Poll findings mortal blow to hare coursing

I am not surprised by the new independent marketing survey findings on attitudes to hare coursing in Ireland. According to the latest poll, more than two thirds of people in the Republic favour a ban on this inhuman and barbaric practice. The poll findings show that the muzzling of coursing greyhounds is widely perceived for what it was and remains: a cynical PR exercise designed to take the “bad look” off the blood sport. It eliminated the dramatic tug-of war scenes that attracted so many top newspaper photographers and revolted most decent people.

But muzzling left all the other elements of hare coursing intact. Coursing Clubs were still free to net the hares, confine them in unnatural environments, prior to using them as live bait.

Though not literally pulled asunder as they were up to 1993, hares are now subjected to less visible injuries, mostly internal, from they cannot recover, being the brittle boned creatures they are.

Instead of those heart-rending spectacles of horror and bloodletting that were invariably accompanied by the ear-splitting, child-like sobbing of dying hares, the animals are now merely “dispatched” (killed by amateur karate chops) after injury or released back into the wild to die of their wounds.

And that's apart altogether from the condition known as “stress myopathy” from which hares suffer by virtue of being held captive in cramped paddocks in the weeks leading up to baiting day.

But muzzling, if the survey findings are anything to go by, has not fooled the general public.

Politicians of all parties should heed and respect the majority view on this issue and move quickly to protect the hare. 

They should remember that coursing is part of the same “Hidden Ireland” that produced concentration camps for single mothers and the “nod and wink” approach to corruption in politics. It deserves to be consigned forever to a sordid and shameful past where it belongs.

Already, the Irish hare is listed as an endangered species in the Red Data Book on Ireland's wildlife. The wholesale chopping down of hedges and other growth militates against its survival, as does the onward march of urbanisation. Its habitat is being stripped away from the countryside, shrinking with each day that passes.

On top of all that, must the hare continue to be at the mercy of coursing clubs…people who wish to abuse it for fun and games?
 

John P Fitzgerald, Callan, Co. Kilkenny