Henry McClean promised that his TV3 documentary, The Truth About Blood Sports, would be a “real eye-opener”. It certainly was. The coursing and hunting fans he interviewed educated us all about how wonderful their sports are. Not only that, but we learned from them that the hare and the fox, far from being upset by their treatment at the hands of the lovely sportspeople, actually enjoy it as much as the men and women who put them through their paces.
There we were all these years, us opponents of blood sports, thinking that coursing was cruel, just because we saw hares being chased into nets and shaking with terror when captured. We thought they were having a bad time when we read reports obtained from the Parks and Wildlife Service relating to the 2009-2010 coursing season, showing that hares died from “severe knocks” sustained during coursing, of badly broken legs, of hares dying from various ailments in the paddocks and compounds maintained by coursing clubs.
We were equally misguided, if the coursing fans are right, when we expressed concern about the stress endured by hares when removed from their natural environment, confined in close proximity to other hares, and of the effects on them of being manhandled and transported around the country in small cramped boxes to coursing venues.
We had been concerned too about the welfare of this animal that is prone to stress myopathy, a condition that arises from frightening or traumatic situations that can result in the death of hares even after coursing has concluded.
Sure, what were we worried about? The hares were enjoying it all along! They get dosed by the nice coursing folk at holiday camps, the big doggies have nothing personal against them, and the whole game is “woven into the fabric of rural life”. Do hares appreciate what these fine people do for them, I wonder?
And the fox loves being hunted. “I’d say he enjoys it,” one hunting fan assured us in the documentary. Again, we had the idea that setting 20 or 30 dogs after a fox, hunting it to exhaustion and then having the skin ripped off its bones, might be cruel, or at least a little unfair to the wily creature. But the fans were confident that he gets a mighty thrill from the experience.
If you doubt this, just pick up the mangled carcass of a fox when the hounds have finished with it and wipe from blood from its face. If you examine it carefully, you might detect the faint trace of a smile. Then you’ll know it died laughing.
John Fitzgerald
Callan, Co Kilkenny
