The season for hunting hares ended on last Friday, February 28th. In at least one area of north Leinster, hares have been diminishing in numbers certainly from one person's observations. Not much more than a decade ago, you could look out across a small river and see, on a large rolling field, ten and maybe up to a dozen hares disporting themselves ads they tend to do at this time of year. Today, only the odd one is seen.
It may be disease that is responsible. It is more likely that they are being killed off by men with dogs, big hunting dogs of mixed provenance. There are notices on gates for miles around
"Hunting Dogs Will be Shot" or more pacifically, "No Hunting Dogs". Some argue that there is little difference in principle between the men who go after hares with guns and those who pursue them with dogs. In practice there is this difference the doggy men seem to kill more. Hares are not great enemies of the farmers. They are vulnerable from birth. Unlike rabbits they do not live in burrows, but are born, eyes open and with fur from the first. The mother parks them out in "forms" while she forages for them and herself.
Everyone knows the whiff of witchcraft which goes with them in legend. But it is a lovely animal. We would all be the poorer without them. They are not without cunning, of course. A rather farcical story true they say in a French magazine, Le Chasseu Franca is, makes the point. Anyway, we give it here.
A man went out shooting wild fowl on the river Oise in northern France. He was in a very light boat, known as a harlequin, in which you lie belly down and propel the craft with small hand paddles. Camouflage of reeds all round the boat. Gun pointed to the front.
The river was in high flood and had spread over several kilo metres, he swore. Nothing doing in the bird line, but suddenly he sees, on a stump of willow projecting above the water a hare. He decides to take it by hand. So he brings the light craft over to the stump, climbs onto it and plunges his arm into the hole in which the hare has taken refuge. Whereupon the hare bursts out of the hole in the top of the stump, lands in the little craft, and the force of his weight landing on it, carries it off into the current. Too deep for our friend to swim, too cold, too dangerous in his heavy clothing. He was lucky to be rescued before night fell.
Question: would anyone try to get away with that story in an Irish magazine?