Camilla Swift

If you don’t hunt or listen to The Archers, you might be forgiven for assuming that hunt saboteurs had become obsolete. Hunting with hounds was banned ten years ago, and the law is respected: convictions for illegal hunting against registered hunts are rare. But as this year’s season draws to a close, masked saboteurs are still a regular sight. Some made headlines in January when a video emerged of a group, faces covered, beating a hunt master unconscious with iron bars. What few people seemed to ask was: why? Why on earth do the protest groups still exist when the ban they demanded came in so long ago?

A gunman is shooting ponies on Dartmoor. Yes, it’s true; a trained sniper is wandering the moor, singling out ponies one by one. But don’t worry – it’s probably not as bad as you think. Charlotte Faulkner, a conservationist, is shooting them with contraceptive darts in a bid to control the number of foals born each year. It might sound like a bizarre idea, but actually, perhaps it makes perfect sense. The current problem that the Dartmoor hill ponies – and their owners – face is one of overbreeding. While hill ponies are needed to keep the gorse and natural ecosystem of the moor under control, the natural result of mixing mares and stallions on the moorland is an excess of foals.

This time three years ago, I hadn’t jumped a single thing for almost ten years. This season, I am happily jumping hedges that my horse and I can’t even see over the top of. Crazy? Most likely. But when the adrenaline is pumping, and an inviting-looking hedge is looming directly in front of you — well, what’s a girl to do? The sheer joy of hunting comes from far more than just dressing up in a smart coat and shiny boots and drinking port. It’s the simple pleasure of being out in the field, watching the hounds do what they do best, and enjoying the pure beauty of the sport.

Under the headline ‘Norway didn’t give into Islamophobia, nor should France’, Owen Jones writes on the Guardian’s Comment is free website that Norway’s response to the Anders Breivik massacre in 2011 ‘was not retribution, revenge, clampdowns’, and that ‘the backlash [Breivik] surely craved never came’. Norway, he writes, 'stood strong'. But did it really? I’m half Norwegian. I adore the country, and I would – and do – fight its corner any day of the week (even against our Swede-loving editor). Norway certainly hasn’t given in to Islamophobia, but it has reacted. No matter what Owen Jones says, there have been some changes in the Norwegian public’s general attitudes.

What’s wrong with eating reindeer? Well, if you normally eat meat, then I’d argue, absolutely nothing. But not everyone agrees with me. The fact that Lidl are selling packs of the meat – with festive golden reindeer on the box – has upset a number of people; presumably because they associate it with a certain Christmas tune about a red-nosed version employed by Father Christmas. But in reality, very little differentiates a loin of reindeer from a standard loin of venison – if anything. After all venison is, strictly speaking, the meat from any deer. So why not just label it 'venison’?

‘The only thing to be said for Halloween’, wrote Alexander Chancellor in a recent Long Life column, ‘is that it perpetuates the demonisation of the bat’. My initial thought was: ‘Surely Alexander is being slightly harsh on the poor old bat?’. I’ve always felt that bats have been dealt a pretty bad hand. After all, they’re essentially mice with wings, yet neither mice nor birds are quite as maligned as bats are. Rats, maybe, but that’s a different story. But then I thought about it some more, and I can see where he’s coming from. I’d argue, however, that it’s not so much the bats themselves that people detest. It’s more the rules that are supposed to ‘protect’ them that put people off.

Police this week were granted the authority to carry out random, unannounced checks at the home of anyone who has a gun licence. Why? They claim that shooters may be ‘vulnerable to criminal or terrorist groups’ and this is the way to tackle the 'problem'. The new Home Office guidance assures us this won’t occur ‘at an unsocial hour unless there is a justified and specific requirement to do so.’ Some get-out clause. Crimestoppers have also launched a dedicated phone line to encourage people to report any ‘concerns’ they might have about behavioural changes in fellow shooters. Acpo's national policing spokesman for firearms and explosives licensing added this would help ‘gather intelligence’. Sound familiar? It should do.

Of all the BBC’s output, the Antiques Roadshow is one of the programmes least likely to cause a row. Alright, so you might disagree with the odd estimate, or argue that some of the ‘treasures’ unearthed from attics aren’t bona fide antiques. But on the whole, it tends to be pretty inoffensive. Well it was, at least, until the Earl of Lonsdale claimed that programme makers had banned him from showing off his family’s collection of hunting memorabilia when filming at his home in Cumbria. So what happened here then? The Earl suspects that the decision was made due to the Beeb’s fears of offending animal rights campaigners; the BBC, on the other hand, has stated that they ‘do not have a general policy on hunting antiques.

The days when horses and humans lived cheek by jowl in the capital are unarguably over. Brewers’ drays have disappeared, and most people would argue that the black cab does a far better job than the hansom cab ever did. But the ghosts of horses past still inhabit the city. Statues of kings atop their chargers take pride of place in squares and parks, water troughs are scattered about the place, and the more recent Animals in War memorial on Park Lane is a reminder that our dependence on them lasted until less than a century ago. Not all of the reminders are visual, either.

On Saturday, the Daily Mirror published a front-page photograph of the racehorse Wigmore Hall with a gun to his head, about to be put down, having broken its leg. Unsurprisingly, the paper’s decision was met with dismay and anger from the racing community. But perhaps more surprising is that the RSPCA appears to be on racing’s side. In February last year, Melissa Kite wrote in this magazine that she feared that the RSPCA might have set their sights on horse racing. But it seems promising – and strangely sensible – of the RSPCA to have spoken out against both the Mirror and the pressure group Animal Aid, which supplied the photographs.

Fly-grazing will be discussed for two hours in Parliament this afternoon. But what is it – and why should the government care? Put simply, fly-grazing is the unauthorised grazing of land by equines. Or, as Defra puts it, ‘the practice of leaving horses to graze on public or private land without the permission of the owner or occupier.’ Essentially, it’s the equine version of being a squatter. This afternoon the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee will take evidence on the topic, after Julian Sturdy MP put forward a Control of Horses Bill that will have its second reading in October. But are irresponsible horse owners something that the government really ought to be worrying about?

In this week’s ‘The Turf’ column, Robin Oakley bemoans the lack of female jockeys in horse racing. This, he claims, is a result of the sport's lack of opportunities for women: 'I have banged on for years about the lack of opportunities for women jockeys in Britain. Some horses go even better for a girl and the good women jockeys like Hayley [Turner] … are as good as the boys. The problem is that few get the chance to become that good because they are denied enough rides by owners and trainers. You have to go 67 places down the championship list to find Hayley as the leading woman rider.

Today, the Glorious Twelfth, is the one day of the year most anticipated by game shooters – the start of the grouse season. But, as the first grouse make their way to restaurants and butchers across the country, a battle is being fought on the moors. The entire sport of grouse shooting is under attack because there are only three breeding pairs of hen harriers left in England – birds that the RSPB argue are endangered due to the actions of those with a vested interest in protecting red grouse from predators. A campaign to ban grouse shooting – complete with an e-petition to Defra – is being orchestrated by Mark Avery, formerly conservation director of the RSPB.