Why fox hunting is more popular than ever

Warwickshire fox hunters say the law banning the sport is "a shambles" as they gather on the first day of the new season.

The riders breathed the aroma of hot wine, the hounds were hungry for a scent, but what you could really smell in the air at yesterday’s opening meeting of the Warwickshire Hunt was the exalted whiff of English contrariness.

By rights, this kind of scene should now be consigned to antique dinner plates and episodes of Downton Abbey. The nation’s huntsmen and women should have hung up their red jackets, retired their steeds and submitted meekly to the dictates of the urban tyranny. Strangely, it hasn’t happened like that. Seven years after the Labour government passed a contentious law intended to abolish hunting with hounds, the country’s hunts – which no longer chase a live animal, but merely a trail of artificial scent instead – are in the best shape anyone can remember.

Part of the reason is that the law has proved almost comically difficult to enforce. Beneath its stated object of outlawing the hunting of wild mammals with dogs, near-total confusion reigns. In theory, you can hunt mice, but not rats, rabbits but not hares, domestic cats but not wild ones. Birds of prey, but not foxhounds, can be set upon foxes. Yet a bigger factor appears to be that exquisitely delinquent streak in the British character that reacts against the hectoring and bossiness of officialdom. As a result, thousands of people who previously had little obvious interest in hunting have taken it up.

“Our membership has doubled to around 1,000 since the law was passed,” says Sam Butler, the Warwickshire’s ebullient Master. “The support we are getting from the communities is incredible. Our range of activities is expanding all the time. Even with the economy the way it is, when everyone’s watching where their money goes, we are hunting at least as much as ever.”

Certainly, yesterday’s season’s opener, at the hamlet of Oxhill, south of Stratford-upon-Avon, offered an image of reassuring well-being. On a damp, chilly morning, a hearty contingent of villagers turned out to cheer the hunt off. The local pub laid on breakfast and drinks. There were no protesters, no police, nothing that in any way detracted from a scene that has been a part of the English countryside for centuries.

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