The reason is simple; the English fox has been carefully husbanded, nurtured and culled. The hunt is the annual cull, operated in a narrow non-breeding season. Another fact. Amid all the intricate lines of the food chains that operate here in the country, with predators night and day hunting their quarry, only the fox sits at the top of the chain. No one preys on him. Without a selective reduction in his numbers, he would experience a population explosion with disastrous results for the rest of the ecology and just as bad for the foxes, reduced to scavenging garbage or fighting each other as the life support system ran out.
Another uncomfortable fact. The actual cull is conducted by three highly skilled professionals, the huntsman and two whippers-in. These men alone, plus the hounds, could do the job. That a hundred others in bright pink costumes choose to come after them may be traditional, picturesque or offensive, but it has nothing to do with the reduction of the numbers in the fox population.
These are the people who take their pleasure in riding at breakneck speed on large horses over some of the roughest countryside they can find - or that the fox can find for them. Personally, I think they are crazy, but then I don't hunt and don't even like horses.
A true cull is not just a decimation across the board; lorries can do that. A cull emulates Nature; as the lion of Africa or the wolf in the Arctic, it weeds out the weak, the old, the tired, the sick and the infirm. As in Nature, the great majority of the fit, virile animals in the prime escape, to mate, breed and produce equally fine offspring. Hence the genetic supremacy of the English fox.
The mainspring behind the conversion of millions of your constituents to the view of the zealots lies in anthropomorphism - an ugly Greek word that means two things: assumption by humans that wild animals share the same standards, criteria, attitudes and fears that we do; and a presumption that we can judge the worth of a wild animal whether we think he is pretty or not.
Most of those who live in our cities and suburbs, and thus the bulk supporting the Bill, have only ever seen a fox on a TV documentary. Here they are presented as little bundles of fluff called cubs. Like puppies and kittens, we judge them to be sweet, cute and fetching. Few mention that these bundles of fluff grow up to be the biggest mass killers in the English countryside.
The fox is one of the three animals in our Nature (the other two are the mink and the polecat) that kills for pleasure, not just what it needs for food. The bunny rabbit is a cute little fellow too; in a full life a fox will happily kill a thousand of them. Chickens are quite harmless ladies and provide us with our eggs; a fox will slaughter the entire house of them for fun. Lambs are cute too; I know, because children come to my farm in lambing time just to cuddle them. There are two carcases in my yard at the moment (lambs, not children) that had their heads chewed off last night.
It is a harsh fact that death is an integral part of our rustic ecology. The owl, jay, magpie, crow, hawk and kestrel hunt eggs, voles, mice and shrews. The stoat, weasel and polecat prey on rabbits and ground-birds. The mink slaughters water fowl chicks. The fox has his honoured place in this scheme of hunter and hunted, but his numbers must be controlled. If you abolish the cull by hound, what is left? Gas: horrible and indiscriminate. Poison: it can empty an entire woodland, including domestic pets. Traps: savage and illegal. The rifle: no sharp-shooter can guarantee a head or heart shot. All imply a long, lingering death in hideous agony.
Only the hound can start the nocturnal fox from his daytime lie-up in dense cover and guarantee despatch in a few seconds or freedom intact.
It may be there is a case that the cull is not necessary at all. I doubt it but, if so, good government requires that the decision be made on the basis of profound study, factual evidence and the views of those steeped in knowledge of our countryside and the natural world within it.
