My preciousssssssssss.......

[Nanohedron]

Out local butcher is doing a line in muntjac steaks.

I take it that there is open season on them, then.

[PB+J]

Is there hunting in Ireland? Hunting used to be common when I was a kid--I went hunting with my grandfather and still do it now and then. In West Virginia I know multile people for whom venison is a major part of their annual food supply. But hunting is dying out in the US in favor of crazy gun hoarding.

Is hunting legal in ireland?

[Nanohedron]

Is hunting legal in ireland?

Probably not for 'Merkins.

You do realize that Ben and I weren't talking about Ireland, but the island of Britain, right?

[benhall.1]

Is hunting legal in ireland?

Probably not for 'Merkins.

You do realize that Ben and I weren't talking about Ireland, but the island of Britain, right?

You mean the island of Great Britain; I don't think there's such a thing as the island of Britain.

[Mr.Gumby]

I don't think there's such a thing as the island of Britain.

It, arguably, stopped being great some time ago didn't it?

Is there hunting in Ireland?

Is hunting legal in ireland?

In places where there are deer, Killarney National Park, Wicklow, they cull deer. Not sure if they get hunters in or let the park rangers take care of it.

I see hunters out during the winter, say from late october onward. Mostly small groups of men and a few dogs. They're after foxes, just the simple pleasure of killing something I suppose. Foxes don't harm anyone, unless you keep hens or ducks, and dead foxes are no use to anyone and often end up being hung from trees or bridges etc. The odd time I have seen people cut the tail and take it away.




There isn't much to hunt in this part of the country, some people snare rabbits, there are plenty of pheasants but I don't think people shoot them. I have come across a guy at the top of our road doing something very bloody, pulling the skin off something, while on my way home but it looked more like a mink or a pine marten, too long and thin for a hare. I didn't stop to watch, or ask. He wasn't the type to quesion.

People have been known to kill the feral goats in the Burren, illegally.

A lot of small towns have a 'Hunt', mostly people into horses, that rides out once a year. Dogs and horses in big groups going cross country, not sure they are out to chase and catch anything most of the time although I have seen a hunt at full speed going after a fox once (it got away) but that was the exception.

The local hunt came tearing don the road (more or less) recently on their annual tour, forty or so horses on a small road, plenty of excitement. Tried to stick my head and camera out of the gate but never got a good angle, you don't want to step out on the road when that comes thundering towards you:

[david_h]

Don't know about Ireland but in GB 'hunting' would usually be what Mr G illustrates. Going after deer is normally 'stalking' and blasting pheasants or grouse (woodcock, snipe etc) out of the air is 'shooting'. Am not sure about rabbits. Going after muntjac may be a branch of pest control ('thinning out') rather than stalking.

[benhall.1]

I don't think there's such a thing as the island of Britain.

It, arguably, stopped being great some time ago didn't it?

I take your point, and maybe that was a joke, as well. But the term "Great Britain" simply refers to the big island. The "Great" just means big. That's it. But there's no such place as the island of Britain.

[Mr.Gumby]

Pest control and 'sport'. I can imagine deer becoming a pest in some areas as they have no natural enemies. I don't know about foxes, farmers seem keen on eradication but it's hard to see what the problem is, again hens, geese and ducks aside. From the foxhunters I see going around it is just 'sport', looking for things to shoot. I don't understand the practice of hanging them out on bridges and trees, nobody has been able to give reasonable explanation other than it being 'a token the land is being looked after'.



I had some friends who brought up their children through the recession of the eighties, the children resented, in hindsight, being fed rabbit three or four days a week, soups, stews and disguised as chicken. Other than that I see little evidence here of hunting for food.

[PB+J]

Is hunting legal in ireland?

Probably not for 'Merkins.

You do realize that Ben and I weren't talking about Ireland, but the island of Britain, right?

yes, I did. Yes, I understand the difference

[Nanohedron]

Okay. Just checking. The transition was a bit abrupt, after all.

[PB+J]

In the US deer have become major pests, partly because they have no natural predators anymore and I guess because hunting has declined, although those guys in West Virginia seem to kill a LOT of deer. The abundance of deer is a main reason for Lyme disease. Foxes, by taking mice and rodents, help keep Lyme ticks down. If I had chickens I suppose I'd hate foxes

I went the full Michael Pollan a few years ago (author of "the Omnivores Dilemna, in which he sets out to make a dinner for friends in which he has produced all the food) and shot a deer and gutted and cleaned it, cut it up, and then made an actually really delicious stew that we served for the neighbors at a Winter solstice party. I suppose I could get used to it--you can get used to anything--but it's not pleasant and you need a literal "gut bucket." We are 90% vegetarian now, and when we eat meat we try to have a clear sense of how it got to the table. I've gone goose hunting, which I don't feel bad about because Canada geese are major pests as well.

It's interesting--I was raised in something of a "hunter culture" and with a sense of ethics about it. There's a certain romance about the cold dawn, food for the winter, the crunch of the frosty ground, the stillness of waiting etc etc. Only take a clear shot, patience, the whole deal is very different than "surf the web for political outrage."

[Nanohedron]

Don't know about Ireland but in GB 'hunting' would usually be what Mr G illustrates. Going after deer is normally 'stalking' and blasting pheasants or grouse (woodcock, snipe etc) out of the air is 'shooting'. Am not sure about rabbits. Going after muntjac may be a branch of pest control ('thinning out') rather than stalking.

In the States, whatever the quarry it's all "hunting", mainly (but trapping's trapping), whether by firearm, arrow, blowgun, what have you - although I seem to recall that it's not unusual for "shooting" to also be generally used for wildfowl hunting. We'll say "bowhunting", but at the end of the day, it's still ... hunting.

The mounted pinks-and-hounds style of foxhunting is so far removed from the US mindset, that applying the word "hunting" to it feels to me like a provisional convenience.

Then there's fishing and related: Activity-specific terms seem more to go with water; gigging for frogs comes to mind, as well as tickling trout and noodling for catfish. Trolling, flyfishing, spearfishing and bowfishing ("shooting", in context) are just subsets of fishing. Don't know if there's a term for small-scale netting other than "netting".

If I were to say I stalked deer, most Yanks would assume I just lurked after them ninja-fashion for whatever reason, and then I would be asked, "Why?", because for us, the goal of bagging one isn't implicit in the word.

[Mr.Gumby]

There's a certain romance about the cold dawn, food for the winter, the crunch of the frosty ground, the stillness of waiting etc etc. Only take a clear shot, patience, the whole deal is very different than "surf the web for political outrage."

I can imagine what you mean but it's not an image I recognise, being used to seeing small groups of men barging around muddy fields at weekends, with a few dogs, shouting, making a racket, shooting continuously at everything that moves and slaughtering foxes just for the sake of it.

[PB+J]

Upper class Philadelphians still do the whole foxhunt on horseback thing. A friend of mine was born to wealth on Philadelphia's "Main Line" and "the Radnor Hunt" https://www.radnorhunt.org/Foxhunting-(1) was part of his upbringing. It seems pretty awful to me--the baying hounds, a lot of pretentious twits chasing a terrified animal.

Also I met a family in West Virginia, living in a trailer, on public assistance, rusting non working cars in the front yard, the whole cliche, but they had a solar powered automated feeder, mounted a mile away in a tree, which would dispense corn at regular intervals. It had a motion sensor and and IR light and would photograph the deer when they came to eat the corn, and transmit the image to the guy's cellphone. In the last few decades the NRA and the gun manufacturers have manged t merge hunting with weird home security fetishsism

I might say "shoot" geese, but "hunt" is the more common term

[Mr.Gumby]

That was not what I was referring to. Yes, the local hunt goes out on a trot once a year, ride across fields for the fun of riding, they don't actually go after foxes I think.

What I was talking about was the four or five cars, some with trailers with a few dogs and the small groups of men that arrive in them that spend their day crossing fields, shouting and shooting. I see them most weekends (I live in a spot with few people and a lot of foxes). Nothing upper class about it.