The National Trust are giving serious consideration to allowing stag hunting on their Exmoor land again. Six years after banning it on the Holnicote Estate (against the express wishes of the Late Sir Richard Ackland who donated the property) and 18 months after the Hunting Act, the NT Board of Trustees are to consider the matter shortly.The change of heart has been prompted by the self-evident fact that, without the use of a trained pack of scent hounds, it is impossible to find and dispatch sick and wounded animals and that the suffering thus caused far outweighs any suffering allegedly caused by doing things in the way that nature has always done them - selective predation of the weak, wounded and sick.
Predictably enough anti-hunting organisations are outraged (when were they ever NOT outraged? They are paid to be outraged; it is their natural condition to be outraged; they thrive on being outraged). They would clearly prefer all such wounded animals (and there are many from RTA's and shooting) be left to extended slow deaths from gangrene and starvation. Heaven forbit that 'toffs on horses' should derive satisfaction from providing a no-cost welfare service and managing the healthiest Red deer herd in the world in the manner which most closly approximates to natural predation.
News links <Here> and <Here>
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Thanks ca. I'm not holding my breath either; but as you say, it's a start.
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