“With the ‘if,’ yes. This was a weak deer; therefore I should have blooded hounds with it.”
The magistrates decided that “there was not enough evidence to convict,” but the prosecution did great service in showing what horrible practices are still carried on under the name of “sport.”
III
THE HUNTING OF GRAVID ANIMALS
Whatever differences of opinion may exist as to the morality of “blood-sports” in general, there is one recurring feature of such sports which, whether regarded from the humanitarian’s or from the sportsman’s point of view, is almost equally repulsive. We refer to the hunting, in some cases accidental, in others deliberate, of gravid animals. That such hunting—of the hare, of the otter, of the hind—takes place, there is no question whatever, as is proved by the following facts.
It is quite a common practice to continue the hunting of hares with beagles until the middle, or even to the end of March, by which time many of the doe hares are heavy with young. Owing to the remonstrances addressed to the headmaster of Eton by the Humanitarian League, the Eton hunting season has now been curtailed, but it is still prolonged beyond the date which has been suggested by the better class of sportsmen. The experience recorded in the County Gentleman (1906) by the writer of the following letter, Mr. John A. Doyle, of Pendarren, Crickhowell, seems conclusive:
“The question you raise is one in which I feel a good deal of interest. I have not only been for some years master of a pack of harriers (foot), but I am also an Old Etonian, and have always felt much interested in the doings of the school beagles, and sympathy with them. Indeed, before I got your letter I had thought of writing to the headmaster, with whom I am—perhaps I should say was, a long time back—slightly acquainted.
“My own practice has always been to have one meet the first week in March, and then end the season. I was once or twice tempted to go on later, and once killed a doe in kindle. Since then I have kept to my rule. She gave us a sharp run of twenty minutes or half an hour. This, I think, disposes of the theory that a pregnant hare has no scent. Possibly she has less than she would have normally. But per contra she must be handicapped by her condition. Then there is the risk of a chop. And it cannot be good for an animal big with young to be bustled and frightened.
“There is yet a worse danger. In some forward seasons there may be leverets by the second week in March. The dam might be killed, and the leverets left to die. I would almost sooner never hunt again than run such a risk. Of course, one might hunt through March for several seasons and none of these things happen; but there must be a risk, and I do not myself think that one is justified in running it.”
What is true of the Eton beagles is true of every hare-hunt throughout the country. The sport ought to be brought to a close on the last day of February, as, indeed, used to be the custom. “Coursing still goes on among a few,” wrote the author of the “Sporting Almanack” for March, 1843, “but in our opinion the fair sportsman will hold hard as soon as March sets in.”[32] Much, then, of the hare-hunting of the present time is not fair.