I have written a couple of articles about Harry’s exploits in sport hunting. Yes, he has been indoctrinated into enjoying killing animals for fun. That’s the royal way. If you are born into the glorious and gloriously privileged royal family in the UK there’s no way to escape the end result: you going to be a sport hunter and be blooded as a young man by having the blood of the animal you killed smeared all over your face and left to dry like warpaint.
It is completely archaic, and out of step with modern life, modern thinking and sentiments. I’m grateful to Rosamund Urwin writing in The Sunday Times for some added information which she no doubt had the time to research or a colleague did it for her.
She mentioned that a 2018 YouGov poll conducted for the League against Cruel Sports and Animal Aid revealed that almost 70% of Britons want the shooting of birds for sport banned.
You don’t have to look far to see photographs of both William and Harry shooting birds on the Sandringham estate. Apparently, Harry is the best shot in the royal family. I don’t think that that is an accolade that he should be particularly proud of seeing as it causes the most harm and pain. And he’s making a film or made one about poaching in Lesotho. Harry’s former exploits hardly recommend him to the role of conservationist.
News media reports that Meghan has convinced Harry to renounce sport hunting. He wouldn’t stop unless he’s told. That’s my impression.
Blood sports are a royal tradition. And the tradition is being passed on as it would be to the latest royal offspring namely Prince George who is nine years of age who has been taken to shooting parties since 2018.
Queen Elizabeth II, the much revered and admired former monarch of the UK, learnt to stalk deer as a young girl. There are many photographs of her at shoots with her husband Prince Philip who is photographed in India in front of a Bengal tiger that he shot. He contributed to the acute endangerment of the Bengal tiger which is endangered the point of near extinction in the wild.
The current monarch, King Charles III is not much different. He prefers, however, to stalk deer on the pretext that they need to be killed because they need to be culled as there are too many of them and they damage the landscape by eating plants and shrubs that many birds rely on including the Nightingale.
It looks as though King Charles wriggles out of the possibility of being criticised by conservationists but he will be criticised by animal advocates such as PETA, which says the following about Harry’s killing of a stag:
“[It was the] the epitome of privilege, according supremacy to one living, feeling being over another; the stag’s life was considered expendable for a hunter’s amusement.”
My sentiments completely. Ultimately it is about humankind’s perceived dominion over animals as per the Bible which many people believe exist to serve people, to provide humankind with food and it doesn’t matter to these people if they are killed for pleasure or raised in factories and slaughtered in abattoirs in the most obnoxious way.
For me, the attitude of sport hunting as being acceptable spreads out throughout the royal family like a disease. If you are born into the royal family or if you are brought into it, the disease attacks you and enters your mind and body such that you learn to accept an activity which is fundamentally inhumane and cruel. It cannot be justified in 2023. The world has changed. The Royal family has not despite what modern royals like William and Harry say.
