BY JOHN MUSGRAVE
‘For Frodo,’ the young boy shouted as the three of us pelted down a farm track, hounds baying ahead of us. ‘For Frodo’ – it’s a line from Lord of the Rings. We were out hunting after the ban came in.
This Monday, 17th February, marks the 20th anniversary of the infamous Hunting Act cutting in. On this day the Hard Left believed it had rid the land of hunting. Twenty years on we’re still here. How come? The answer goes right to the heart of what it means to be British, resilient and stubborn.
That afternoon high in the Welsh hills myself and my two young sons saw the quarry belt away across the moor and down through a farm yard. ‘Tallyho-back,’ we shouted as the huntsman crested the brow of the hill.
‘Where’d he go?’
Wide-eyed, the youngest pointed. ‘Down through the farm.’
The huntsman lifted hounds on to the scent with a Gondor-strong blow of the horn. The pack cast forward, noses to the ground. Foxhounds hunt by sense of smell, speaking (barking) when they have it. Sure enough one spoke, hesitant at first, not quite sure. Then with a wild carolling off went the pack, mouths open, calling up the chase with a primeval yodel.
We sprinted after them. It was then that the youngest charged ahead shouting, ‘For Frodo.’ We had been to see the third of Peter Jackson’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy. The line is spoken by Aragorn just before the forces of good charge the massed ranks of orcs and goblins at the gate to Mordor. Their aim was to draw fire while Frodo, deep in Mordor, sought to destroy the ring of power.
As the years went by I came to realise the boy was more percipient than he realised. Hunters stand at the Black Gate of Mordor seeking to reverse the West’s ever diminishing chances of survival. We hung on, going out in all weathers, hunting through barrow downs and misty mountains. My children read the whole of the Lord of the Rings, running and riding across the secret realms of Middle Earth.
For most of that time we were alone, rangers in a forgotten kingdom which had lost its sense of self-worth. We watched aghast as the dark side set about trashing our green and pleasant land.
However, if the antis, those black-garbed Nazgul, thought we’d meekly go away, they thought wrong. Defenders of the Shire, we refused to leave the field of honour. Instead, we hunted on. We adapted to the law as best we could using falcons and trails. On foot and horse trail layers hug the horizon trailing lures soaked in fox urine. This replicates the smell left by a fox. Hounds hunt this. Often our trails are too powerful. Once I fled across a river hoping to wash away the scent and it didn’t work..but that’s another story. Churchill once said there is nothing quite so stimulating as being shot at by the enemy. Being pursued by a pack of hounds, in my view, comes a close second. The thrill of the chase, the mud-spattered river-fording joy of it has no equal.
Much good it did us, for the Uruk-hai still plan to outlaw trail hunting. It’s us they are after, free men and women, and the children of Húrin; in fact all those who run free with the wind at our backs.
The Hunting Act sits right at the heart of the wrongs done to our country. The ban is endemic of the urge for social control: Forcing people to do what is deemed right, rather than building up the individual and the family. The ban is about hard left dominance and nothing to do with animal welfare. Behave in certain way because we say so, the Saurons in their dark towers tell us.
This has been stoutly resisted. Twenty years ago, on the 18th February, vast numbers turned out to hunt. One man, a local poultry farmer, clopped up on a borrowed horse. I knew him because our kids went to the same school.
‘Why on earth have you taken up hunting this day of all days?’ I asked him.
‘Because they banned it,’ he said.
Hunters, with hound, rod or gun, love the land, rivers and woods and look after it. I have hunted through hidden valleys with no public access, forded streams with strands never printed by the heel of man. These are the hinterlands of an older freedom.
Over the last two decades I have come to believe the Left detests the very idea of uncertainty, of going into danger. Hunting is uncontrollable and uncertain. Who knows what the quarry will do? This is precisely the appeal of hunting; a cloud of unknowing, if you will. Hunting demands personal courage, resilience and fortitude. For a country to be successful the hunter’s gene needs to be nurtured. It’s the gene that urges a hesitant youth to ask that girl to dance, to start a business, build a house, sail the seas and climb the mountain. Without it we are forever stuck in mire and marsh, a state-orchestrated slough of despond.
Winston Churchill was a fox hunter. He remarked that an hour on horseback is never wasted. Look closely at the great civilisations of the past and we see leaders who hunted – it might not feature in history books as a preeminent quality, but it’s there nonetheless, a given.
This week hunting folk will be out in force. We are the spear point of the pushback and we ask all to join us. The Reeves-Gauche death tax has united farmer and hunter with an indissoluble bond. Similarly, endangered family firms, pensioners and entrepreneurs are making common cause. In their ranks march fabled archers from Lorien, yeomen of Dunhallow and the miners of Khazad-dûm. United, we grow stronger by the day.
All who venerate liberty, free speech, trade and commerce from shire, town and city alike seek to cast the ring, symbolising the shackle of enslavement, back into the fires of doom. For the threat is not only to farming, fishing and hunting but to all who treasure elective choice, free thinking and free speech.
At last it looks as if the conceits of the last 20 years are being laid bare. The scales are falling from King Theoden’s eyes. Although the hour is late and the times desperate, the Horn of Gondor is heard once more. The Rohirrim ride still.
John Musgrave’s hunting novel, ‘Corsica Girl’ is available on Amazon.