Christopher Graffius
Learning About Life and Death
Christopher Graffius
Christopher Graffius has been the Director of Communications for BASC since 2001; prior to that he worked for eighteen years in and around politics with posts in the British Council, as a political press officer, the manager for a Commons whips office, as a lobbyist and campaigner.
He is the author of a guide to the election of 1997 and a university course on political campaigning. Formerly a keen follower of the beagles and minkhounds when he lived in the South, he writes and lectures on politics whenever his shooting and fishing in North Wales leaves him time.
I happen to share a godchild with a former MP who is a notorious anti. Before I knew she was an anti I once told her that I’d taken my children beagling. I was told in no uncertain terms that I was “abusing” my children and that they would be “traumatised” by the experience. A blistering argument then ensued.
It’s tough to convince a fanatic, but to the unbiased observer what’s best for a child? Healthy exercise, the study of nature, the teaching of responsibility and discipline – or a day in front of the TV or fifteen hours in playing a video game that involves killing people?
I sometimes wonder which planet critics of fieldsports live on, or whether years of believing nonsense has damaged their mental faculties. They’ll serve bacon to their children without a thought for the pig that died to supply it, an animal that lived within a fence and died in a slaughterhouse, but reach for a placard when they think of a wild and free deer being culled and eaten.
It’s time to recognise the role fieldsports play for our children and the benefits it could give to the hundreds and thousands of young people who never get the chance to experience them.
For millennia this contribution was recognised. Humanity is first and foremost a rural species, part and parcel of the countryside. Existing in an urban or suburban environment without access to rolling fields is a development no more than three hundred years old. From our very beginnings as a species we’ve taught children the ways of nature, how to live side by side with other species and how to hunt them for food.
Look at any anthropological study of tribal or nomadic people and you will see the same themes coming through. Children are taught to respect their environment and the species they hunt and to understand them in a way that goes far beyond an animal seen at the zoo. For many native cultures that have been labelled as “primitive” the experience of hunting is so important that it meshes with their religious beliefs. For them to imagine life without nature and without the hunt is impossible.
One of our problems is that we’ve tended to divorce education from values and experience. In a less religious age, values have become pick and mix, none of them are eternal and everything is valid because “choice” is worshipped but rarely respected. Experience is distrusted or discounted. Education is confined to the classroom as opposed to the old-fashioned view that real education happens through the experiences outside the classroom. This lack of agreed values and distrust of experience tends to result in intolerance. Those who disagree with your values want to stop you doing what you want to do. They won’t accept that because you understand the rural environment better than they do that your experience has any worth. Instead they ignore common sense and search for scientific justification – scientists have become the new shamans.
In my experience fieldsports teach values. Values which ought to be prized but rarely are. You don’t entrust a loaded gun to a child who isn’t responsible. Exercising responsibility teaches discipline. Fieldsports can be solitary but are often sociable. The young person on their first driven day is expected to interact with the other guns and show good manners. Learning the lesson of ensuring that the other guns have sport teaches consideration. A young person taught to hold up their end of the conversation at the shoot lunch has learned a valuable skill. He won’t be reduced to the monosyllabic grunts of the young person whose major form of social interaction has been through a computer on a social networking site or by texting on a mobile phone.
Hunting and fishing teach perseverance and patience. To keep fishing when there isn’t a result until the fish “come on” and your patience is rewarded with a bite teaches a valuable lesson. Learning to watch for your quarry over an extended period teaches a skill; one that the children who are never satisfied unless they have a screen or a keyboard in front of them haven’t been given the chance of acquiring.
The young person who has stood in the line on a frosty January morning or watched the dawn come up over the marsh has had an experience denied to most of his generation. He’s felt part of the “circle of life”, at one with nature, and this can often be a spiritual experience. The hunter is a part of the environment rather than merely an observer through a TV screen, pair of binoculars or a car window.
My father used to say that if you want to really understand an animal you should hunt it, and I’ve found that observing my quarry while trying to get on terms with it has taught me more about its natural history than any number of books. When I think of the hunter’s reaction to nature I think of words such as “wonder” and of course “respect”. For hunting teaches respect for the quarry in the same way as a farmer respects or feels the bond with the animal he farms.
It might be objected that you could achieve much the same by taking a child for a nature walk or taking them camping. I don’t think so. Those activities haven’t the central link to food that sharpens the experience and justifies the pride that’s natural for a person when they provide for others. The antis might again object that we don’t have to kill animals for food. We can buy them shrink-wrapped at any supermarket. My response would be that this entirely misses the point. Visiting the chill cabinet in a supermarket teaches the child nothing about the production or life cycle of the food, to learn that effectively, you need the experience.
We live in a society that tries to ignore death. Yet we all know that we must die and that death is a part of life. To insulate children from such a natural process does them no favours. Children who hunt know that death is a part of life and that once a cartridge has been fired it is irreversible – unlike the child playing with the Xbox.
Fieldsports provide a wonderful opportunity for children, and that’s why, whatever his godmother says, when my godson is old enough I’ll make sure that he gets the chance to wield a fishing rod, aim a gun and learn from hunting.
Christopher Graffius
Director of Communications for the BASC