Forums.NitroExpress.com

Was the Emperor of Exmoor's death quite what it seemed?
Many questions remain, not least why we are being told that deer hunting is inherently wicked, says Charles Moore.

The giant stag of Southern Exmoor, which weighed more than 300lb and and stood nearly 9ft was killed close to a busy main road in the middle of the annual rut Photo: RICHARD AUSTIN

It was Jim Naughtie, on the Today programme on Tuesday, who set the nation's moral tone. "It is an appalling thing," he said, throwing all BBC impartiality to the wind, "if you like wild animals."

Naughtie was reporting the death of the Emperor of Exmoor, a huge stag. The Emperor's reign was brief. He was so named by a photographer, Richard Austin, and introduced to the public in the current rutting season. The picture sold everywhere. Then, three weeks ago, the beast was shot. For some reason, the news took a long time to break. When it did so, we heard a lot from Johnny Kingdom, a sort of Crocodile Dundee of Exmoor, who has a television series on the way. A trophy-hunter "from abroad, probably Europe", might have paid £10,000 for the head, apparently. The evil deed was quickly denounced across the world.

By Thursday, however, people were beginning to ask questions. Early stories had been full of those phrases we journalists use when we don't know what we are talking about – "it is claimed", "rumours have been circulating". Slightly more rigour now entered the reporting. Would any named person say that he had seen the beast shot? No. You cannot easily cart away a 300lb corpse. If the stalker had left the body and escaped with the head, the smell of the carcase would have made its presence felt.

So there is, as yet, no body. Perhaps there was no death. Is the Emperor, like King Arthur, not dead, but somehow occulted, waiting to return?

Some other things have been said that do not quite stand up. The Emperor is "certain", according to Mr Kingdom, to be the son of Bruno, another famously fine beast from the district, shot 12 years ago. In fact, it is impossible, without DNA testing, to tell who is the father.

The Emperor was also said to be the largest wild mammal in Britain. This is not true. There are bigger stags in Thetford Forest. Nor is it true that His Imperial Majesty, if indeed he was assassinated, was taken much before his time. Devonian deer managers tell me that, by the look of him, he might have lasted one more season before "going back".

And although the Emperor was/is a magnificent specimen, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, one of the nation's great red deer experts, assures me that, judging from photographs, the "points" on his antlers are "fairly weak" and do not have the balance between "brow, bay and tray" of the perfect specimen.

Nor, by the way, is the Emperor even from Exmoor. He was killed – if he was – near Rackenford, several miles outside the national park. In short, the story is an inverted pyramid of piffle.

Whose interest, then, did it serve, apart from helping sales of Mr Austin's photographs and ratings for Mr Kingdom's programmes? The answer, I suggest, is the desire, deep in the puritan character, to get self-righteously angry about animals.

Let us assume that the Emperor is, indeed, no more. What, exactly, was, as the Rev Dr Naughtie put it, "appalling" about shooting him?

It is not wrong, in general, to kill a deer. They are wild animals with no natural predators in these islands. If they are not shot, they die of natural causes, most commonly of starvation. Their welfare is served by killing a percentage of them, because if they grow too numerous, their quality declines and they do too much damage to agriculture, forestry and habitat. If you do not kill a few, there will come a time when you will need to kill a lot.

So you are left with the "How could you…?" line. "How could you be so cruel as to kill such a beautiful thing?" As someone who has shot stags quite often, I have sometimes felt sad about it, a feeling which tends to grow as one gets older. But it is not crueller to kill a stag, which is beautiful, than a rat, which isn't. This is a matter of human taste, not of kindness to animals. The person with the fine head on his wall will believe himself to be conferring an honoured immortality on the beast shot. Personally, I am not interested in trophies, but I cannot see that he is morally wrong.

Is it down to money, then? Opinion polls suggest that people agree that "professionals" should be paid to put down wild animals, but that it is wicked for amateurs to pay to do so. But why is human pleasure in the hunt so frowned on? Men's relationship with wild animals is complex. Throughout history, many of those who have known and liked them the best have enjoyed killing them. This is a fact worth thinking about.

It is particularly illuminated by the case of Exmoor. There, unlike in Scotland, where stalking is part of the rural economy, shooting deer is frowned on. This is because of the hunt, which has long been seen as a "social compact". Farmers, often people with very small amounts of land, have consented to have deer managed by hunting with hounds, not by shooting. It is mutual: they let the hunt go on their land; in return, the hunt keeps the deer numbers in balance. Money does not change hands.

Exmoor's – dare I call it – "Big Society" approach has come under strain with the hunting ban. Under that preposterous law, the hunts can go out with only two hounds. This has reduced their scope. As a result, the social compact has weakened. Farmers have become more likely to take money to shoot the deer (and sell the meat) instead. Such people are known as "poachers" on Exmoor, even when they are shooting legally, because they are seen as breaking the social compact. The number of the stags in the district is falling (408 this year, compared with 462 in 2003, just before the ban). It is the hunting ban that makes the shooting of beasts like the Emperor more likely.

The most moving novel about the life and death of a wild animal is The Story of a Red Deer, by J. W. Fortescue. In its final scene, the great stag is chased by hounds into the river. The reader longs for him to escape. The stream sings to him, inviting him to its waters: "Nay, raise not your head, come, bury it here;/ No friend like the stream to the wild Red-Deer." He obeys, and drowns nobly.

You might think that Fortescue hated the hunt. No. In his preface, he says he is telling the story "even as the deer have told it to me in… many a stirring chase, and as they have told it to all others that would listen". Somewhere behind this muddled tale of the Emperor lies something to which more people should, indeed, be listening.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/colum...-it-seemed.html

--------------------
© "I have never been able to appreciate 'shock' as applied to killing big game. It seems to me that you cannot kill an elephant weighing six tons by ´shock´unless you advocate the use of a field gun." - W.D.M. Bell: Wanderings of an Elephant Hunter.