Lucy Harvey
DEFIANT hunts will one day be rewarded with a change in the law a leading Labour MP said yesterday, after a weekend show of strength among supporters.
Kate Hoey said new legislation affecting the sport is "totally impossible" to enforce and she is confident it will be amended.
Her comments came after 300 hunts turned out across the country on the traditional starting date of the season, 29 of them in Yorkshire.
"The reality is the police know this is a law which is totally impossible for them to enforce and the bad law always ends up being changed. I'm very confident that will happen," said Ms Hoey, who opposed the ban in the Commons.
"What's important is we don't have our police chasing over the countryside deciding whether someone's chasing rabbits or chasing foxes.
"The most important thing, and I think this is something the public will more and more realise, is that this is nothing to do with animal welfare.
"And the fox at the end of it all is being killed, probably in many areas now, in much more inhumane ways – poisoned and gassed and snared."
Chairman of the Badsworth and Bramham Moor Hunt Charlie Warde-Aldam said he had been forced to shoot foxes on his land at Frickley Hall, Doncaster, since the law was changed.
"As a landowner I have livestock and if you can't kill a fox with hounds you have to indiscriminately reduce the population with a rifle," he said.
"I am a good marksmen but I can't guarantee I'm 100 per cent all the time so the odd fox will get wounded and will die slowly, probably through gangrene. This law is not protecting foxes."
Mr Warde-Aldam acted as fieldmaster for the first Badsworth and Bramham Hunt of the new season – one of 300 which took place nationally on Saturday. The Countryside Alliance estimates 250,000 people attended hunts across the country in total.
About 150 riders took part at Frickley Hall, following a drag trail set up using the scent of a fox to mimic a chase for the pack of 64 hounds.
The Badsworth and Bramham Hunt has seen a 10 per cent increase in membership since the new law was introduced in February.
The youngest, Poppy Burnell, is aged just three, and other young riders included Mr Warde-Aldam's daughters Isabel, seven, and Constance, five.
"People are showing their support for hunting after the ban which the majority of people feel is unjust," he said
"Why can one minority stop another minority doing what they want to do without a majority vote?"
"We are a very diverse hunt – everyone from the pauper to the pope. It is a cross section of society and has never been elitist."
Fifteen-year-old Eden Greenwood said: "We do have to act within the law but it does not change the social side of it.
"It does take the excitement out of it a bit because there is nothing to look out for anymore, but it is good being out in the countryside.
"You learn a lot about how the countryside works, it's something to do and it keeps you out of trouble.
"The law has not stopped us, and because of the way it has been written they can't really impose it."
Mr Warde-Aldam said he does expect to see a prosecution in Britain.
"I think there will be a test case, there almost needs to be one because the law is so ambiguous," he said.
"But the police are not interested. They have got enough on their hands.
"The last thing they want to do is traipse around the countryside watching a minority doing what they have done for hundreds of years.
"There are so many loopholes in the law we can do an awful lot within it in the short term, which will keep us hunting until the human rights case comes back from Europe."
Regional Director for the Countryside Alliance John Haigh said: "All hunts in Yorkshire that were active before the Hunting Act are active since the Hunting Act.
"It has no effects on the number of hunts in the county. In fact in terms of support there is increased support for hunting in the region and the support particularly from farmers and landowners has been tremendous.
"The support is there, the confidence is there, and we are getting more and more people wanting to go out hunting. A lot of people don't like the way the Government used the Parliament Act to force through this prejudiced Act.
"It is an unworkable Act. The reason they are carrying on is with a great determination to keep the infrastructure in place so when the act is repealed or amended so hunts can carry on as they did in the past."