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[23] In just a few decades, this bustling civilization has withered into a ghost town. Colonel W. Lisle B. Coulson, The Otter Worry, in Henry Salt, ed., British Blood Sports: Let us go out and kill something (1901), pp. The sea otter population has rebounded to nearly three thousand individuals A modest proposal for hunting sea otters | Popular Science Coulson, Otter Worrying A Protest, The Humanitarian, August 1908, 601. See The League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sport, Annual Report (London, 1926). 336, p. 34. young and thoughtful. The belief that any sentient being deserved protection from ill-treatment generated a comprehensive list of animal related activities marked for legislative change. 55. 67. Alongside this broad criticism, the incident was also used to expose the behaviour of sportsmen in general. Otter hunting is a practice that dates back to the 1700s. 49. WebA scientist designed an experiment to test an. In February 1918 the Representation of the People Act gave all women over the age of thirty the right to vote. For Bell, the only difference between an otter and a cat was their legal status. The Picture Post styles otter hunting as just another peculiar pastime the notoriously crazy English enjoy in the countryside. The League established a special department to deal with Sports in 1895. 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 They were killed mostly for their fur, which was desirable WebOregons sea otters disappeared in flash of destruction, as one small part of an ocean-spanning fur boom driven by demand for their lush pelts. An incredibly vile sport: Campaigns against Otter 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. Prior to the maritime fur trade which began in the late eighteenth century, sea otters ranged from Japan, north through the Aleutian Islands and down the Pacific coast of North America to Baja California (Barabash-Nikiforov 1947). Hale, Matthew 15, Although this document only had a small readership it proved to be the earliest written condemnation of the sport from an organisation. Resting upon his well-notched otter pole and fully clad in hunting attire, he gazes into the distance. There is no danger, no risk, absolutely no excuse for this form of baiting except the insensate one of a lust for blood.Footnote In 1844 Landseer's The Otter Speared polarised opinion about otter hunting which was condemned by many as barbaric. On Tuesday 28th April, a small group of members from the Oxford Branch assembled in Islip to demonstrate against the Buckinghamshire Otter Hounds (Figure 2). Google Scholar. Bell-Irving, David Jardine, Tally-Ho: Fifty Years of Sporting Reminiscences (Dumfries, 1920), p. 120 59. 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. 26 Mr Rose of the Eastern Counties Otter Hounds described the proposed Bill as most unfair and ridiculous and argued that otter hunting was grossly misrepresented: Long spiked poles are never used for the purposes suggested, but for assisting followers across ditches, rivers and fences. 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. He followed the Cheriton Otter Hounds from 1924 and subscribed to Records of the Cheriton Otter Hounds produced by William Rogers, Master, in 1925. Otter Here Bates presents a very personal and very committed attack on otter hunting in a style of writing quite unlike his own. Addressing the issue in Cruel Sports, a member with the pseudonym Wansfell could not see how it was fair to hold the Workington roughs up to obloquy without doing the same to devotees of organised otter hunting. 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. In order to share these principles with the public, the League adopted a strategy that involved open meetings, lobbying of influential individuals, letter writing campaigns to newspapers and magazines and the production of pamphlets, monthly journals and other scholarly publications.Footnote He is astonished that the law of this country still allows this rotten and most bloody exhibition of behaviour and that such repugnant bloodiness survives in a so-called civilised age and country.Footnote Now, what nonsense this is!Footnote Reflecting on the period, W. H. Rogers of the Cheriton Otter Hounds wrote: Some doubts were expressed as to the propriety of hunting while so many poor fellows were being killed and wounded in the trenches, but the view prevailed that if the Hunt was once dropped it would be very difficult to restart it, and that those who were away would wish us to keep things going against their return.Footnote 17 He stressed that he was not a sportsman and had never shot a bird nor hooked a fish in my life but became involuntarily the witness of an otter hunt while sketching beside a pool. Separating fact from fiction: otters and anglers | Discover . This may have been because the facts were incomplete or because the figures seemed to speak for themselves. 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. Donald, Diana, Picturing Animals in Britain 17501850 (New Haven and London, 2007), pp. WebThe otters were then protected by the international fur seal treaty, which banned sea otter hunting. The first publication solely concerned with exposing the cruelties of otter hunting was Joseph Collinson's 1911 The Hunted Otter, a twenty-four page booklet in Ernest Bell's A. 75 Sea otter conservation began in the early 20th century, when the sea otter was nearly extinct due to large-scale commercial hunting. The sea otter was once abundant in a wide arc across the North Pacific ocean, from northern Japan to Alaska to Mexico. Finally the author of the original article, J. C. Bristow-Noble, responded resentfully that On behalf of some of these daughters of Eve, I have now to state that it is of their opinion that the quarry, as is frequently the case, should always be allowed to escape. It argued that if it were necessary, otters should be cleanly killed, i.e. . From The Field for 18th June 1910 came a report that: Too many bitches are killed at this time of the year (June), the dog otters making themselves very scarce. The crucial connection, he discovered, was sea urchins. 87 Big game hunter Sir Henry Seton-Karr and otter hunter Mr David Davies, Member of Parliament, were among its sixty-one ordinary members.Footnote In the minds of campaigners it not only looked ridiculous, it was unacceptable. 30 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; 87. 82 78. 86. . Although in the book he admits this was partly due to the animal's nocturnal behaviour, in the shortened leaflet the omission of the introductory paragraph made otter hunting the prime reason for his misfortune. For Bates, such suffering could not be enjoyable for the sufferer and should not be enjoyable for onlookers. The Master of the Crowhurst Otter Hounds surveys a line of Country. Bates wrote this chapter on the basis that he liked otters but, despite living within a mile of a river valley, had never seen one in the wild. Hopkinson, T., ed., Picture Post 193850 (London, 1970), p. 8 If the mere presence of women was condemned, then the role they played in, and joy they gained from, the death of the otter was shocking. In the Aleutian Islands, a massive and unexpected disappearance of sea otters has occurred since the 1980s. The cause of the decline is not known, although the observed pattern of disappearances is consistent with a rise in orca predation. Sea otters give live birth. When the Otters Vanished, Everything Else Started to It was not until July 1928 that the age was lowered to twenty-one. Coulson, Otter Worrying A Protest, The Humanitarian, August 1908, 61. And as a relatively inexpensive sport, such social changes meant otter hunting had become a less appealing target for them. Second, he felt that as he had bought the cats they were his own property and third, he argued that it was less cruel to use a cat than a badger as worrying the latter badly injured the dogs.Footnote 2956Google Scholar; The scientist built a tube that was divided by an. Ernest Bell, Cat Worrying, pp. Nearly 280 river otters were captured in the Adirondacks and Catskills and relocated to 15 sites in central and western New York during a three-year period in the 1990s. 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. 56 39. And since I have never seen an otter, except behind the glass of a painted case, who am I to say that the otter does not enjoy the fun of having its belly bloodily ripped? . 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 This pack disbanded in 1919 when he became master of the Hawkstone Otter Hounds. Collinson had previously led the Humanitarian League's campaign against flogging and was described by Henry Salt as a young north-countryman, self-taught, and full of native readiness and ingenuity, who at an early age had developed a passion for humanitarian journalism.Footnote 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. The National Anti-Vivisection Society was founded by Frances Power Cobbe in 1875; the Plumage League was established in 1889 and became the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in 1904. Sir Harry Johnston, British Mammals (1903), p. 140. Observing sea otters and kelp beds on Amchitka both onshore and during scuba dives led Estes to question the links between them. A part of this pamphlet, which included this quotation, was reprinted in Cruel Sports magazine in 1929. Tichelar, Michael, Putting Animals into Politics: The Labour Party and Hunting in the First Half of the Twentieth Century, Rural History, 17 (2006), 21334, 219CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also 57. 1 How to Get Rid of Otters? (Helpful Guide and Quick Facts) When urchin populations spiked in response, the reefs held their ground. 18, The first published call for the protection of otters came from Sir Harry Hamilton Johnston (18581927) who has been described as one of the main instigators of the scramble for Africa on the ground and considered himself a naturalist above all else.Footnote When the otter reached temporary sanctuary in a holt twenty men got on to the bank and endeavoured by jumping and other means to force the earth down into the unfortunate animal's hiding place until worn out by fatigue and fright surrounded by men and dogs the otter became as easy prey to its enemies. The Otter Worry, The Humanitarian, September 1907, 164. 41 } 10 Swamp Otters