Peter Hogg
Peter Hogg
Peter Hogg farms in
partnership with his brother
at Causey Park Farm, near
Morpeth, Northumberland.
Half the 450ha (1100-acre)
heavyland farm is in crops,
mainly winter wheat, barley
and oilseed rape, plus a
few potatoes
HARD luck to the tally-ho brigade in Scotland, but dont feel too hard about it, after all, it is only a matter of time before Tony and his cronies have another bash at banning hunting south of the border.
I despair at the direction the hunting debate has gone. First, it isnt illegal in Scotland and wont be in England and Wales to kill as many foxes as you like by any means other than using dogs. You can dig them out and beat them to death with a fence post or take pot shots at them with any gun; similarly with deer control – only you would need to be very fast with a fence post!
The next logical step by the legislators would be to give foxes protected status. But actually they wont. The RSPCA, in conjunction with other conservation agencies, already has its own marksmen creeping around blasting away at foxes and deer. They dont tell anyone that when rattling collection tins in Kensington. It is all done in the name of conservation and maintaining a healthy balance in the wild. Wasnt that what the hunt did?
Also, now there is no money to be made out of keeping sheep, fox control becomes pointless for farmers. The result will be fox populations rising. The weak, mangy, diseased foxes that the hunt used to catch will survive on nests of skylarks and curlews – the very ground nesting birds we are supposed to nurture.
English Nature will then want foxes controlled and ask for grant aid to take the necessary action. Fox population counts will be needed to justify that, paying people with clipboards to do surveys. Then, local authority employed marksmen will ask for a derogation to use dogs to flush foxes out.
You guessed it, we are back to hunting with dogs, only now the stupid people who asked their politicians to ban it are now paying for it through their taxes. *
Peter Hogg has a strange feeling of despair about the hunting debate. He can see things going full circle, only the people calling for a ban will end up paying for fox control in their taxes.