Tally-ho!

And now for something completely different.

 

The latest bit of angst emanating from the Masters of the Universe is to do with deer and foxes.

 

Foxes first.

 

Apparently old Brer is getting to be a real nuisance in his adopted urban environment, biting babies, rifling garbage bins, fouling lawns, climbing through bed-room windows and other kinds of anti-social behaviour.

 

They are also disease-ridden, lousy and mangy, and their bite could have serious consequences since they feed off refuse tips.

 

Now deer.

 

The man from the Ministry tells us that they are at record levels, although quite how he knows the number of deer at the time when William the Conqueror banned the hoi-polloi from hunting them is not explained. Be that as it may, they are now believed to total 1.5 million.

 

They have become a major traffic hazard and a pest to both farmers and gardeners.

 

So what to do?

 

Some would have it that foxes should be caught and returned to the countryside. They would almost certainly starve to death for lack of hunting skills or immediately return to the nearest town.

 

Common-sense suggests that they should be culled in large numbers, but if a householder blows one away, the RSPCA, which is more concerned with urban foxes than babies, will prosecute him.

 

The Ministry has appealed for licensed hunters to shoot a large number to restore some kind of control. How many deer? 100,000? 1 million? That should bring down the price of venison in the shops.

 

(Some years ago these metropolitans were proposing to cull ruddy ducks. Now, they are charming little birds, Canadian immigrants,  but very randy, and they were breeding with the native mallard. For some reason this did not sit well with the tree-huggers. I worked it out that the cost per bird would have been about the same as a business-class fare to Toronto, so perhaps a better solution was to send them back courtesy of Air Canada).

 

What will not be contemplated is the return of hunting with hounds.

 

But the unpalatable fact is that this is the most humane way of dispatching both.

 

Neither the deer nor the fox have natural predators, so left uncontrolled they will outbreed their rural habitats and infiltrate areas where they are less than welcome.

 

Hunting is the best form of conservation.

 

Hounds will usually take out the sick, aged, or starving. Banning hunting deer has resulted in sick deer straying into stock-farms and spreading disease amongst farm animals. Without hunting, both foxes and deer are left to suffering from disease and starvation and to miserable deaths.

 

But of course nothing will be done. Hunting is indelibly and wrongly linked to landed toffs and others of the  privileged classes, and the British love a bit of class prejudice. The RSPCA has morphed into  animal-rights activism, and is spending vast amounts of donors’ money on persecuting and prosecuting hunters and farmers.

 

So get used to it. And don’t leave baby in the garden.