a pack of hounds on a fox.

However, what’s sauce for the goose is not in this instance sauce for the gander and those whose idea of a good day out was chasing said fox around the countryside today weep for their lost sport.

The Telegraph has a picture of Peter Collins, the Quorn’s huntsman, struggling to hold back tears as he prepared to become one of the 100,000 people who yesterday rode out for the last time.

Legally, at least. For the paper says thousands have promised to saddle up tomorrow and test the new Hunting Act to its limit.

Even the Guardian gets a bit teary as it listens to Rikki Bennett, master of the Chiddingfold, Leconfield and Cowdray Hunt, read a poem.

“We have no wish to exaggerate/ The worth of the sports we prize…/Yet if we once efface the joys of the chase/ From the land, and outroot the stud/ Goodbye to the Anglo-Saxon race/ Farewell to the Norman blood.”

Now we at Anorak are no fans of the fox and if people want to spend their weekends chasing one around a field, they should be allowed to do so.

But it might be overstating the case slightly to suggest that the very future of England depends on the right of people to dress up in strange clothes and shout “Tally ho!”

Nor do fox hunters make a better case for their sport elsewhere.

“We will all be criminals tomorrow,” Hamish Hiddlestone, landlord of The Stag (a pub that has played host to hunters for more than 300 years) said.

“When was the last time a sport was banned? Imagine if you said to Manchester United you can’t play football anymore.”

Eager as ever to please, we do as good Mr Hiddlestone suggests and imagine a world where Manchester United weren’t allowed to play football.

And a beautiful world it is too…’



Posted: 18th, February 2005 | In: Uncategorized Comment | TrackBack | Permalink