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Hare coursing

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Hare coursing is the coursing of hares, that is to say the hunting of them with sighthounds. In formal hare coursing the objective is to test the dogs on their ability to turn the hare. Informal coursing is often conducted to kill, either for betting or for food.

In recent decades, controversy has developed around hare coursing with some viewing it as a cruel bloodsport, and others seeing it as a traditional activity that assists in the conservation of hares.

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[edit] History

[edit] Formal coursing

Whether for sporting or hunting purposes, hare coursing was historically restricted to landowners and the nobility, who used sighthounds, the ownership of which was at certain historic times prohibited among the lower social classes. The oldest documented description of hare coursing is the work Kynegetikos (Greek), otherwise known as Cynegeticus (Latin), which was written by Arrian circa 180 AD. This volume, known from its first complete English translation as On Coursing 1831, by William Dansey , was considered by its original author as a necessary addition to the classic work of the same name Cynegeticus (On Hunting) - scent hunting - by Xenophon. Arrian felt compelled to describe the sight hunt and sighthounds because the ancient Greeks only knew the scent hunt. Arrian's description of coursing most likely originates from the Iberian peninsula, where he functioned as proconsul in Baetica. He described hare coursing as carried out by the Iberian Celts, of all social classes. The dogs that were used were called vertragus (Latin) from ouertragos (Greek) swift of foot, which were introduced into Western Europe by the Celts, and they were possibly the antecedents of all European sighthounds, almost certainly the antecedents of the Galgo. It is from Arrian that the most famous quote on the sporting fairness of coursing originates " ... true huntsmen do not take out their hounds to catch the creature, but for a trial of speed and a race, and they are satisfied if the hare manages to find something that will rescue her." Today hare coursing is practiced using Greyhounds that are registered with a governing greyhound body (the National Coursing Club in Great Britain, the Irish Coursing Club in Ireland); the objective is to test and judge the athletic ability of the dogs rather than to kill the hare.

[edit] Informal coursing

The oldest form of hare coursing simply involved two dogs chasing a hare, the winner being the dog that caught the hare; this could be for pest control, for food or for sport. In order to indulge legally in the practice, the peasantry developed various cross breeds under the generic term lurcher. Today such animals may be specifically bred for coursing. Informal coursing is nearly always poaching, lacking the landowner's permission, and is often seen as a major problem by landowners and by the police.<ref>http://www.cambs.police.uk/campaigns/dornier/</ref>

[edit] Description of formal hare coursing

Hare coursing in Britain is open coursing, that is, it takes place in the open (as opposed to Irish coursing which takes place in an enclosure with an escape route). There are two forms of open coursing. In driven coursing (such as the Waterloo Cup), hares were "driven" by beaters towards the coursing field. As they enter the field, a person known as a slipper releases two dogs at the same time, in pursuit of the hare, which is given a head start (known as 'fair law'), usually between 80 and 100 yards (70-90 metres). In walked-up coursing, a line of people walk through the countryside and a pair of Greyhounds are released when a hare is disturbed.

The greyhounds will then pursue the hare and, being faster, will start to catch up with it. Since the Greyhounds are much bigger than the hare, and much less agile, they find it hard to follow the hare's sharp turns, which it makes as the greyhounds threaten to reach it. This agility gives the hare an important and often crucial advantage as it seeks to escape.

Under National Coursing Club rules, the dogs are awarded points on how many times they can turn the hare, and how closely they follow the hare's 'course'. The contest between the Greyhounds is judged from horseback.

[edit] Welfare issues

Image:Hare5.jpg

Coursing has long sparked opposition from supporters of animal welfare. The League Against Cruel Sports was established in 1924 to campaign against rabbit coursing on Morden Common. Debate on coursing continued over subsequent decades, and the Waterloo Cup became a centrepiece of the campaign against coursing.

Until more recently, there was a dearth of scientific evidence on the welfare impact of coursing. The first thorough study was carried out in 1977-1979 by the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare. Of 53 hares killed, 43 had neck injuries, 18 of which were inflicted by the "picker up". No clean breaks were believed to have been caused by dogs (where tooth marks were evident). The UFAW team’s assessment was that all chest injuries would have been quickly fatal (in six cases these included a punctured heart); 10 animals without neck injuries had chest injuries. Abdominal injuries included six punctured livers, but generally involved a ruptured gut. In the UFAW team’s opinion, hindleg and back injuries could have been extremely painful until chest or neck injuries were inflicted.<ref>http://www.huntinginquiry.gov.uk/mainsections/research/macdonald/macdonaldfinal.htm#sec6.2</ref>

The Burns Inquiry, set up by the Government, concluded that "We are similarly satisfied that being pursued, caught and killed by dogs during coursing seriously compromises the welfare of the hare. It is clear, moreover, that, if the dog or dogs catch the hare, they do not always kill it quickly. There can also sometimes be a significant delay, in “driven” coursing, before the “picker up” reaches the hare and dispatches it (if it is not already dead). In the case of “walked up” coursing, the delay is likely to be even longer." <ref>Burns Inquiry report, paragraph 6.68</ref>

[edit] 'The kill'

The rules of the National Coursing Club were changed shortly before 2003 so that a point was no longer awarded for a greyhound that killed a hare "through superior dash and speed." Hares are sometimes killed in coursing, but the numbers are hotly disputed. The Government's Burns Inquiry said that about 250 hares are killed each year in formal coursing. Much larger numbers of kills are believed to take place in informal coursing.

The National Coursing Club and the organisers of the Waterloo Cup - the most important event in the coursing calendar - each said that, on average, one in eight hares coursed come to harm and that kills are very rare. By contrast, RSPCA Inspectors who attended the event estimated that one in five hares coursed were killed at the event.

Observers of hare coursing at the Waterloo Cup regularly reported a minority of people in the crowd cheering when hares were killed, although this attitude would be criticised by the organisers of the event.

[edit] Conservation/Pest control

Two contrasting arguments are made in favour of hare coursing. Some coursers claim that coursing assists conservation because it relies on landowners creating a habitat suitable for hares. Opponents say that the converse is true, namely that coursing takes place where hares live rather than hares living where coursing takes place. On the other hand, some landowners believe that high densities of hare are agricultural pests - a view also taken by the California Dept. of Agriculture.<ref>http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7447.html</ref>

Hares are the subject of a species action plan aiming to double spring numbers in Britain by 2010.<ref>http://www.ukbap.org.uk/UKPlans.aspx?ID=410</ref>

[edit] UK Legislation

The practice of hare coursing has only recently, in historical terms, been debated in Parliament, although the British Parliament created an exemption in 1921 from the cruelty legislation, the Protection of Animals Act 1911, for animals released for coursing.<ref>http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm47/4763/4763-app8.htm</ref> Eric Heffer, MP for Liverpool Walton, was a major opponent of coursing in the late 1960s, and the then Prime Minister Harold Wilson joined in the criticism of coursing.<ref>http://politics.guardian.co.uk/politicspast/story/0,,1674703,00.html</ref> Under his premiership, the House of Commons voted for Government Bills to ban hare coursing in 1969 and in 1975, but neither law passed the House of Lords to become law. In 2002, the Scottish Parliament passed the Protection of Wild Mammals (Scotland) Act which banned hare coursing in Scotland. In 2004 the British parliament passed the Hunting Act, which banned hare coursing as well as other forms of hunting with hounds. The Act came into effect on February 18, 2005, and hare coursing events have been suspended in England and Wales since that date.

[edit] Coursing in Ireland and in Northern Ireland

Image:NI coursing leaflet.jpg

There has been no legislation to ban hare coursing in Ireland, although there is a campaign to this end by the Irish Council Against Blood Sports. Instead formal coursing is regulated through the mechanism of requiring coursing clubs to obtain Government licences to net hares. In Ireland the national meeting in Clonmel, Co.Tipperary and the Irish Cup at Limerick Racecourse, Greenmount, County Limerick are the most important events in the coursing calendar.

There are two formal coursing clubs in Northern Ireland, in Dungannon and Ballymena. However, no formal coursing has taken place in Northern Ireland since 2002, as UK Ministers have refused the coursing clubs permission to net hares for coursing. At the present time, hares are also protected from being coursed or hunted under a Special Order under the Game Preservation (NI) Act. The two Northern Ireland coursing clubs travel to Ireland to hold meetings in conjunction with coursing clubs there.

[edit] Comparison to coursing in Britain

There are several differences between coursing in Great Britain under National Coursing Club rules and coursing in Ireland under Irish Coursing Club rules.

  • the British form is open coursing which takes place in open land. The Irish form is run in a secure enclosure over a set distance.
  • under Irish Coursing Club rules it is compulsory that the dogs are muzzled.
  • hares are not plentiful in all parts of Ireland, mainly due to modern agricultural practices, illegal hare killings and informal coursing. In order to run a coursing meeting, 70 or so hares have to be found for each event; they are generally caught by use of nets under the terms of a licence agreement between the Irish Coursing Club and the Irish Government. The hares are then transported in boxes to the coursing venue where they are trained to be coursed. After the coursing event, the hares are transported back to where they were netted and re-released into the wild. Because hares are generally caught and released in the area where the club hunts, it is unlikely that hares will be raced at more than one meeting per year. However, reports by Government wardens, published under freedom of information legislation state that hares have sometimes been coursed more than once at the same event.
  • the British form of coursing is run on points while the Irish one is not. The latter is run on the basis of the first dog to turn the hare wins and this is denoted by either a red flag or a white flag (the collars of both dogs respectively).

[edit] Welfare arguments in Ireland

Organisations such as the Irish Council Against Bloodsports and the League Against Cruel Sports say that it is wrong to expose animals to the risk of injury or death for human entertainment. They point out that some hares are killed - some due to injuries caused by the muzzled dogs pounding the hares into the ground and some due to capture myopathy. For example, they cite reports of Government wildlife inspectors to say that 50 hares were killed in the 2001/02 coursing season. The report from the official Countryside ranger at the Wexford Coursing Club meeting in December 2003 confirms that forty hares died at the event.<ref>http://www.league.uk.com/uploads/documents/doc_318.pdf</ref> The report of the veterinary surgeon who examined the hares blames the "significant stress" of being "corralled and coursed." Opponents of coursing also refer to the (British) National Coursing Club evidence to the Burns Inquiry which said that muzzled coursing can cause more suffering than unmuzzled if the coursing officials are not able to reach injured hares quickly;<ref>http://www.huntinginquiry.gov.uk/evidence/coursingclub2.htm</ref> they point to occasional video evidence that shows this happening.

Coursing supporters deny that hare coursing is cruel. They say that very few hares die and that hares that are injured, pregnant or ill are not allowed to run and are seen by a vet. They say that, where hares die, this is because of an error of judgement by the slipper. In particular, they deny the claim that 50 hares were killed in 2001/02. They say that the National Coursing Club statement should not be given weight because it was given in the context that the National Coursing Club wanted to keep the traditional (unmuzzled) form of coursing. They say that traditional coursing has many more fatalities than muzzled coursing. Supporters say that, as the aim is not to kill or harm the hare, coursing should not be given so much publicity and should not be considered as a [blood sport]. They further say that the wildlife rangers who are present at the coursing events say that the hares are well fed, well looked after and the coursing is run well with very few casualties.

An issue that alarms both supporters and opponents of coursing is the trading of hares, which is illegal. A small minority carry out these activities; for example, there was a conviction for this in 2002 after the Dungannon Coursing Club had only been able to find nine hares to course, though all people involved are not necessarily involved in coursing clubs. Informal coursing and illegal hare killngs are also strongly opposed by both sets of supporters.

[edit] Public opinion (Northern Ireland)

There have not been any recent opinion surveys in the Irish Republic. However, the League Against Cruel Sports commissioned Millward Brown Ulster[1] to do a survey of 1,000 Northern Ireland residents at the end of 2003.<ref>League Against Cruel Sports press release, 15/09/03</ref> This found that at the claim that that 85% of rural people believed that hare coursing is cruel, that 73% believed it is immoral and that 70% wanted to see it brought to an end. Hare coursers argue that the public has not heard their side of the story.

[edit] Coursing in the United States

'Open field coursing' of jackrabbits takes place in a number of states in America, including California, Wyoming and Montana<ref>Burns Inquiry report, paraagraph 2.58</ref>. Its legality across the United States is unclear. Animal Place, an American animal rights group, claims that such hare coursing is legal in California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah & Wyoming but illegal in Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Vermont & Wisconsin.<ref>http://www.animalplace.org/blood.html</ref> However, it has been alleged that this is an error and that such illegality refers to closed park coursing as it occurs in Ireland and as once used in the US for training racing greyhounds. The pro-coursing campaign, Stop2110 says that open field coursing is legal in all US states with a huntable population of jackrabbits.<ref>http://www.stop2110.org/faq.php#q14</ref> Washington state lists jackrabbits as a protected species, due to an unusally low population for a western state, and bans all forms of hunting them.

In early 2006, the TV channel ABC 7 showed a film of coursing with sets of three greyhounds competing in the chase of a number of hares.<ref>http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=i_team&id=3874872</ref> It was subsequently alleged by coursers that hare screams had been "voiced over". A bill, AB2110, was introduced by California Assemblywoman Loni Hancock to make it a crime for any person in California to engage in "field coursing" defined as any activity where dogs are "allowed to track and pursue any rabbit, hare, or fox and that results in the injury or death of the [animal]" (with exemptions for the use of dogs in managing livestock, hunting, training and other legal purposes). A pro-coursing campaign <ref>http://www.stop2110.org</ref> was also established. The bill was later amended to forbid only open field coursing, defined as a "competition in which dogs are, by the use of rabbits, hares, or foxes, assessed as to skill in hunting live rabbits, hares, or foxes." (still with the same exemptions, plus one for the use of a single dog "to take animals injuring growing crops or other property." In Spring 2006, the Bill was passed by the Public Safety Committee but died in the Assembly Appropriations Committee which is responsible for considering the benefits of a bill in relation to its cost.

[edit] Hare coursing in other countries

According to the UK Government's Burns Inquiry <ref>Burns Inquiry report, paragraph 2.58</ref>, open coursing (UK style) takes place in Spain and park coursing (Irish style) takes place in Portugal. Coursing also takes place in Pakistan. Hare coursing is illegal in most other European countries.<ref>http://www.coursing.nl/alg_info.htm</ref>

[edit] Alternatives

Some critics of hare coursing suggest that coursers could test their dogs through sports such as lure coursing. However, coursers believe that, while, lure coursing is good athletic exercise, it does not approximate the testing vigour and sport of live coursing<ref>http://www.fernhill.com/lurebite.htm</ref>, and say that the breeding selection made through live coursing is primarily responsible for the existence of all true sighthound breeds.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

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[edit] External links


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