Rambling Postscript
After walking on the estate described in ‘Rambling’ we went to the local pub for lunch. In the bar was a very large photograph of the local fox hunt in front of the restored mansion on the estate, gloriously repainted in a sort of custard cream.
The hunt meeting was the largest I have seen by a country mile, maybe 40 mounted and a hundred or more hangers on, and a big pack of hounds.
This hunt has now been disbanded because the kennel staff were secretly filmed dropping live – baby - fox cubs into pens of hounds, to be torn to pieces and then put in the bin.
The large mounted photograph in the bar could be seen as a very public declaration of the sympathies and links between the hunting community and the landed aristocracy, inserted among all the brassware, nostalgia and twinkle of the idealised country pub. You can’t help wondering who provided it.
Meanwhile other local hunts, which have absorbed the members of the supposedly disgraced hunt, are now starting the cubbing season, which involves setting out at five in the morning to hunt fox cubs.
Most foxhunting pretends to follow the rules by saying they only do trail hunting - following a scent trail laid by the hunt ‘servants’ through country where foxes are known to live, and pretending that if the hounds find and kill a fox it is an accident.
When they go cubbing they do it in the early morning, wearing ‘rat-catcher’ jackets rather than the red ones. They describe it as ‘exercising the hounds’ since ‘trail hunting’ clearly won’t wash. They ‘exercise’ the hounds by surrounding a wood or covert and releasing the hounds into it. Any cubs they find will of course be torn to pieces.