Hunting inquiry

SIR, – Professor David Morton (VR, July 15, p 83) writes as though the Burns inquiry into hunting with dogs comes to a clear conclusion about the relative effects of hunting, as against other modes of control, on the welfare of the fox. It does not. Its angle on fox hunting is briefly this: there is a lack of scientific evidence about the effect of hunting on the welfare of the quarry; death follows almost instantaneously should the quarry be caught, but nevertheless those final moments of the hunt ‘seriously compromise the welfare of the fox’. That last peculiar phrase (quoted by Professor Morton) needs interpretation, since on the surface it looks like an empty tautology, comparable to ‘death is fatal’. If we are talking of the individual animal, then presumably any experience that culminates in death ‘seriously compromises’ its welfare. In so far as the report makes comparative judgements, it comes to the conclusion that shooting with a shotgun is likely to be worse for a fox than being killed by hounds, that snaring is definitely worse, that digging out using terriers is bad, if only because the quarry is unable to escape and held for a long time in a state of fear, and that only ‘lamping’ (shooting carried out at night by an expert marksman aiming between the eyes of an animal dazzled by a lamp) offers a better deal than hunting. In no case, however, does the report compare these or other methods of killing with the death that a fox could expect if no human being interferes in its life cycle. All that can be concluded from the report is that it is not much fun to be killed, and that being killed by hounds is fair to middling in the list of methods legally used. The report concedes that, while lamping might be preferable from the fox's point of view, it is not always practicable. It does not confront the far more serious argument that, whatever the effects on the individual fox, lamping and other forms of shooting are bad for the welfare of the species. Those who favour hunting argue that hunting gives people a motive to live with the fox and tolerate higher numbers, that it discriminates against the weak, old and diseased members of the species, and that the huntsman will call his hounds away from a pregnant vixen. Lamping, by contrast, has adverse effects on the welfare of the fox as a species in all those respects, as well as being a dangerous excuse for armed men to roam the countryside at night. It is also a totally unsporting way to treat a wild animal. To think that this way of treating foxes is somehow less ‘compromising’ to their welfare than hunting, is to ignore all that the concept of welfare might mean when dealing with other species, and to concentrate on those few short moments that precede the individual death, as though they were the only real moments when an animal's welfare should trouble us. Professor Morton incidentally argues that we are morally obliged to side always with the vulnerable. This argument would have the implication that we should never kill any wild animal by any method whatsoever, since, in the confrontation with humans, wild animals are always the vulnerable ones. In my recent attempt to clear the rats out of our barn I was glad of this fact.