Letters to the Editor
THE TRAPPING OF RABBITS
• [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sm,—No one will disagree with the strongly and often repeated ' views of the Spectator on the cruelty of the steel trap. But 'there are, nevertheless, points from the trappers' side which call for comment. As Sir W. Beach Thomas says, the :steel trap in the West" is a trade weapon ; it should be added. that trapping is a trade of importance. Here are a few facts about the method of it in 'East Cornwall. Nearly every parish has in it one or more trappers, some of them employing two or three -men. The trappers are usually men of thelabouring class, not, as a letter in the Speetator of March 24th seems to imply, ," the lazy, the inefficient, and the cruel," but as a rule those of an intelligence and independence which raise them above the nick of farm labourers. The work is hard, and requires considerable skill, and expenses are heavy : in this district, for instance, a trapper with three men has to maintain Some 1,400 traps (the local reckoning for actual work is 300 traps -per man), and in addition to -wages he has to purchase the rabbits. The prices vary from farm to farm, but it is safe to .say that the'rabbits on a farm of 120 acres cost the trapper 112 to 215 for a season that lasts only from September 1st
to the middle or end of February, and he has to buy three or . - four farms.
My aim in re-stating facts which are no doubt well known already is this : that any repressive legislation, however well justified on the score of cruelty, will be regarded as a definitely unjust attack on a poorer class, resented by labourers already distressed at a time of low wages, as well as by farmers who make double profit by the present system, for their rabbits are kept down and their rents or rates partly paid by rabbit money. Their obvious retort will be (I have heard this from trappers again and 'again): "If you are agitated about cruelty, why not turn first to repress hunting, an upper and • middle class pleasure where cruelty is inflicted solely for pleasure ? " Admittedly the trapper inflicts cruelty in far greater quantity, but he pleads that in doing so he provides much-needed employment as well as a supply of good food for Northern markets. I dare add that no candidate in a Western division could risk making repression of steel traps a platform issue.
Sir W. Beach Thomas says rightly that trapping does not reduce the tale of rabbits, but when he says further that the trap is not a farmers' protection, he is at least making an overstatement. It must be insisted that the trapper at least keeps the number of rabbits stationary and within reasonable
• bounds, and, more, at the same time (little as he wishes it) he 'kills thousands of rats a Year, which I understand would be 'left quite untouched by the R.S.P.C.A. snare. This matter of rats is one of importance, for Sir W. Beach Thomas says that the steel trap wounds or kills most vermin, except rats. In this I can only say that his experience is directly opposed to mine, and to that, I should Say, of all trappers in a rat- infested district. A trapper to-day assured me with feeling that he killed as many rats a year as he did rabbits, and going With trappers on their rounds I have seen them to their sorrow frequently catch as many as sixty rats in a morning to twenty- 'Ave or thirty rabbits. If the R.S.P.C.A. snare was really effective, the thought of catching less rats would make trappers bnly too ready to take it up. The question of effectiveness i-aises another point : that of setting traps in the open. It is illegal (no humanitarian motives, by the way, inspire the 'law. It is enforced solely in the interests of the game-rearing land- lord, that the trap may not kill the birds he raises to slaughter for his pleasure,, and in my experience it is very seldom enforced .except in the neighbourhood of a big game-rearing estate); but if this .law were rigidly followed the trapper's catch would be reduced by something like 40 per cent. Any trapper Will say that traps must be set where the rabbits jump. Traps set in holes are mostly traps wasted ; and it is this importance of the rabbits' jumping spot that makes the steel trap in a country of earthen hedges the only reliable device yet produced.
It should be added, too, that trappers are by no means inselisitive;but Very often men of as muck 114ndliness towards other animals as riders to hounds. But just as the hunter refuses to let humanitarian pleas interfere with his pleasure, so the trapper with more justification does not allow such pleas to interfere with his living. Suppression of the steel trap aided by hunting men would be an impertinent form of fu quoque.
I do not for a moment deny the hideous cruelty of the steel trap, both to the rabbit and to the innumerable " unwanted" victims, from buzzards to blackbirds and red squirrels. But in fairness it must be admitted that the trapper is better than the Spectator has painted him, and that his trade has at least a better moral and economic excuse than hunting. Lastly it must be emphasized that the trapping of rabbits is a trade which depends on maintaining to a nicety a rabbit population sufficient to supply the market demand, and yet not great enough to do too serious injury to farmers. So far no device can provide this equilibrium as well as the steel trap. The solution to the cruelty problem does not lie in repressive legislation : this would only raise a small hornet's nest in Western England and engender as well class resentment of a most regrettable kind.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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