The royal hunt is extremely polarized in the Netherlands, with animal welfare activists doing their best (legally) to obstruct the "fauna management" (read: hunt) on the royal domains.
It seems there are no such protests in Denmark?
The short and sweet answer is: No.
Hunting is not seen in a negative light here - there are of course those who are very much against hunting, but they are few and very rarely make an appearance anywhere.
There are some 70.000 licensed hunters in DK. Which means that most people know someone within their family and social circle who at least have a hunting license.
Most kindergartens are at some point visited by hunters, who bring their weapons and gear as well as animals that have been shot and explain what it is all about. They break an animal like a hare or deer and explain how it looks like inside, where it lives and what it eats and how it lives. And children ask direct questions where you as a hunter can't get away with a "political" answer. Your answer will have to be straight and clear.
So children are explained that animals are culled because they would otherwise starve. Not least old and infirm animals. Or because they ruin something, like scarves-droppings that ruin the trees. Or may bring deceases.
Okay, that makes sense.
And as many kindergartens have chicken and/or rabbits - that are sometimes killed and eaten, the idea of hunting for food makes sense as well.
Apart from that Danish Hunting Association work very closely with preservation and animal protection associations in keeping an eye on flora and fauna in the country - reports of sightings of all kinds are regularly send back online to the Ministry of Agriculture.
It's quite common for an amateur ornithologist who is adamant in protecting a particular bird, chatting with a hunter: The Bluebeaked Bullgull? Yeah, I saw a nest over there the other day while I was staking a deer.
With a amateur botanist interjecting: Oh yeah, that's where the blue mushrooms are. It's crawling with butterflies over there!
- You get my meaning? It's a cooperation of protecting and preserving the nature and the wildlife, because all of them are interested in as good a habitat as possible. If hungry deer in desperation eat all the shoots, it upsets the balance and those who want's to preserve the forests. Again affecting the insect population, which upsets the ornithologist because the birds mainly live of insects.
At the same time one of the most popular evening-coffee TV-shows is about a hunter and a cook, who goes hunting for whatever animal. And while doing so, we learn about the animal, the habitat and traditions and history. Sometimes they get the animal they hunt, sometimes they don't - but in both cases they have an experience in being close to nature.
Danes don't have a theoretical relationship with nature. Even those living in downtown Copenhagen have at most 15 km to the nearest forest with red deer and pheasants.
I will claim that the overwhelming majority of Danes go to a forest, a real forest with wildlife, if not every week, then certainly every month.
So the sight of a deer, or hares or foxes is not something novel, even for city-dwellers. And you can easily tell if an animal is injured, sick or starving and most will call an emergency number and they will send a hunter and a dog to investigate and if need be kill the animal.
Something that does cause a huge commotion, is if the general public see animals who are starving. That happened recently not far from we live actually. As a part of a rewilding project a number of animals were let out in a reserve and left to fend for themselves, which is what nature is all about. Some won't make it. And nature is brutal, those who are not strong or well-adapted enough will starve to death. That caused a
huge outcry!
So to sum up: In DK the issue is not hunting and killing animals, the issue is whether the animals have as good and natural life as possible during their lifetime.
There is no humanization or Disneyfization of animals in DK. Hence why Danes act with bewilderment when there is an outcry from abroad whenever a surplus animal in a zoo is killed and dissected publicly here.
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But back to the royal hunt.
https://www.bt.dk/royale/kongehuset-beklagede-mandsdomineret-gaesteliste-men-nu-er-det-sket-igen
I said I would return to this BT article.
There are two aspects in this:
A: Who attended. I'll return to that.
B: And why aren't there any women among the hunters?
That was brought up at a previous royal hunt where there were no women among the hunters and the DRF admitted: Yeah, true enough. We need to look into that.
And then this article comes up saying: There are still no women! The DRF haven't learned anything!
- No, because the invitations for the royal hunts went out months ago. Something the journalist might have learned if he had bothered calling the court. - But then he wouldn't have his headline...
And there is another factor. While the number of especially young women who get a hunters license is going up markedly these years, perhaps there were none of the women in the circles who are invited for these royals hunts this year, who
wanted to go hunting?
What is the DRF supposed to do? Drag women kicking and screaming with them to a royal hunt, so that certain people can claim equality in that field as well? - Political correctness distinguish itself by being silly most of the time.
A third matter is that the royal hunt in Grib Forest near Fredensborg is the grandest of the royal hunts and traditionally the men go hunting - hosted by the senior male member of the DRF - Frederik.
While the ladies go on a cultural outing, hosted by the senior female member of the DRF - QMII and now also Mary.
But I guess next year they will have found a few ladies who would like to join the actual hunt and in the holy name of equality I suppose they will also have found a handful of men who will go on the cultural outing.
To the names. The guestlist of the royal hunt at Grib Forest is also a list of the nearest friends and associates of the DRF - today mainly of M&F. Because they have pretty much taken over.
In fact there were 19 names on the list at the actual hunt and indeed many names will be familiar to most here by now:
Fritz Schur, who handles the private finances and investments of the DRF.
Count Christoffer Knuth - friend.
Otto Reedtz Thott - close friend.
Peter Aaendahl - friend.
And so on and so on.
The old names we used to see when PH ran the show, are mostly long gone. They were friends and associated of QMII and PH.
