BY ALAN HERSCOVICI When I was a child, in the 1950s, my father would sometimes bring me down to my grandfather’s fur atelier, on St. Helen Street, in Old Montreal. In the lobby of the grey-stone building, my father greeted Frank, the elevator man, who crashed shut the heavy metal-grate doors, and swung the wood-handled lever to guide our clunking steel cage up to the … Continue reading Montreal’s Fur Ateliers
BY JOHN MUSGRAVE This Boxing Day morning thousands of folk will gather on cobbled squares to greet their local hunt. Packs of hounds and squadrons of horses will clip-clop down the highway to cheers and applause. Gabled inns will do a roaring trade in mulled wine, cider and ale. Old friends greet one another. Hounds cast about the crowd for titbits delighting children. It’s a … Continue reading Boxing Clever
BY GILES BRADSHAW The Wild Justice Director Mark Avery has given qualified support to disobeying the Hunting Act. He believes that it is “fine” provided that: I’m going to assume this is also the position of the campaign group to which he belongs. And I think this is a reasonable position to hold. I’d like to give qualified support to Avery’s qualified support of hunt … Continue reading Breaking the Hunting Act is “fine” says Avery
BY ED STODDARD Hunting, especially trophy hunting, is a thorny issue that has taken centre stage in countries such as the UK in the wake of the slaying of a Zimbabwean lion named Cecil in 2015. A recent book takes an objective look at the topic and reaches conclusions that both hunters and animal welfare activists will find discomfiting. Trophy Hunting by Nikolaj Bichel and Adam … Continue reading The Polarising Issue of Trophy Hunting
BY AFRICAN COMMUNITY CONSERVANCY LEADERS In this open letter to the UK Minister of State for Development and Africa, Andrew Mitchell, 109 representatives of community-run conservation areas in the four African countries which come together in the massive Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA) respond to the bill currently before the British Parliament to ban the import of hunting trophies to the UK. The Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier … Continue reading Colonialism All Over Again
BY MARK CRUDGINGTON Lord Goldsmith wants trophy hunting banned because he finds the idea of it, as well as photos of hunters posing with dead animals, repulsive. This is a call echoed and endorsed by celebrities such as Ricky Gervais, Peter Egan, Chris Packham and even the explorer Ranulph Fiennes. Lord Goldsmith claims trophy hunting is helping species extinction as well as damaging some environments … Continue reading Truth Clashes with Ivory Towers
BY SARAH GREENWOOD The Mendip Farmers Hunt have recently had so many new faces out on mounted hound exercise, which has provoked lots of enquiries about how to get into hunting, that they have answered publicly. This means that they are being blatantly transparent about the activity – much, I am sure, to the various anti organisations’ collective horror! Transparent and above board is not … Continue reading The Reality of Hunting for Newbies
BY PAUL STONES Before reading this piece, I ask that you consider that I am not a trained journalist like the one whose article has spurred me into action. As a professional hunter myself, my agenda is clear and open – I wish to see a future in which hunting remains one of the cornerstones of good conservation practice. The moniker that hunters are merely … Continue reading Does Hunting Have Value Beyond the Rhetoric?
BY CAPTAIN ED SWALES In the aftermath of the resignation of Boris Johnson, could this be the opportunity to get straight to the point that has eluded the UK rural voter over recent years and get a proper review of wildlife management law and strategy? To start delivering for the Countryside? Now, more than ever, the support for whichever party champions the cause of the … Continue reading Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man?
BY JOHN MACNAB This is the second in my series of recipes using fox meat as the main ingredient. Inflation is rising, energy and food prices are going up and people are looking for cheaper alternatives to butcher meat. What better than the ready supply of free meat available from our burgeoning urban fox population? Each recipe provides a different way of obtaining your fox … Continue reading Braised Leg of Fox
BY ROGER WATSON Over twenty years ago when I lived with my family in the halls of residence at The University of Edinburgh the best time of the year was the Christmas break when the students went home. Only a handful of families who served as wardens remained and we had twenty two frosty acres, under the shadow of Arthur’s Seat to ourselves. One evening … Continue reading Urban Fox Hunting: Worth Considering?
BY CAPTAIN ED SWALES Rural Britain is being eradicated, quietly, in the back halls of Westminster, Stormont, Cardiff and Holyrood, by the sour ingredients of a damaging cocktail of misguided urban political correctness, ‘virtue signalling’ and woke agendas. As they used to say in the Army, when unexpectedly under attack…. “Stand To!”. In reality, this threat is from a tiny minority of animal rights extremists, … Continue reading Hunting Kind
BY SARAH GREENWOOD In the recent ‘Trail of Lies’ cartoon, produced by LACS and narrated by Chris Packham, there was an assertion that: ‘During a decade long study, hunt monitors reported that only 1% of so -called trail hunts lay a potentially genuine trail’. Hmm! Hunt Monitors! An interesting use of words. This appellation makes them sound like a peer reviewed group of people lawfully … Continue reading The Truth About Hunt Monitors
BY SARAH GREENWOOD Dear Editor, Having watched the recent ‘Disney’fied production narrated by Chris Packham about ‘fox hunting’, there are some comments about this ‘production’ I would like to draw your attention to: Overall, the Chris Packham et al portrayal of the countryside is misleading, claiming it is a place of ‘tranquility’ and ‘serenity’ with all creatures living in harmony, when it patently is not. … Continue reading Fantasy Cartoon Cobblers
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN Like with most companies which Peter Thiel is linked to, PayPal is a seriously impressive operation. Certainly, it has no need to be supporting hunt saboteurs’ insipid grifts, which are so clearly bogus that one wonders how idiotic the sabs’ useful idiot following has become. Take two recent examples: PayPal has been told of these recent scams as have the UK authorities. … Continue reading PayPal a Lifeline for Scamming Sabs
BY JENS ULRICH HØGH Dear Editor, The British press has a vast global audience. Media giants like The Times, The Financial Times, The Guardian, and BBC are highly regarded as credible sources of information around the globe. Rigorous British press standards surely helped to build such a stellar reputation. Unfortunately, I feel that these once high standards seem to be on a slippery slope of … Continue reading What Happened to British Press Standards?
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN The last fortnight has been rough on the chickens. One cockerel and a hen stolen away by a wily fox. My young son guilty for not counting them all into their enclosure at night. Eleven is a good age to learn responsibility for others, as well as how to help provide. More chickens, a ledger and an incubator are on the way. … Continue reading Beyond Red Crows
A website called Hunting Leaks – with links to the convicted fraudster Jay Tiernan* of Stop the Cull – is doxing hunt subscribers and their businesses. Extremists are encouraged to hassle those on the list. To justify its criminality, the group accuses the Countryside Alliance of holding a database on saboteurs – this, they insist, makes their action an appropriate response. Of course, if the … Continue reading Aubrey Thomas’ Hunt Sabs Ka-Ching
BY NIGEL BEAN & PAUL READ “Leaked webinar shows huge criminal conspiracy at hunting’s highest level”. Or so the hunt sabs’ tweet proclaimed. So what was breaking? Not a lot. So what really happened during this webinar? It seems an invite was sent out to hunt staff to attend a trail hunting webinar by the Hunting Office, which is the body responsible for the administration … Continue reading The Infiltrated Webinar
BY NIGEL BEAN & PAUL READ Sad and worrying stats were released by the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC) recently. Research shows 64% of Scottish gamekeepers receive abuse from members of the public at least once a year. And another 79% are concerned about their future. Put into context, that’s 64% of Scottish gamekeepers getting grief for going about their lawful business putting … Continue reading The Coming Storm
