Also known within hunting circles as cubbing, this activity aims to give young hounds a taste of blood and thus prepare them for the official hunting season later in the year.
The "sport" occurs shortly after dawn, or in the early hours of the m
orning. The hunters encircle a patch of ground in a wood or other rural locale known to contain a fox covert that has cubs, blocking any possibility of escape by surrounding it with men and women, some on foot, others on horseback. Then the dogs are released into the covert to attack and kill the cubs.
Any cubs attempting to escape from this circle of death are beaten back with whips or sticks...into the jaws of the frenzied novice hounds to be ripped asunder.
Cubbing is one of the downsides of a sport whose more benign image is conveyed to us in splashes of colourful pageantry on murals and tablemats.
Even as the foxhunters enact this barbaric ritual as a warm-up for the long Tally-ho season, Minister for the Environment John Gormley has yet to decide whether to permit the netting of hares for five months of organised animal baiting. If he gives the go-ahead to hare coursing, he will have the distinction of being the leader of the only Green Party in the world to be actively endorsing such cruelty.
In fairness to him, Fianna Fail is bullying and humiliating the Greens into towing its own political line on hare coursing, which is the exact opposite of the Green Party's official policy of wanting it banned.
Despite changes to licensing conditions governing it, stag hunting continues also, with the animals being hounded to exhaustion and injury by people who ought to know better…bankers, property developers, legal eagles, auctioneers for example…intelligent refined individuals who MUST realise the suffering they cause to these majestic creatures.
And for what? A few hours of fun chasing a defenceless animal and frightening it out of its wits?
There are Dail Deputies of all parties who oppose this deliberate abuse of our wildlife heritage. I suggest they form an inter-parliamentary group dedicated to the abolition of blood sports. Opinion polls show that a substantial majority of the Irish people favour a ban, so surely our elected representatives can now make this a political reality.
Yours,
John Fitzgerald
Lower Coyne Street,
Callan,
Co. Kilkenny.
