and 51. WebThe otters were then protected by the international fur seal treaty, which banned sea otter hunting. 8. The opinion of H. E. Bates provides an insight into one person's perception of the immorality of hunting otters to death. The sea otter population has rebounded to nearly three thousand individuals 67. WebSea otters were hunted to near extinction during the maritime fur trade of the 1700s and 1800s. 34 In the case of an organised hunt, the followers deliberately engage in a series of barbaric acts, skilfully camouflaged by all the trappings of an elaborate ritual. Figure 4. As this practice was almost exclusivelyFootnote Some inhuman wretch: Animal Maiming and the Ambivalent Relationship between Rural Workers and Animals, Rural History, 25 (2014), 13360CrossRefGoogle Scholar. My object is only to insure that this Institution shall fulfil the great purpose for which it was founded.Footnote 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. 17 2956Google Scholar; 48 Varndell had mastered the Crowhurst Otter Hounds since 1905, and had missed only four days hunting in thirty-five years.Footnote 23 7 In August 1938 the National Society for the Abolition of Cruel Sports gained permission to reprint the chapter in leaflet form. Demonstrations at a Meet of the Bucks Otter Hounds, Cruel Sports, June 1931, 51. . 8 It may be that he saw otter hunting as a useful device for testing both the political elasticity of the Society and the penetrative influence of the Humanitarian League. The otter is as good an excuse as the next one; and, after all, the beast usually escapes.Footnote . On occasions deer-hunters hunted and killed hinds-in-calf. After introducing her pack, the Crowhurst Otter Hounds, the article listed the women who actively enjoyed the sport: Of the invariably large and influential following we may mention Mrs Mantell, Mrs Killogg-Jenkins, and Miss Woodruffe, Mrs Trimmer and Miss and Mrs J. Awbrey.Footnote The Picture Post styles otter hunting as just another peculiar pastime the notoriously crazy English enjoy in the countryside. President Stephen Coleridge, his successor Lady Cory and several other members did the same. It depicts Varndell as a solitary figure deep in thought. 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 5 This may have been because the facts were incomplete or because the figures seemed to speak for themselves. . Staged at Colchester's North Railway Station, on this occasion members of the Colchester Working Group were the chief agitators and the Eastern Counties Otter Hounds the agitated. the quarry itself is quite a secondary consideration.Footnote Coleridge, Bell and others argued in articles in Animals Friend magazine and The Humanitarian that this reversal was unconstitutional and illogical.Footnote was fully aware of the power of publicity and as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals did not oppose blood sports, this proposal was a radical move. Perhaps surprisingly, despite four decades of campaigns against the sport, the article does not describe otter hunting as something controversial. Cruel Sports magazine readily employed this strategy. UKWOT has But in the early 2000s, their numbers exploded: From 2002 to 2011, the sea-otter population more the killing of baby cubs must needs go on, though a grief and pain to all concerned in their ultimate destruction.Footnote This is likely to be a ban by local landowners. But model men would find pleasure neither in torturing, nor annihilating any of them.Footnote It also shows that people other than animal welfarists and sportsmen were concerned with the hunted otter. 6. Now, Dr. Estes said, more than 90 percent of those otters are gone. Walter Cheesman and Mildred Cheesman, Diaries of the Crowhurst Otter Hounds, 1904, Unpublished, East Sussex Record Office, Reference AMS5788/3/1, p. 3. There were several large sources of South American otter skins. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s however verbal disapproval was replaced with more subtle visual rebukes. It is a brutal, demoralising amusement. Here, the criticism of otter hunting seems to be directed more at the spectator's reaction to the prolonged death-agony, than the actual experience which the animal is going through. 56 . John Mackenzie points out that Landseer did not decry human participation in the raw cruelty of the natural world. 73 22. 35. She is about to be afforded the pleasure, the privilege, of being harried and hunted and having her living guts ripped out by forty human beings, twenty or thirty hounds and some terriers.Footnote Justice for the Animals, Otter-Hunting, Cruel Sports, October 1929, 128. The recent exposure in Devonshire, where a master of otter hounds was sentenced to imprisonment. For many, the behaviour of these dynamic and somewhat bedraggled women, clad in sodden attire, was far from ladylike. It is pleasant to read that after such heroic conduct on the part of the poor beast, the hunter's heart softened and the whelp restored.Footnote This was the month when the Barnstaple cat-worrying case was in the public eye. 10. Joseph Collinson, The Hunted Otter (1911), p. 19. Spearing was no longer permitted in the popular modern form. 55. After some lively verbal exchanges between the Huntsman and League members, the Branch Secretary Mrs Chapman attempted to address the crowd by standing on a chair. 70. It argued that if it were necessary, otters should be cleanly killed, i.e. Large numbers of sea cows occurred in the Commander Islands at the time of their discovery by Europeans in 1741. 50. 3.84. 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 See inside.. At its centre an exhausted hunter holds an otter aloft over a pack of baying otterhounds. The otter is impaled on a barbed hunting spear and is about to be flung down for the hounds. 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. In the latter, the fox has some chance of escape but in the former the otter's chances of escape are clearly much less. Rogers, W. H., Records of the Cheriton Otter Hounds (Taunton, 1925), p. 225 They were joined by English and American hunters in the latter part of the century, and uncontrolled hunting continued until 1799. The underlying motivation for these very specific criticisms is a much broader belief that all living beings feel pain and suffer. 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. 336, p. 34. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings. 59. In his opinion everyone had a right to enjoy this animal in its natural surroundings, not just otter hunters. Darts and arrows were present at the start of hunting. artificial membrane that mimics the. Hounds Feather as They Search the River Banks; (10) Followers Take to the Water; (11) This Is the Kill; (12) The Whip Holds Up the Trophy. This official regulatory association was set up to standardise conduct in the field, eliminate internal squabbles over hunting countries and promote the otterhound breed. Render date: 2023-05-01T08:20:46.153Z In this case, which was brought by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Master of the Cheriton Otter Hounds, Mr Walter Lorraine Bell, and three of its members were found guilty of charges relating to cruelty to cats. 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 In advance of a major test in 1968, the U.S. Atomic Ene Moreover, the intimacy of otter hunting meant that not only are they present at these infamous scenes, but, like the huntsmen, are worked up to the wildest pitch of excitement and moreover join in the final worry and the performance of the obsequies, when the spoils of the chase are distributed.Footnote . and provided further evidence of the barbarous spirit engendered by indulgence in blood sports.Footnote In February 1918 the Representation of the People Act gave all women over the age of thirty the right to vote. J. C. Bristow-Noble, Madame, 22nd July 1905, 171, cited in Cheesman and Cheesman, Diaries of the Crowhurst Otter Hounds, p. 43 [Actually it was Mrs Kellogg-Jenkins, Battle, who had been born in San Francisco, 1911 census]. Google Scholar. He focussed on several key themes including the hunting of pregnant otters and the demoralising effects of participating in the hunt. Hunting is a good excuse for a hard day's exercise. 25. Consequently everyone can watch, and most do watch, the end and people collect from far and near and watch in cold blood for minutes together the frantic death-agony of the brave little animal who has never done injury to anyone assembled. Rather than focussing solely on the incident, they redirected their attention to the public's response to it. CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Coulson, Otter Worrying A Protest, The Humanitarian, August 1908, 601. Williamson's book was based on considerable personal research and knowledge. It has many meanings and perhaps I misconstrue it? . In 1901 he also contributed a four page paper, The Otter Worry, to the League's sixty-three page pamphlet British Blood Sports: Let us go out and kill something. 77. Bates begins by considering the main excuse for killing otters, the supposed need to reduce predation on fish. 58. A prime example was when an article appeared in the 22nd July 1905 edition of Madame, a magazine aimed at wealthy women, proudly informing readers about the first lady Master of Otter Hounds, Mrs Mildred Cheesman. are not infrequently killed, even in the summer months, and then, of course, the whole litter is destroyed. With this in mind Johnston seemed to overlook the behaviour of otter hunters and instead placed blame on anglers: Salmon is produced in such enormous abundance in North America and Norway, and is so very unlikely (owing to its habit of resorting to the sea) to become exterminated in British waters by the otter, that it would be a shame if this remarkable aquatic weasel. Sydney Barthropp, Master of the Eastern Counties Otter Hounds, died fighting in France in 1914, which led to their disbandment soon after. The men then lit some cotton waste, smoked out the otter, and pelted it with stones. The national profile of otter hunting was raised in July 1905 when the press reported an incident that became known as the Barnstaple cat-worrying case. 68. The Master of the Wye Valley Otter Hounds, on the other hand, styled himself as a utilitarian, hunting through the war not for sport, but in order to keep down the head of otters in the interests of the fisheries.Footnote Google Scholar. For such people the laceration of an otter's living flesh is an amusing thing. CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Sea otters were hunted to near extinction during the maritime fur trade of the 1700s and 1800s. When urchin populations spiked in response, the reefs held their ground. "During the fur trade, Clathromorphum persisted through centuries where urchins presumably abounded," Rasher said. "However, the situation has drastically changed this time around. George Greenwood made a similar observation in the 1914 publication, Killing for Sport: Men and, good heavens! Hastings (190982) became a leading war reporter for Picture Post. Each image is accompanied with a caption and a paragraph explaining the scene. WebThe otters were then protected by the international fur seal treaty, which banned sea otter hunting. Otter-Hunting, Cruel Sports, August 1939, 58. Now, what nonsense this is!Footnote Another aspect of otter hunting that attracted critical attention was the type of people involved and the behaviour it induced. 83. 50 Ormond, Richard, Sir Edwin Landseer (London, 1981), pp. Members of the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports were also outraged by this murderous behaviour and equally critical of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, but they had a slightly different response to the event. In The Times on 13th June 1928 Williamson was described as the finest and most intimate living interpreter of the drama of wildlife. With no sportsmen involved, the incident gained universal condemnation from otter hunters, members of the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports and the general public. He is remembered today for his monumental two-volume Comparative Study of the Bantu and Semi-Bantu Languages (191921); for his natural history collections now held at Kew, the British Museum, and London Zoo; and for his identification of the okapi (Okapi johnstoni) in the Congo in 1901.Footnote 3. 49. Google Scholar. and the sunshine of May. 43. } 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. Again this article was accompanied with a striking photograph of several ladies holding banners (Figure 3). This reversal shows that the campaigning did have an impact, albeit a small one, on the public perception of the activity. 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. earlier attempts at concealment were also exposed. Like the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports, the National Society for the Abolition of Cruel Sports advocated the state regulation of British wildlife, and were outraged by the hunting and coursing of highly sentient creatures for sport. 90. 18. In 1923 he diverted his attention to blood sports. 69 For Bates, much like Henry Salt, the pain and suffering experienced by animals were indistinguishable from those experienced by humans. Now, Dr. Estes said, more than 90 percent of those otters are gone. In just a few decades, this bustling civilization has withered into a ghost town. You can travel down 10 miles of coastline and never see an animal, he said. The loss is more than cosmetic. In the Aleutians delicate seascape, otters hold the entire ecosystem together. Figure 5. 1823. Here we explore the plausibility of this mechanism, using information on sea otters, kelp forests, and the recent extinction of Steller's sea cows from the Commander Islands. Drawing his facts from The Field of 8th October 1910, Collinson explained that the Eastern Counties Otter Hounds had recorded a total of twenty-two otters, the Border Counties accounted for twenty-five, and the Hawkstone finished with forty. Resting upon his well-notched otter pole and fully clad in hunting attire, he gazes into the distance.
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as otters were removed during the hunting years