Henry Salt also argued in the Morning Leader on 31st August 1907, almost two months after the incident, that such scandals as this bludgeoning of a hunted otter and the recent worrying of cats by the master of the Cheriton Otter Hounds were a sign that cruelty in one direction often leads to cruelty in another, and that in such a sport as otter-hunting the line between practice and malpractice is apt to be overlooked.Footnote 79. With fox hunting, he argued, few perhaps ever see the death, and it is over almost in an instant but, owing to his strength and cat-like tenacity of life, the otter fights long and dies hard. Bates wrote a regular column, Country Life, in The Spectator, and two volumes of nature essays, Through the Woods (1936) and Down the River (1937). 26 Reflecting on the period, W. H. Rogers of the Cheriton Otter Hounds wrote: Some doubts were expressed as to the propriety of hunting while so many poor fellows were being killed and wounded in the trenches, but the view prevailed that if the Hunt was once dropped it would be very difficult to restart it, and that those who were away would wish us to keep things going against their return.Footnote Which of the following In 1939 another iconic image came out on the front cover of the Picture Post (Figure 5). 35 At this time the main justification for killing otters was the damage they did to fish stocks. [22] In 1957 the treaty was finally re-drafted to account for the population changes in the various locations of sea otters. Resting upon his well-notched otter pole and fully clad in hunting attire, he gazes into the distance. In advance of a major test in 1968, the U.S. Atomic Ene But model men would find pleasure neither in torturing, nor annihilating any of them.Footnote Afterwards everyone who took part in the orgy was probably ashamed of himself. Unlike the working men who may have regretted the spontaneous event, sportsmen not only celebrated their own form of killing; they had created organisations that expected it to occur on a regular basis. Justice for the Animals, Otter-Hunting, Cruel Sports, October 1929, 128. . Nearly 280 river otters were captured in the Adirondacks and Catskills and relocated to 15 sites in central and western New York during a three-year period in the 1990s. Following its publication, the book received widespread publicity when Williamson was awarded the Hawthornden Prize in June 1928. Throughout the essay he applies the term to a number of situations to discredit the idea that animals are killed for public safety, natural history, protection of farmers or sporting exercise.Footnote 84. 80. Six weeks later, on 9th September, the magazine's editor revealed that many readers had taken umbrage with the article, and invited further correspondence on the subject. 22. Although celebrated by reviewers in the Illustrated London News and Athenaeum, the subsequent engraving failed to sell well and John Ruskin argued in 1846 that Landseer before he gives us any more writhing otters, or yelping packs should consider whether such a scene was worthy of contemplation.Footnote 66. Coulson compared the death of the fox with the death of the otter to emphasise the cruelty of the latter. The latter formed a pack of Otter Hounds in Llandinam, Wales, bearing his name in 1906. He did however come to the conclusion that their conduct had been reprehensible.Footnote This may have been because the facts were incomplete or because the figures seemed to speak for themselves. Observing sea otters and kelp beds on Amchitka both onshore and during scuba dives led Estes to question the links between them. 56 The idea of introducing a slaughter limit helps to explain why his case for protecting the otter did not play a part in the rhetoric of the Humanitarian League or the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports. 70. Cruel Sports magazine readily employed this strategy. Kean, Hilda, The Smooth Cool Men of Science: The Feminist and Socialist Response to Vivisection, History Workshop Journal (1995), 40:1, 1638 Kean, Hilda, Animal Rights (London, 1998)Google Scholar; 23 Sea urchins are voracious grazers of kelp. with exception of the three spurious sports of carted-stag hunting, rabbit coursing and shooting pigeons from traps.Footnote At night, in company with her other cub, she came to the yard and tried to liberate the little captive, but without success. Johnston condemned otter hunting and urged the government to give the mammal legal protection in his 1903 publication British Mammals. and the sunshine of May. He thought that the aesthetics of otter hunting could be maintained if public opinion or legislation limited the killing of otters to ten per annum in any one county and then it might be possible to keep up a picturesque sport without unduly lessening the number of otters in our rivers.Footnote Donald, Diana, Picturing Animals in Britain 17501850 (New Haven and London, 2007), pp. Vivisection, the slaughter of animals for food, the fur and feather fashion trade, and blood sports were all targeted.Footnote A key criticism was of the voyeurism of watching the otter die. 11. WebThe feeding habits of otters vary greatly depending on species, location, and time of year or season. Now, Dr. Estes said, more than 90 percent of those otters are gone. and provided further evidence of the barbarous spirit engendered by indulgence in blood sports.Footnote The chapter entitled Otters and Men is important. 60. An anonymous informant writing in The Humanitarian in August 1908, for instance, questioned the unwomanly conduct of the ladies in the field: The conduct of the women is beyond me to describe. Instead as Collinson argued, the hunting and worrying of otters while caring for their offspring proclaimed only the insensate cowardice of the men and women concerned.Footnote His letter writing campaign against rabbit-coursing on Sundays in Surrey led to its prohibition in 1924. For this reason, Bates believed that all animals, whether wild or domestic, should have the same legal rights. Diana Donald argues, however, that the resulting canvas, six and a half feet high, had no precedent in British sporting art in the way it combined archaic pageantry and brutal actuality with the hunter twisting the spear so the otter does not immediately fall to the hounds. The painting was commissioned as a commemorative portrait of his pack of otter hounds by Lord Aberdeen (17841860), then foreign secretary and later to become prime minister. 20 50. The League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports, Annual Report (London, 1931), 34. 54 . 68. My object is only to insure that this Institution shall fulfil the great purpose for which it was founded.Footnote As the otter hunters arrived at the meet, the first thing they saw was a line of demonstrators with banners bearing the words Abolish the Shameful Sport of Otter-hunting and Stand up for the Helpless. (Cheers.) "useRatesEcommerce": false 36, The third, by Lady Florence Dixie, took the opportunity to publicise the Humanitarian League's work on blood sports. Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 1906 Annual Report (1906), p. 127. . The first publication solely concerned with exposing the cruelties of otter hunting was Joseph Collinson's 1911 The Hunted Otter, a twenty-four page booklet in Ernest Bell's A. Ibid., p. 20. . 23. By placing value on the life of the animal, it was not the act of killing that was condemned, but rather the killers reaction to such an act. But Bristow-Noble emphasised that we should. 15. During the 82nd Anniversary Meeting of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals on 21st May, Stephen Coleridge tapped into this public feeling, and unexpectedly proposed that the committee should prepare a bill to make otter hunting illegal. 73 The evidence seems clear enough.Footnote The Guardian, 9th May 2010. 12. 86. Figure 1. This official regulatory association was set up to standardise conduct in the field, eliminate internal squabbles over hunting countries and promote the otterhound breed. Throughout the period campaigners repeatedly pointed to this subject as proof of the inconsistency and heartlessnessFootnote 3.84. If anyone interpreted this anecdote with a smidgen of sentimentality, as a narrative of a protective mother rewarded for her heroic conduct with the release of her whelp, the harsher realities of such freedom were instantly put into perspective with a quotation from L. C. R. Cameron: Resentment at disturbance of the normal conditions impels her to leave her couch in which she has laid her cubs; the promptings of the maternal instinct compel her to return forthwith to her offspring. In the Daily Sketch, Mr Harding Matthews, an individual with no declared interest, wrote: Are we to believe that Workington breeds people so utterly spineless as to allow, in public and in broad daylight, the brutal murder of an inoffensive, wild creature? Feature Flags: { 55. 22. Demonstrations at a Meet of the Bucks Otter Hounds, Cruel Sports, June 1931, 51. The Trust recently secured the first ongoing class licence to capture and transport live Eurasian otters trapped in well-fenced fisheries in England. phospholipid bilayer of a cell. The men then lit some cotton waste, smoked out the otter, and pelted it with stones. The hypocrisy of clergy preaching high moral standards and Christian virtues yet killing for fun was regularly exploited by members of the Humanitarian League. Mr Rose of the Eastern Counties Otter Hounds described the proposed Bill as most unfair and ridiculous and argued that otter hunting was grossly misrepresented: Long spiked poles are never used for the purposes suggested, but for assisting followers across ditches, rivers and fences. The otter is impaled on a barbed hunting spear and is about to be flung down for the hounds. 52. 1 70 Williamson, Henry, Tarka the Otter: His Joyful Water-life and Death in the Country of the Two Rivers (London, 1927)Google Scholar; . The letter proposed that drag hunting provides all the thrill of the chase without a living victim, and we earnestly request you to consider its adoption in preference to hunting live creatures.Footnote Pring, Geoffrey, Records of the Culmstock Otterhounds, c. 17901957 (Exeter, 1958), p. 35 As this practice was almost exclusivelyFootnote . Added to this, the physical characteristics of the otter meant that the final worry, much like the preceding pursuit, could be more prolonged and more of a spectacle than in hunts of other animals. were extirpated. He was a founder member in 1903 of the Society for the Preservation of the Wild Fauna of the Empire and an opponent of big game hunting. The League established a special department to deal with Sports in 1895. After retiring from the army he devoted much of his time to lecturing in schools across the country about the fair treatment of animals. . As with the Barnstaple cat-worrying case of 1905, attention was redirected from the actual killing to the animal in question. This echoed broader concerns for non-human animals. During 1970-71, 93 sea otters were released in Oregon. This indiscriminate killing of females and cubs was shown to be by no means isolated. Large hunting efforts were under way with the help of a massive ship in the water. 18, The first published call for the protection of otters came from Sir Harry Hamilton Johnston (18581927) who has been described as one of the main instigators of the scramble for Africa on the ground and considered himself a naturalist above all else.Footnote Published online by Cambridge University Press: When urchin populations spiked in response, the reefs held their ground. [23] and broadly disregarded spearing as one of the blood-thirsty methods used by our forefathers.Footnote And even we English whose behaviour in the country is notoriously crazy must have an excuse for wading through rivers in grey bowler hats, blue jackets and white flannel breeches. By the mid-1960s, Amchitka Island was being used a site for nuclear testing, which eventually killed many sea otters in the area. 59. 39 Bobcats and otters or their pelts must be delivered to an agent of the Conservation Department for registration or tagging before selling, transferring, tanning or mounting by April 10. Glorying over being blooded at an Otter Hunt, Cruel Sports, 1928 p. 85. It also shows that people other than animal welfarists and sportsmen were concerned with the hunted otter. Still, if I am ruled out of order I will resume my seat. The letter argued that no reasonable excuse can be found for such conduct, misnamed sport which was morally wrong and barbaric. Darts and arrows were present at the start of hunting. Otherwise inaccessible wild and watery landscapes could also be explored: in otter hunting, the hounds, the invigorating air of the early morning, and the superb beauty of England's valleys and dales constitute the chief attractions. Here Bates presents a very personal and very committed attack on otter hunting in a style of writing quite unlike his own. . feel thankful that the Masters of the various packs of otter hounds do not share this opinion.Footnote The regular otter hunter deliberately indulges in cruelty without the saving grace of feeling shame on the contrary, the returning cars and local tap rooms ring with the complacent boastings of the lords and ladies of creation.Footnote The public profile of otter hunting was raised by the publication in 1927 of Henry Williamson's Tarka the Otter: His Joyful Water-life and Death in the Country of the Two Rivers. . hasContentIssue false, Copyright Cambridge University Press 2016. He is astonished that the law of this country still allows this rotten and most bloody exhibition of behaviour and that such repugnant bloodiness survives in a so-called civilised age and country.Footnote 9. In the minds of campaigners it not only looked ridiculous, it was unacceptable. This idea is reinforced by the fact that the two members of the audience who stood to offer their support were both members of the Humanitarian League. This act of individual defiance was, however, soon silenced by the laughter of the unreceptive audience. WebThe otters were then protected by the international fur seal treaty, which banned sea otter hunting. The following year, the Fur Seal Treaty was signed and although the One of the first men of influence to join the Humanitarian League was Colonel William Lisle Blenkinsopp Coulson (18411911). According to Coulson those who engaged in the kill became virtually maddened by it.Footnote 42. Writing in the Morning Leader, Colonel Coulson described how an otter, which had been hunted for seven hours, was struck and killed by a blow from a metal-shod stick wielded by an otter hunter in a boat. Sea otter conservation began in the early 20th century, when the sea otter was nearly extinct due to large-scale commercial hunting. The sea otter was once abundant in a wide arc across the North Pacific ocean, from northern Japan to Alaska to Mexico. Hastings (190982) became a leading war reporter for Picture Post. Sea otters were locally extinct in British Columbian waters in Canada, until a plane containing a romp of otters arrived and set off a population boom with unintended consequences. Williamson dedicated Tarka the Otter to William Rogers. 336, p. 34. 14364Google Scholar; . 63. On rare occasions women were singled out for criticism during this period: Why the educated, rich, or the uneducated for the matter of that, have nothing better of more edifying to do with their time is beyond one's comprehension. She argued that Otter-hunting is an incredibly vile sport, because it is deliberately carried on in the breeding season and was amazed that a larger number of influential people do not feel it their duty to make active protests against these things. And as a relatively inexpensive sport, such social changes meant otter hunting had become a less appealing target for them. See inside.. We can gain an insight into the exact message they were trying to make from the letter which was handed to the master, Sir Maurice Bromley-Wilson, and followers: The Leeds branch of the League for Prohibition of Cruel Sports has organised this protest against otter-hunting to indicate that there is a growing public feeling against this and other so-called sports. 16586Google Scholar; Total loading time: 0 He uses heavy irony to get his point across: Fun is a curious word. 42. He reported that in certain otter hunting regions such as Wales, Devonshire, and Sussex, the otter was being rapidly extinguished by the actions of unreflecting, red-faced, well-meaning, church going, rate-paying persons on the plea that it eats salmon or trout. The war had a dramatic effect on otter hunting and campaigns against the sport, although individual hunts dealt with the hostilities in their own ways.
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as otters were removed during the hunting years