Blood-sports are recreations in connection with which animals are pained, or killed, or both. Some common forms of this sport in England are the hunting of foxes, hares, otters, and deer, wild and practically domesticated; the coursing of hares and rabbits; the shooting of hand-reared pheasants, etc., in the battue; and the shooting of pigeons and other birds from traps.
The points which render this class of amusement objectionable are (1) That all these creatures could be destroyed with less suffer and, and (2) that the harrying or killing is effected in order to provide pleasure for those engaged in it. As to the first of these points, it would be easy to destroy deer, foxes, otters, hares, and rabbits by the employment of the gun. To hunt them to death entails upon them avoidable pain.
Take the chase of a fox or a wild deer. Before death comes to its rescue, there may have been a protracted effort to escape the jaws of the pack, extending over a couple of hours. Who shall estimate the agony endured in the course of it by the quarry? The same remark applies to otter and hare hunting.
Here is a glimpse of what the hare often suffers. The West Somerset Free Press, of March 20, 1909, records a meet of the Nettlecombe Harriers on March 12. A long and glowing account is given of the hunt, which took place with the second hare found. The latter part of the chase is thus chronicled:—
“Still holding on, she went by Combe Barn, Putnoller Copse, Vemplett’s Cross, top of the Grove, and down again to Huish Barton, where she bolted into a drain running from the pond near the house into the meadows on the opposite side of the road. The water was turned into the drain and drove the hare out, and she was Accounted for in the usual way. She had given a rattling good hunting run of two and a-half hours without a check worth mentioning.”
How easy it would have been to have killed this hare without all this agony!
Then again, where the gun is used, creatures are destroyed in such a manner very frequently as to cause unnecessary suffering: for example, pheasants, hares, etc., are shot in the battue. But in this mêlée many heads of game generally escape, instead of being immediately secured, and are left in a wounded condition, to be picked up next day by the keeper’s party, assisted by their retriever dogs. In the shooting of birds from traps, many are often hit, but not secured. True sport would demand that wounded birds should be brought to hand, wherever possible, before others are aimed
A second objection to blood-sport is founded on this, that mere amusement is sought. But what right-minded person can deliberately justify the paining or doing to death of any lower being for recreation alone? That sport lies at the bottom of these practices is patent from the fact that any man who should shoot a fox or wild deer would become an object of great dislike in his locality among hunting-people, and they would find a way to penalise him.
There is one form of sport in which the death of the quarry is the last thing the hunt desire, and that is park-deer chasing. The animal used for this purpose is kept in a paddock and taken to the meet in a van. When liberated, the pack are laid on its trail, and it is run till, quite exhausted, it seeks refuge in a shed, or house, or yard, or pond. It is then recovered, often dosed with spirituous liquor, and taken to its home on the same or the next day, and preserved for a like ordeal on a future occasion.
This, of course, was the kind of sport pursued by the old Royal Buckhounds, concerning which diversion the late Queen Victoria said, through her Private Secretary, December 24, 1891: “The Queen has been strongly opposed to stag-hunting for many years past.”
As Her Majesty must have had this feeling twenty years before she died, it was the product of a strong and clear-judging intellect.
In the tame-stag worry an animal might be subjected to torture some fifty times, if it had a long career. I say torture, because it never gets into such a state of mind that it ceases to regard the pursuing hounds as its enemies. Even the celebrated experienced stag, “Guy Fawkes,” which met its death at Reading in 1894, ran till it could go no longer, and finally dropped from exhaustion. If we are to believe what stag-hunters tell us, “Guy Fawkes,” when, tired, ought to have stopped and played with the hounds.
This species of sport still flourishes in the land, about a dozen packs being engaged in it. Looking at the moral side of these national pastimes, we cannot help saying that they are offensive to all ideas of worthful manhood. To kill any living thing in a way that inflicts upon it unnecessary pain proves a man to be cruel, tyrannical, selfish, and mean. To get amusement out of the process proclaims him to be something worse than this. No legislation, of course, can touch the latter evil. We cannot regulate a person a feelings by law; we can only take cognisance of his acts, and declare that he shall not be allowed to do this or that.
And this is just what law has done, at any rate, in some degree. The man who kills domestic creatures—an ox or worn-out horse, for instance—in a barbarous manner may be punished. And with regard to certain sports, the law has very properly stepped in and put down bull-baiting, dog-fighting, cock-fighting, badger-drawing and some similar evil customs. It leaves really wild creatures, however, beyond the pale of its protection—a very wrong principle, for why should not a wild animal be shielded from ill-usage as well as a domestic one? To make a distinction of this kind is absurd. Humanitarians, while they see the conclusions to which strict logic would lead them, are quite willing to advance in these matters by degrees, looking to a better-informed public opinion to enable them to reach, by-and-by, the rightful goal.
This is the reason why they have picked out of the sports above mentioned those which appear most reprehensible, viz., the carted-deer chase, the coursing of captured rabbits, and shooting birds from traps. These practices it is sought to abolish by the enactment of the Spurious Sports Bill, now called Cruelty to Animals Bill, a measure which, I am glad to say, has the approval of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. It is to be hoped that the public will not rest till this Bill is passed into law.
MORAL ARGUMENTS.
If any further argument were required of a moral kind to enforce our objection to blood-sport, I might observe that it calls into exercise that part of a man’s nature which drags him down, instead of elevating him. The feelings which raise him as a rational and spiritual being are those of unselfishness, kindness, sympathy, chivalry, generosity, self-control, and love. To needlessly pain other beings, or to find actual pleasure in what causes their death or agony, tends quite manifestly to check such sentiments, and develop their opposites. And when we recollect that man is a progressive being, we see that blood-sports do a serious injury to his mental and moral constitution, preventing his fulfilment of the Creator’s plain intentions regarding him. There is another view of this matter that is worth mentioning.
Whatever is opposed to the Creator’s will anent human conduct, we may be sure, will be found hurtful to human society. And, as far as these blood -sports are concerned, the principle I have in mind is seen in the indisputable fact that persons who are cruel to animals usually make light of cruelty to their fellow-men. It is not for the well-being of society, therefore, that these barbarous diversions should receive encouragement. They are, in reality, anti-social, though they are often represented as promoting fellowship and goodwill. If they do this, the goodwill and fellowship are confined to the circle of sporting-folk themselves, while the interests of the general public suffer!
One of the chief defences of blood-sport lies in the appeal which its patrons make to Nature. They affirm that they merely copy the ordinances of Nature, which exhibits one kind of animal hunting down and killing another, and that, as the Deity is responsible for all this, men cannot be blamed for imitating it. In answer to such argumentation it may be observed that the constitution of the world is too big a thing for men fully to comprehend, and that they must leave unsolved such puzzles as the existence of the law of prey among animals. But this may be said, that Nature does not wear one aspect, but two. She abounds with traces of benevolence side by side with what gives a shock to the moral sense. And as men, in every age, have gazed upon her and reflected, they have felt that the only safe and wise plan is for them to build their civilisations upon the good side of Nature, and not the bad, taking this good side as the one which truthfully represents the mind of the Deity. To copy freely in our conduct towards each other what we behold among animals, as they follow their instincts of prey, would be to step back into primaeval barbarism and induce social anarchy. The appeal of the sporting world to Nature, therefore, is useless.
It is sometimes said by these people that blood-sports are an instinct born in mankind, and evidently meant to be gratified. We might as well assert that thieving, to which, in some form, myriads are addicted, is born in men, and ought to be practised. The answer to such foolish “sportsman’s logic” is that man is, as I have remarked, a progressive being, and is intended, by the aid of reason and conscience, to grow gradually out of all practices which savour of cruelty, injustice, and selfishness. In this view, the time has come for blood-sports to be condemned by all enlightened thinkers.
Patrons of “field-sports,” as they are called, i.e., sports in which animals have to suffer, in their desperate efforts to preserve their dearly-loved pastimes, make very rash declarations sometimes. One may hear them frequently deny that chased foxes, hares, deer, and others, feel painful dread. We can only judge of an animal’s state of feeling by its actions. An animal would not run before a pack of hounds till it becomes exhausted if it did not fear for its life. Much less would a wild creature try to shelter itself in a human habitation were it not in a tortured frame of mind.
The Daily News, of January 6, 1909, had an account of a foxhunt on the previous day with the “Vale of White Horse” Hounds, at the close of which the quarry “sought refuge in a cottage near by, and bolted upstairs into a bedroom, startling the occupants. The fox was again driven forth, this time practically into the mouths of the pack, and he was quickly broken up.” It is nonsense to deny that this animal was tortured in the chase.
The silliest defence of these recreations is, I think, that which asserts that many animal races would become extinct if they were not preserved for sport, thus pretending that the hunters are good friends of foxes, otters, etc. In the first place, no one would complain, other than sportsmen, if foxes and otters became extinct like wolves. But, if they are kept alive, it is no consolation to the tortured section that others of the species are exempt from ill-usage. It is not justice to make individuals the scapegoats of a whole community.
I have dealt with the suffering to which blood-sportsmen necessarily subject animals in the chase. But there are aggravations of this inhumanity which are quite gratuitous and inexcusable. I refer to digging out foxes, etc., when they seek refuge in “earths” or drains, and throwing them to the hounds. These “earths” are often stopped previously to a hunt. This is downright barbarity and cowardly usage of the quarry, and must have a most deteriorating effect on character. The case of the hare dislodged from the drain by water, as already described, comes under the head of aggravated cruelties. Another horrible custom ought to be mentioned, that of blooding children when a hunted creature is killed. We had an instance of this a few months back, if the Daily Express account is reliable, in the blooding of the little Princess Mary of Wales at a “kill” with the West Norfolk Foxhounds. What progress among the rising generation in respect to gentle treatment of the lower order of beings can be expected while such examples of conduct are set? These things tend to make the endeavours of the R.S.P.C.A. to promote humanity quite a farce.
From what I have observed in Press accounts of field sports, it appears to me that the above-mentioned blooding incident has given new life to this hideous custom, which of late years seemed to have fallen more or less into disuse.
THE ETON HARE HUNT.
When I think of the young, my mind naturally turns to the Eton College Hare Hunt. The sons of the “upper ten” at this educational establishment learn to be cruel by reason of the college authorities permitting such sport to go on under their ægis. The boys carry into adult life the tastes and habits they have acquired at school, and a moral poison is thus diffused through the whole community.
Humanitarians are often charged with a desire to sweep away “field-sports” altogether. This is not so. We only want to eliminate from them the inhuman element. The Eton Beagles could be easily converted into a drag hunt, and all the benefits of exhilarating exercise retained for the boys without the harrying of defenceless hares. The “drag,” indeed, might be used in all parts of the country as an effective substitute for the chase of animals. It would not minister gratification to the “blood-lust,” but the “blood-lust” is a bad feeling, and ought to be exterminated in mankind. The “drag” affords good sport to the Household Brigade and the Sandhurst Military College; why should it not suffice for lovers of cross-country riding of all sorts and conditions?
Then, again, the devotee of trap-sporting might turn to the artificial pigeon-shoot and cultivate his gunning skill by that, and decide his contests without the murderous slaughter of pigeons and sparrows and starlings.
Finally, the rabbit-courser might cease to shock us by his horrible practices and turn to whippet-racing. He could take delight in dogs and their breeding and training, and obtain recreation which he has a liking for without becoming a cruel man. If he likes to spend money in such amusement he has a perfect right to do so. My last word about “sport” shall have reference to its effect upon “economics.” As everybody knows, it is very desirable to find employment for labouring men. A Royal Commission has recently been considering the question of afforestation as having a bearing on the above object. Its conclusions were published in the Daily News of January 16, 1909. The Commission finds that the interests of “sport” largely prevent employment being given to working men in regard to the growth of timber. Its utterances on this head do not tend to substantiate the charge of sporting people that we, who oppose their pursuits, are enemies of the community.
RESPONSIBILITY OF SPORT.
“Considerations of sport have played an important part in determining the method of management of our woods. Clean boles, with high-pitched crowns, the exclusion of the sun’s rays, and ground destitute of grass, weeds, and bushes are not conditions favourable to either ground or winged game. On the contrary, trees that are semi-isolated and with low-reaching branches, and a wood that is full of bracken, brambles, and similar undergrowth, present conditions much more attractive to the sportsman, and it is these conditions that many landowners have arranged to secure. Ground game, too, has been the cause of immense destruction amongst the young trees, and thus it has in a measure directly brought about that condition of understocking which is so inimical to the growth of good timber, and to the successful results of forestry. Nor is it possible in the presence of even a moderate head of ground game to secure natural regeneration of woodlands, the young seedling trees being nibbled over almost as soon as they appear above ground. So intimate is the association in the United Kingdom between sport and forestry, that, even on an estate that is considered to possess some of the best-managed woods in England, the sylvicultural details have to be accommodated to the hunting and shooting, and trees must be taken down in different places to make cover for foxes and so on.”