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Here's news for you. Foxes are nocturnal creatures, if you want to hunt them close range with a gun night-time is when you want to do it.
Even if a fox is not killed in the act and needs a second shot, it is infinitely more humane than being torn apart alive and watching your own guts spill before you. Don't you agree?
I find the specific breeding of dogs for hunting and subsequent putting down of perfectly healthy animals rather repulsive myself.
Perhaps it's the ability to look at an issue from a neutral and unbiased position? "Tradition" and "heritage" mean absolutely bugger all when evaluating whether a practice is cruel or not best suited.
No, foxes are not in the same catagory as big game for ease of shooting.
Dogs are trained to kill within seconds. It is however, highly unlikely that you are ever going to find a fox for a second shot, you'd have to be a trained tracker, and willing to take hours over it while the fox slowly bleeds to death.
I find Halal preparation of meat repulsive but I'm not allowed to ban it with a minority opinion.
If your knowledge of the country-side and how it works is anything to go by that response can be totally disregarded now.
Why does it make any difference if it's a child or adult that's been shot?
You know full well that experienced hunters wouldn't have any problem whatsoever in killing foxes with one shot.
Excuses, damn excuses and same old nonsense.
Just as mauled foxes die in their holes then...
Irrelevant to this argument.
And if your apparent ease with the atrocious practice of shooting perfectly healthy dogs when they cannot be used in hunts any more is anything to go by, any concerns you claim to have about the welfare of foxes and humane ways to control them can safely be disregarded as well.
Difference number two: Children don't have the experience, skills or judgement needed to be fooling around in night-hunts.
Well of course because you've been on these hunts you'd know.
This is how bird hunting works, esentially two lines of blokes, one set stand with their guns, the other walk toward them making noise to scare birds into the air. The guys with the guns shoot, as accuratly as possible and hope they'll bring the bird down, alive or not. At which point trained dogs are used to collect the birds. The birds then die slowly.
Foxes are not easy to shoot, they are fast, they are small, and they are primarily nocturnal.
A fox that is caught by the dogs does not get away alive. A fox that had been poisoned, trapped or shot might get away to die slowly in their holes though.
No, not really, I'm a minority and can't force my opinion on someone else because of some cruelty to animals claim.
Shooting a dog to put it down is not inhumane. I note that you've totally ignored the fact that dangerous dogs have to be put down by law.
The only people that have a valid right to complain about fox hunting are those who are vegetarians. Everybody else can get off their high horse and stop the hypocrisy. Whether it’s battery farmed chickens, cows pumped with antibiotics or pigs incarcerated into tiny cages the animals which make up the meat on your plate have probably been treated far more inhumanely than the foxes killed through fox hunting.
The whole issue is basically morality and ethics. MP’s are forcing their morals and values on others. Now when Bush does that people like Aladdin are the first to complain. Yet they are happy to see MP’s in Parliament today attempt to legislate morality. Double standards yet again.
There have been many instances of foxes being mauled by the lead dog or even several of them before managing to seek refuge in holes.
And then there are those foxes who are not caught by the founds by die anyway of stress and exhaustion after long, relentless chases.
What's wrong is wrong. What's cruel is cruel. If you think Halal meat should be banned in this country, write to your MP.
Breeding scores of dogs for hunting purposes and then putting them down because they can't be used for hunting any more even though they're perfectly healthy and capable animals it's the height of cruelty.
Do you understand the concept of animal cruelty?
Once it becomes law in two years' time, let's see if the decent, upright, law-and-order bashing Telegraph-reading folks who like hunting keep their promise and break the law to continue hunting.
Now that would be a hypocrisy, considering how much many of these people go about zero tolerance for criminals and all that...
To microwave a kitten would be pure torture. The kitten would endure horrendous pain and torment from the radiation and could explode and split into pieces. There would be no justification for such an sick action.
Fox hunting however is justifiable, it controls the numbers and there is a genuine need for the fox population to be kept down. The death is fairly quick and cannot be compared to sticking a kitten in a microwave.
I believe your Spanish, will you condemn bull fighting?
Although I personally find hunting with hounds quite distasteful it quite simply is the best way of controlling the Fox popualtion. The fox has a good quality of life up until the chase and the kill - a far better quality of life than the animals put on your plate.
As I've already said I don't liek the idea of hunting with hounds all that much but I do go bird shooting. Will that be next? After all we use dogs.
So many local people I know are angry that affairs out here in the cuds can be decided by people in the city who know absolutely fuck all about the way of life.
Most of the people involved in the hunts are the people who keep care of our countryside who know more about it than any other. What do the people in the city know about land management and game keeping.
This is the problem. People not knowing very much about the argument but supporting a ban anyway cos it doesn't really matter to them. All they think is cute ickle foxies.
oh, the poor poor gazelle that gets hunted by the lions, being chased till it tires out and then killed by a bite to the throat.
i personally think hunting is a much more humane way of killing pests. or would you prefer us to introduce a myxamatosis- like disease that blinds the animals so that they cannot see what they are eating and therefore slowly starve to death?
I totally disagree with fox hunting its sick and cruel and a pastime only practiced by a small minority of country toffs. It was in Labours election Manifesto and a majority of the public and MP's support it so it is going to be law basically. Is there *really* a problem with the fox population?
Do you have a source for a 'majority of the public' supporting it?
This is another problem. It's not so much a problem with the fox hunting, it's more a problem with the 'upper class'. There are so many ignorant people out there that think that hunting is a toffs sport. While plenty off toffs do enjoy it there are plenty of other country folk that enjoy it too.
There will be unless the fox numbers are kept down.
Shooting doesn't distinguish between the sick and healthy animals.
Who eats meat here? Is it bought at a supermarket? If the answer is yes to both of those questions you’re a hypocrite. (Unless you buy free range organic products, such products however make up a tiny minority of supermarket sales).
So if you're in the majority in eating normal supermarket stuff the conditions that the animals have gone through are appalling.
Read up it. It's far worse than fox hunting.
Before anyone asks I have considered both sides of the argument thoroughly over the years but as previously mentioned my mind was made up by a hunter who claimed that she and most hunters she knew did it purely for the fun of it.
She didn't give a toss about whether other methods were better or worse, it was the buzz and the social life for them and other pro-hunting arguments were merely crap they put out to pacify us wavering townies.
Various sources on BBC news and in papers. I'm trying to find one now.
For me its even more reason to dislike the whole thing. The idea of getting your kicks from chasing an animal and watching it being ripped to death is perverse.
renzo, how many country side people do you actually know? how many hunts have you seen and spoke to the people on?
farmers hunt the foxes because they are pests that would otherwise kill all the chickens that you eat.
you live not far from me, in the middle of the country, yet you have absolutely no idea of how people who work on farms and come across death every day act. they are not all country toffs.
it is not just a pastime, polo is a pastime, fox hunting actually serves a purpose. Farmers allow and invite these people to hunt on their lands because farmers are busy enough and do not have the time to go around their land shooting foxes.
as for sick and cruel, how can you say shooting them is more humane? it's different when it's point-blank, but how can you get close enough to a small, agile wary animal like a fox to shoot them point blank!
there was a problem with the rabbit population. we introduced myxamatosis, there was no longer a problem. the rabbit population is now growing again, soon to be as pest like as before.
Hi.......and i agree with what you just said.
and todays farce really made these protestors look stupid. Peaceful protests yes but todays was well out of order. I seen on the news a woman saying the police had hit her......well why was she in the frontline kinda thing ? what were the police supposed to do with people stampeding them ?
This hasnt helped them any in my opinion.
Telescopic lenses? The Americans use guns to kill foxes, maybe they'll show the Brits how if we ask them.
As for the rabbits, they'll all be eaten by foxes, who'll then begin dying of obesity, like us.
Thus we can kill two birds with one stone. (Excuse the pun
I've debated with people who have actually been on hunts. They did it for fun. :mad:
Is it not possible to make any sort of fox proof chicken coop then?
From what i see on the news they are mostly upper class people who like to dress up and ride horses. Idiots.
A lot of it *is* just a pastime though. I am sure most people are not doing it because they are concerned about fox populations. They are doing it because they enjoy it.
I don't know how it would be done, personally I don't think it would be *that* much of a problem. Surely anything is better than having the fox torn apart by a pack of hounds is a better way to die, if they even have to.
Surely things will balance out if nature is allowed to take it's course. Overpopulation and underpopulation etc etc.