Let the hare sit, and survive
THE Northern Ireland Assembly has passed an amendment to wildlife legislation banning hare coursing. Hunting of the animal had been prohibited for some years, and a firm law to end coursing had been expected.
The Irish Council Against Blood Sports said this move should now put pressure on legislators in the Republic to ban "a cruel activity that many Irish people want outlawed".
Many years ago, while a permanent countryside resident, I ceased killing animals and birds, gave up gun club membership, stopped fishing but kept my dogs. This was an activity I had been involved in since boyhood. I had, one day, heard a shot hare scream like a wounded human being. Perhaps that had something to do with my decision.
William Blake, in his magnificent litany, Auguries of Innocence warned: "Each outcry of the hunted hare/A fibre from the brain does tear."
Robert Burns, on seeing a wounded animal limp by him, was apoplectic: "Inhuman man! Curse on they barb'rous art/And blasted be they murder-aiming eye."
The Irish Mountain Hare (lepus timidus hibernicus) is a declining species vulnerable to extinction, a daunting destiny for a living link with Ice Age fauna of 10,000 years ago. In the Republic, the animal is still openly hunted.
Coursing events are celebrated festivals and groups, such as beagling clubs, pursue the animals with dogs. Between September 28 and February 28 hares may be hunted using packs of beagles or harriers without need of a special licence. The Department of the Environment may issue licences to hunt outside the open season but none has been granted in recent years.
"Let the hare sit" is an ancient exhortation in this country to leave well enough alone. When a hare sits up in the wild it is a signal to a would-be predator such as a fox that its element of surprise has been lost. The hare feels secure. The fox, being wise, does not pursue the hare which it knows will outrun it.
But trained dogs such as greyhounds are not natural predators of hares and when a hare sits up in a coursing paddock it does not expect to be hunted. It is not natural for a hare to run in blind panic in an enclosed place, and neither is catching and enclosing the animals prior to coursing. Such confinement can contribute to a fatal condition called stress myopathy. In at least one recorded instance 50 per cent of animals caught died in captivity.
Apart from such factors being responsible for the decline of the mountain hare, other reasons have to be considered. Farmers will report an absence of hares where once they thrived. A fragmented local population is susceptible to decline due to changed agricultural practices such as chemical usage and huge tracts of grass, expanses of growth useless to hares once a certain height (25-30cm) is reached. The animals might as well be in a desert. The hare is vulnerable. Its young, leverets, lie still in grassy 'forms' during the day waiting for the mother to return to suckle them. Then "the timid hare throws daylight fears away when birds are gone to bed and cows are still", wrote the poet John Clare. In the mornings they dance and play and "lick the dewfall from the barley's head". Long may they continue, unpersecuted.
- I thank those who wrote letters to the editor about the recent piece on the plight of the remaining hares on Bull Island and the continuing dangers to them from the unleashed dogs of some thoughtless ramblers
Originally published in
