Has the âŹ3 bounty on dead mink come in yet and have any of you sportsmen cashed in on this bonanza? I presume youâre allowed to skin the mink first before handing it over to the department. Iâd say you could throw in a stoat and they wouldnât know the difference, youâd hardly get away with a big fucking Pine Marten though.
:lol:
Those cunts have had a mild winter.
I havenât seen one in years but I saw a dead one in the Natural History Museum recently, vicious little cunts Iâd say, as Lohan knows well.
I keep meaning to read this thread more as it interests me enormously. Runt and the rest of the anglers - has any salmon fishing commenced this year and any deceny catches to report?
Iâve learnt over night that you only need to present the tail of the mink to get the bounty, therefore you are free to skin and eat the rest of the mink if you so wish.
Likewise Grey Squirrels.
Please feel free to recount your stories or anecdotes about culling grey crows. There is nothing that gives me a warmer feeling than hearing about this scourge of a bird being kept in check. A friend of mine shot a grey crow while firing out the passenger window of his car over the weekend. Thatâs one less of the bastards to rape and pillage the nests of songbirds and ground nesting birds over the Spring.
In other news, I was overjoyed to come across a dead mink while walking on the road today.
When a fatty ewe goes over on her back the bastard grey crow has been known to pick their eyes out⌠What a ruthless creature.
Thats nice.
Anyway, have any of you been out fishing so far this year?
Sorry Fitz, missed your earlier post.
I havenât been fishing yet this year and with the thousand odd gallons of diesel going into my local river in the past month I canât imagine the fishing being much good for the next few years. An awful pity as the river was full of salmon parr a couple of years ago and finally seemed to be replinishing itâs stock, but this will set it right back again.
Jaysus Runt, thats terrible, what river is that?
River Deel.
We were on boil notice until this week
What happened Runt? What has the damage been like?
An underground pipe at a factory coroded and dumped a load of diesel
into the river. We had no water for nearly 3 weeks. Donât know what the environmental impact had been like. I went for a walk by the river a couple of weeks ago but their wasnât any slick on it or anything.
check out this clown
âPattwellâs Verdictâ
Evening Echo, February 21st 2012
We are but a week away from the end of the hare-coursing season. Unfortunately for the poor hares we are in a Leap Year, which means that the legal torture of these poor timid creatures can go on for a day longer than in other years. The Irish hare is a protected species under The Wildlife Act, 1976 but is classified as a game species and may therefore be trapped or sold under license during the open season (end of September to the end of February). The license must be obtained from the National Parks and Wildlife Service and it usually allows for the netting by each club of about 75 hares. After the coursing event, the hares are supposed to be transported back to where they were netted and re-released into the wild. Yet one hears reports of hares, having survived a coursing meeting, being passed on to another club to be used again.
In 1993, the government, responding to public concern over the cruel killing of hares during coursing meetings and under political pressure, required the Irish Coursing Club (who control the sport) to change the rules to require that greyhounds are muzzled at enclosed coursing meetings. To be facetious for a moment, nobody figured out how to tell the hares that the dogs are muzzled. Greyhounds used in open coursing still, however, remain unmuzzled.
Remember the Lisbon Treaty? You know, the one we voted to reject but not being satisfied with the result the Government ran the referendum again. Anti blood sport campaigners and animal lovers generally, if they had read Article 13 of The Lisbon treaty, could, initially, have been quite overjoyed, until, that is, they read the sting in the tail. Article 13 reads:
In formulating and implementing the Unionâs agriculture, fisheries, transport, internal market, research and technological development and space policies, the Union and the Member States shall, since animals are sentient beings, pay full regard to the welfare requirements of animals, while respecting the legislative or administrative provisions and customs of the Member States relating in particular to religious rites, cultural traditions and regional heritage. The saving words for coursing fans are, of course, âŚ.respecting theâŚcultural traditions of the Member States.
There is no doubt that coursing is a cultural tradition. Arrian, the Greek philosopher, wrote the oldest documented description of hare coursing about the year 180 AD. That certainly establishes the antiquity and heredity of the sport. Since 180 AD, however, very many other practices, common then, have been regulated and banned as human beings evolved and civilisation progressed. We donât cut the heads off convicted criminals anymore; slavery has been legally abolished (whether factually so is another matter); we donât send little children up chimneys to clean them anymore; women can no longer be regarded as chattels. Yet a poor timid animal can still be taken out of its habitat, confined, hunted, terrified and often brutally killed because it has been done for 2,000 years. It seems to me that civilisation still has a way to go.
There are between seventy-five and eighty coursing clubs in Ireland. In the weeks before each meeting, members of the clubs go into the countryside to collect hares in a process known as ânettingâ. This involves shouting, yelling and making loud noises to herd hares into nets that have been strategically placed. The hares are then put into boxes for transport to the coursing venue. This netting and handling is cruel in itself and often results in these timid and delicate creatures dying or suffering severe injury.
The hares then have to be trained. Releasing a wild animal into a coursing field would produce, what coursing supporters would see as, very poor âsportâ because the hare wouldnât know where to run. Before the coursing event, therefore, they are put through training sessions to get them familiar with the field and to teach them to run up the centre in order to provide âgood coursingâ.
During these training weeks the hares are kept herded together in an enclosure. This adds considerably to the stress suffered by them. Being naturally solitary creatures, in captivity they are very prone to disease, which can spread more easily when they are kept together in an enclosure.
The coursing field is typically about 370 metres (400 yards) long. A hare is released from one end and given a 90m start before the greyhounds are released to pursue it up the field to the âescapesâ at the far end. Typically the dogs catch up with the hare about 50m from the escapes. The first dog to turn the hare wins.
The objective of coursing is to test and judge the athletic ability of the dogs rather than to kill the hare which, being a very agile creature, weaves, turns and dodges skilfully to avoid them. Greyhounds are much bigger and faster. A hare is usually about 3.5 kg in weight whilst a greyhound can be between 30 and 40 kg. With two dogs chasing one hare, the hare is a mere one twentieth of the size of the combined size of the chasing dogs. A hare can reach speeds of up to 40 - 45 km/h. At maximum acceleration, a greyhound reaches a full speed of 70 km/h (within 30 metres from release,) travelling at almost 20 metres per second for the first 250 metres of a race. With odds like those the wonder is that so many hares do make it to the 'escapes".
Thankfully its agility gives the hare an important and often crucial advantage as it seeks, usually successfully, to escape. During the course, however, the hare is literally fighting for its life. Even though the dogs are muzzled, they still can kill the hare by mauling it into the ground or tossing its delicate body into the air. In fact, this often happens.
I have seen a report that suggests that during the course of a coursing season at least 400 hares are killed or so seriously injured that they have to be put down. That figure may be anti-blood-sport propaganda. When I enquired the Irish Coursing Club said, âIn the 2010/11 season 5734 hares were captured for the purpose of Park Coursing and 5671 of these were released back into the wild, under the supervision of officers from the National Parks & Wildlife. Of the 63 hares that did not make it, some would have died of natural causes whilst in captivity, some would have been hit by the greyhounds and a decision was made to put them down and a few would have been killed outright.â
The national coursing meeting in Clonmel is considered the most important event in the coursing calendar. It is said to attract up to 10,000 spectators and is claimed by its organisers to be worth many millions for the local economy.
At least Article 13 of The Lisbon Treaty, which effectively means our Constitution, recognises that animals are âsentient beingsâ. The best meaning for the word âsentientâ I could find is âhaving the power of perception by the sensesâ, that is, be able to perceive or feel things. Nothing but words! Entirely meaningless to the poor creature dying a horrible death so that a few humans, supposed to be sentient creatures too, can have a few moments of sport.
Whether it is 400 or 50, or some number in between, it is too many. Remember too all the hares that survive despite having been terrified and tortured in a most cruel way, all in the name of sport.
It doesnât say. But I assume thatâs written by Michael Patwell? If so he is a retired judge from Cork, noted for his massively hard line on criminals!! Bit of a loose cannon. Everyone in Cork knows someone whos gotten a booting offa Patwell
Patwell is a cunt of highest order
+1
Ah yes to be released back into the wild where they will live out their days in peace and tranquility not to be chased or âterrifiedâ by anything.
This a great time of the year to be walking the fields.
Went out with the dogs yesterday evening. Plenty of hares & pheasants about, even ended up with a fox sitting itself down about 20 yards from me.