Madam, – Thank you for your increased coverage of hunting. The slideshow of the Waterford foxhounds (on irishtimes.com) is particularly evocative of our sport, showing the commitment of the participants, the beauty of the countryside and the poetry of the Irish winter.
On the whole, the hunting fraternity suffers from a lack of publicity. It is not media trained, nor particularly organised. Indeed, we are largely silent, perhaps to our detriment, too busy to concentrate on the looney-tune hot air now, extraordinarily, coming from the Green Party. Moreover, we do not have the luxury of the bottomless resources backing the extremist, one-issue agenda of the “antis”.
However, hunts and the people who are loosely bound together by hunting across the country are involved in their communities on a grassroots level, contributing to everything from cancer beds to home visits to local charities, all given quietly and without fanfare.
Perhaps, if those making grand gestures would get down from their pedestals, take their blinkers off and involve themselves in real life they would see not just what they might view as the negative but, rather, the enormous contribution given to rural life by those who hunt. – Yours, etc,