HUNTING, SHOOTING, AND RURAL PROSPERITY.
IN an address delivered on November 9th before the Surveyors' Institution, Mr. Howard Martin, the newly elected president, gave his hearers the results of some extensive inquiries which he has lately made, and which have an interesting bearing on questions of rural economy. He took as his subject " The Effect of the Exercise of Sporting Rights in Hunting and Shooting on Rural Prosperity," and the facts and figures on which he based his argument are worth con- sidering. In estimating the sums of money spent directly and indirectly in connexion with the two forms of sport, it was impossible for him, of course, to obtain complete statistics. But he managed, at all events, to cover the ground pretty thoroughly. He asked for and received answers to a series of questions from twenty-nine land-agents of long experience in England and Wales, managing a very large area of laud in eighteen counties, particularly in the shooting districts of the Eastern Counties in which shooting rights are of the greatest value, and game is most extensively preserved. Obviously one of the first things to do, in trying to estimate the effect on rural economy of the two forms of sport which he chose, was to get hold of trustworthy figures as regards the amount of money spent, and the channels in which it was circulated. Next, there would be the question to decide whether the spending of money in this particular way did good or harm, and if so, what good or what harm.
To take first Mr. Howard Martin's calculations as to some of the expenses incidental to bunting. Incomplete as his figures necessarily must be, they are striking enough. According to tables published, in the United Kingdom them are two hundred and twenty,five packs of foxhounds and staghounds, ten packs of draghounds, and two hundred and fifteen packs of harriers and beagles,—that is, about four hundred and fifty hunting establishments in alL Mr. Martin confines himself to the foxhounds and staghounds, and reckons that the cost of maintaining a pack comes to something like £900 a year for each hunting day in the week ; that is, that a pack hunting two days a week would cost some £1,800 a year, and a pack hunting three days £2,700. That expenditure would include the wages and clothes of bunt servants, the food for horses and hounds, rent and rates of buildings, repairs of saddlery and horse-clothing, shoeing, compensation paid to farmers for damage done, and various other expenses: Since the -average number of days hunted per week is about three, or a little under, the cost of main- taining the two hundred and twenty-five packs of foxhounds and staghounds amounts to over £500,000 per annum. That excludes the bunting expenses of followers of the pack, which are more difficult to calculate. Mr. Martin takes as an average two hundred horses as the number kept by followers of a pack of hounds, and thus arrives at a total of forty-five thousand kept by those who hunt with the two hundred and twenty- five packs of hounds. The coat of keeping these horses alone would work out at not less than £3,150,000 a year ; and no calculation is made of the other expenses which hunting men would necessarily incur in maintaining a country house, in servants' wages; and so on. Clearly, the sum of three and a half millions which Mr. Martin reckons as the minimum cost of maintaining the packs he chooses for calculation- must be very largely exceeded when the expenses of the other two hundred and twenty-five packs are taken into consideration as well. But if the amount 'of money spent by hunting men on their recreation is large, so are the sums paid for shooting rights and in wages to keepers and others employed on shootings. As to rent, in the Eastern Counties as much as 4s. to 5s. per acre is paid for sporting rights ; in the South of England the rate varies from Is. to 5s., and in other counties from 6d. to 2s. 6d. an acre, according to the accessibility of the shooting and the propor- tion of covert. As to direct payments made in wages, figures are more difficult to get. Mr. Martin gives a few instances of particular estates. On one large shooting in the Eastern Counties wages of keepers, beaters, &c., for twelve days' shooting amount to £320 in a parish with a population of nine hundred and twenty-nine; in another parish, with a population of seventeen hundred and twenty-eight,lbe wages paid in the same way come to £1,006 a year. In a Berkshire parish, with a population of eight hundred, £468 is spent in wages on one estate alone. On a very large estate in the West of England £1,700 a year is spent on labour directly connected with the shooting, and of that sum £550 is spent on beaters at a time of year, as Mr. Martin justly points out, when they would not otherwise be fully employed. Those are direct payments; the indirect would be difficult to calculate, but must be large. Much of the money paid for the food of the birds reared artificially goes into the farmers' pockets ; and there are • other very considerable sums spent at local hotels, among fly-drivers, inn-servants, and so on. Perhaps, since most of the Excise-duties are paid over to the Local Taxation Account, Mr. 'Martin might also have taken into calculation the amount paid for gun, game, and dog licenses,- which comes perhaps to between £800,000 and £900,000 per annum,—a good round contribution from a recreation to the Exchequer.
Of course, it would not be a sound argument, because so much money is spent in hunting and shooting, to say that therefore the money is necessarily well spent. But it can be argued, certainly, that if it were not spent on sport in the country, it would probably be spent in obtaining pleasure or recreation elsewhere, perhaps in the town, perhaps on the Continent. In any case, it is worth while to see whether, in return for the large sums expended, there are not some very tangible benefits secured. There is the very large amount of pleasure and recreation gained from a day spent in the open air, to begin with ; it would be difficult to calculate what it adds to the health and working power of men who spend long hours in business to get out for a day's hunting once a week, or for ' occasional days' shooting during the season. But perhaps
• more important economically is the fact that hunting and ' shooting both make life in the country, rather than the town, desirable for rich and poor alike. The more well-to-do • people there are who live in the country rather than the town, the better chance there is of keeping country people on the land and attracting them to country life. The need for the ' rural working community is not so much to supply a large quantity of what it produces, but to find ready purchasers for its produce, and unless there is some one close at hand to buy, the finding of a market may be a difficult matter. In hunting districts houses are occupied much longer in the autumn and winter months than they would be if there were no packs of bounds. The result is that, apart from landowners who have • special duties to their tenants, many people of means are induced to live in the country during a long period of the year, and to take an interest in local institutions, to subscribe to local charities,—in fact, to become part of the rural com- munity itself. An intercourse between rich and poor springs up which would be impossible if money spent in recreation • were spent, say, in the South of France instead of on an English countryside. The whole tendency is to a life in the open air on the land for a larger number of people, and-that is a tendency to be encouraged.
Is there any counterbalancing harm brought to the country- side ? The argument is specious that if less game were preserved, more land would be brought into cultivation. . Mr. Martin can find no evidence in all hisAnauiries that this would be so. On the contrary, a good deal of light land which could not be farmed at a profit is deliberately farmed at a loss for the sake of the sporting rights, with the result that many labourers are kept in work for whom no work would otherwise be found in the district. Then there is the argument that the farmer loses poultry by foxes, and that his crops are spoiled by riding over them, and by game devouring them. As to that, every hunt pays compensation for poultry destroyed, and farmers have the remedy in their own hands as regards forbidding the hunt to ride over their ground,—a remedy which they seldom apply. The Ground Game Act removed the difficulty caused by rabbits and hares, and it is only in very rare cases that any trouble is caused by other game. Here and there may be found an inconsiderate shooting tenant, oftenest, perhaps, among the shooting syndicates ; but such cases are few and far between. • As a rule, the farmer, when be possesses the sporting rights of his land, is glad to let or to underlet them, and reckons the money so obtained as clear profit. In the aggregate, the sums paid for sporting rights to farmers must amount every year to a very large total indeed. But perhaps the money side of the question is the least worth insisting on. • The main point is that life in the country is benefited and stimulated, made more interesting and more easy, and that the wholesome recreation of a very large number of 'persons, rich and poor, leads also to wholesome employment iu healthy surroundings on a very large scale. That is all to the good.
Previous page
