May 1st marks the formal start of the new hunting season and, as usual, several hunts have announced plans to merge. This has been a pattern for several years and clearly demonstrates the slow but inexorable demise of hunting.
In Northumberland, the Morpeth Foxhounds and the West Percy Hunts are amalgamating through lack of support though, with the hounds being kennelled at the West Percy, this looks very much like the end of the Morpeth Foxhounds.
We’ve also heard that the North Shropshire Hunt is to merge with the South Shropshire Hunt to form the…you guessed it…Shropshire Hunt. Both packs have had a great deal of sab attention, resulting in Community Protection Warnings, convictions for illegal hunting and badger sett interference by their gangs of terriermen. Sabs were pleased to find the North Shropshire’s kennel derelict on a recent visit!
On the other side of the country, East Herts Hunt Sabs confirm that the Puckeridge & Essex Union Hunt – itself a merger of at least three former hunts – is to amalgamate with the neighbouring East Essex Hunt. Things are not looking good for this new venture: the Puck already have a CPN, and the East Essex has been severely depleted (it has a hunt country, but no hounds!) ever since North London Hunt Sabs exposed their terrierman torturing a fox with pitchfork.
Tim Bonner and his mates at the Countryside Alliance like to present these mergers as evidence that hunting can “adapt to the modern world”. As always, Tim is wrong. Hunts tend to have their own internal cultures and traditions, so mergers are always forced, unhappy affairs, with rival factions from the original hunts vying for power and influence in the new organisation.
Mergers also create practical problems for hunt supporters, who suddenly have to travel many miles to get their weekly fix of animal abuse and, of course, fewer packs mean more sabs at each hunt!
An HSA spokesperson commented:
“We welcome the news of these three mergers, which follows the amalgamation of two Somerset harrier packs and the folding of a Scottish fox hunt just last month. Hunts are collapsing north, south, east and west – and we are doing everything we can to hasten this process!”
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