Hunters: hanging in there...

My progress in photographing the hunters, first shown here on P-D, has been slow. Other work has been getting in the way - and I'm always a sucker for stuff that pays the bills.

The arrival of some decent weather means that the hunting season is coming to an end but there will always be other times...

I was both impressed and confused by the hunting community. The legislative onslaught that the pastime has suffered seems to be in abeyance for a while but this remains a close-knit community who don't really like the intrusion of a lens.

And yet there are some lovely stories; people who are closely connected to the land, who understand the rhythms of flora and fauna, and work hard in a variety of professions to afford what is, after all, a significant luxury. 

Hunting has a very contentious image in the UK.  Viewed as a sport of the privileged (not my experience), it is perceived as glamorous but divisive.  I have to say that glamour was in short supply on the days that I hung out with them.  

What struck me was how very ordinary it was.  

Like the rest of us, the hunt tries to make it's way through a landscape that is defined by industrialisation and intensive farming. The glamour seems to be more of a wish than the reality, even among the participants, who I think would have preferred photographs that made everything seem beautiful, lush, rural and clichéd. 

But it just didn't look like that.