confined to otter hunting, they also tried to divide the hunting fraternity by distinguishing the sporting conduct of otter hunters from fox hunters, stag hunters and hare hunters: If the sporting set consider it unsporting to hunt some animals in the breeding season, why does this not apply to otters?Footnote 1 For campaigners, the killing of indefensible cubs and protective mothers was the antithesis of fair play, sportsmanship and manliness. He did however come to the conclusion that their conduct had been reprehensible.Footnote Alongside this broad criticism, the incident was also used to expose the behaviour of sportsmen in general. In these terms, if fishermen, as the only people with a genuine grievance against otters, did not feel the need to hunt and kill them on the grounds of revenge, then the animal was not a pest. Oliver, Roland, Johnston, Sir Henry Hamilton (18581927), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [online]Google Scholar. Summer hunting across rugged river valleys offered strenuous physical exertion in the sun, whilst facilitating a picnic and a paddle. For almost 40 years, the otters in southeast Alaska scrapped by. He had seen a Master of a pack last summer throw a man into the river for striking at an otter with a walking stick.Footnote 13. The candid words of Reverend E. W. L. Davies in his 1886 chapter on The Otter and his Ways helped to reinforce this point: Bitch-otters yielding milk. 78. 29 This desire had different implications for different sorts of people. My object is only to insure that this Institution shall fulfil the great purpose for which it was founded.Footnote In the same year Amos organised the Leeds Rodeo Protest Committee which successfully scotched several attempts to import and establish rodeo in England. Is there no legislation which would enable, say, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to get upon the track of the Workington murderers and make them suffer? during the fur hunting period in the 18th and 19th centuries. Donald, Diana, Picturing Animals in Britain 17501850 (New Haven and London, 2007), pp. It depicts Varndell as a solitary figure deep in thought. Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 1906 Annual Report (1906), p. 127. 42. 46. 74. Otter hunting is a practice that dates back to the 1700s. Otter hunting was a minor field sport in Britain but in the early years of the twentieth century a lively campaign to ban it was orchestrated by several individuals and anti-hunting societies. 9. In his view, otters were more visible than fish and therefore their lives were more valuable: the time has come when active steps should be taken to promote the preservation of the otter, a creature far more beautiful, wonderful and obvious than any fish.Footnote In 1928, it showed a cheerful young woman glorying over being blooded at an otter-hunt (Figure 4).Footnote F. Pamphlet Series. The Humanitarian League was dissolved in 1919, and the main organisation to campaign against otter hunting became the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports, founded in 1924. were extirpated. 42. Here he labelled otter hunting as the second cruellest blood sport: With the exception of the hare-hunt men and women possibly never sink so low as they do when they join an Otter-Worry. The idea of the fairer sex taking part in manly or savage amusements was regularly invoked to shock the public.Footnote Otter hunters were of course proud of this fact; it was one of the many peculiarities that set it apart from other field sports. Big game hunter Sir Henry Seton-Karr and otter hunter Mr David Davies, Member of Parliament, were among its sixty-one ordinary members.Footnote This was the month when the Barnstaple cat-worrying case was in the public eye. This may have been because the facts were incomplete or because the figures seemed to speak for themselves. 37, The first malpractice to be exposed in otter hunting itself was an incident that occurred on the River Tweed on 6th July 1907. He focussed on several key themes including the hunting of pregnant otters and the demoralising effects of participating in the hunt. Added to this, the physical characteristics of the otter meant that the final worry, much like the preceding pursuit, could be more prolonged and more of a spectacle than in hunts of other animals. 72. . Yet although Johnston was not directly involved, his argument brought into prominence the campaign for the otter. Considering Johnston's establishment position and his enthusiasm for hunting in the Empire, this was a powerful request. In these terms the iconic image of Varndell could be seen as positively publicising the face of otter hunting. The seasonality, setting and pedestrianism of otter hunting appealed to Edwardian sporting and leisure sensibilities. feel thankful that the Masters of the various packs of otter hounds do not share this opinion.Footnote By the mid-1960s, Amchitka Island was being used a site for nuclear testing, which eventually killed many sea otters in the area. Rivers are then lovely with kingcup and ladysmock, meadows are starred and belled with daisy and cowslip, and, above all, the female otter is in cub. With no utilitarian reason for killing, the hunted otter was simply something killed for fun. WebAll the otters that are in there might leave to get away from the smell. 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]. 1847Google Scholar; Leeds Women Protest at an Otter Hunt, Cruel Sports, August 1935. . Diana Donald argues, however, that the resulting canvas, six and a half feet high, had no precedent in British sporting art in the way it combined archaic pageantry and brutal actuality with the hunter twisting the spear so the otter does not immediately fall to the hounds. 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. 7 The sea otter rescue plan that worked too well - BBC Future WebFrom 1941 till 1957, an interim agreement between the U.S. and Canada regulated the harvesting of sea otters. This allowed broader questions to be raised by the publisher and campaigner Ernest Bell (18511933). Ernest Bell noted in the Animals Friend journal soon after the prosecution that it was quite right that the press should express horror at such barbarity but questioned whether the deliberate worrying of otters for amusement was any less cruel or reprehensible than the worrying of cats.Footnote With fox hunting, he argued, few perhaps ever see the death, and it is over almost in an instant but, owing to his strength and cat-like tenacity of life, the otter fights long and dies hard. UKWOT has The latter is probably more in keeping with the prosaic style of the pamphlet. 77. WebIn 1741, Russians began hunting sea otters. 41 The History of the Eastern Counties Otter Hounds (Powys, 1988), p. 24.Google Scholar. The evidence seems clear enough.Footnote earlier attempts at concealment were also exposed. As this practice was almost exclusivelyFootnote hasContentIssue false, Copyright Cambridge University Press 2016. The otter hunters involved had been using cats in a specially constructed wooden tunnel to train their young terriers to bolt otters. 87 81. 59. These public demonstrations shed light on the respectability of the animal welfare movement. . Allen, Daniel, A Delightful Sport with peculiar claims: The Specificities of Otterhunting, 18501939, in Hoyle, R. W., ed., Our Hunting Fathers: Field Sports in England after 1850 (Lancaster, 2007), pp. Interestingly, the magazine did not choose a classic scene of hounds in a watery landscape. These Cuties Could Help Save Oregons Kelp Forests For such people the laceration of an otter's living flesh is an amusing thing. Why Otters Are Endangered? - Earth and World 2022 Ormond, Richard, Sir Edwin Landseer (London, 1981), pp. Smith, Virginia, Bell, Ernest (18511933), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [online]Google Scholar. 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 62. 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. 79. WebWhich of the following critical values should the scientist use for the chi-square analysis of the data? By planting a seed of doubt into the minds of readers over the accuracy of hunting reports, it also implied that otter hunters could not be trusted. shot but they felt that many otters were preserved for hunting, a shameful blot on our civilisation. He was also a member of the National Society for the Abolition of Cruel Sports and an unwavering opponent of otter hunting. Rather than focussing solely on the incident, they redirected their attention to the public's response to it. . The League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports also publicised isolated malpractices to strengthen their argument. Should Otters be Hunted?, Madame, 9th September 1905, 515, cited in Cheesman and Cheesman, Diaries of the Crowhurst Otter Hounds, p. 44. Newcastle Daily Journal, 29th May 1914, cited at http://www.henrysalt.co.uk/friends/colonel-coulson. 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. WebNo hunting (except waterfowl) during removed only by the user. The Masters of Otterhounds Association was formed on 9th February 1910. Pain, too, like fun, is a word of many meanings and it is not surprising, perhaps, that for many people the two things are synonymous. 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. The fifteen hunts in existence in 1880 had grown to twenty-two by 1910.Footnote Although Coleridge's speech was welcomed with loud cheers and rapturous applause, the chairman of the committee was far from impressed by the impromptu inclusion of the subject. Throughout the period campaigners repeatedly pointed to this subject as proof of the inconsistency and heartlessnessFootnote } L. C. R. Cameron, Otters and Otter-Hunting (1908), cited in Collinson, The Hunted Otter, p. 6. Reverend H. C. G. Matthew, Coleridge, Stephen William Buchanan (18541936), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). The Spirit of Otter-Hunting, Cruel Sports, August 1939, 62. The object of this society was to create a sound public opinion on the destruction of wild animals throughout the British Empire, especially Africa, and establish game reserves.Footnote About the Otter, Cruel Sports, June 1928, 73. This pack disbanded in 1919 when he became master of the Hawkstone Otter Hounds. Otter hunting presents to him a picturesque scene, with the scarlet-coated, white-breeched men armed with spears, with shaggy hounds, and the landscape set with great marsh marigolds. (Cheers.) By setting this against contemporary instances he insinuates the unchanging attitudes of otter hunters over the centuries. Feature Flags: { 70 88. The photograph was taken by Felix Man, who had been an active photojournalist since 1929, had emigrated from Germany to London in 1934 and was chief photographer for Picture Post from 1938 to 1945.Footnote