Don’t get me wrong - I was just presenting the pro-hunting (with dogs) argument, certainly not siding with it.
Left with the crime scene undisturbed, a fox will return later to retrieve food.
And indeed, without the artificial restraints imposed by Man, most if not all of the prey would have escaped from the fox in the first place. It’s for those who create the unnatural situation to address the need to keep the foxes out, not bewail the loss as an excuse for fox-hunting. Meaning no disrespect to those who suffer distress or hardship through fox predation, naturally, for I’m sure that’s a pisser when you’re on the wrong end of it.
And not always with the permission of the land owner. Though they talk a good game about protecting the countryside, my own very limited personal experience is of them (or those around them) damaging property of farmers.
Absolutely. Any anthropomorphism of the fox as malicious (or simply wasteful) is inappropriate as part of the argument.
How do they manage not to get their asses sued? Do they pay for the damages?
Sometimes they would throw a few pounds around. But generally it seems some damage to crops/fences/gates/hedges is part of the cost of doing business for a small farmer.
The only fox hunters I have come across are aristocratic wankers who will be put up against the wall come the revolution.
One way to do that is to kill off the foxes, and fox-hunting helps fill that. I’ve never really understood the anti fox-hunting arguments. Fox-hunting is a hobby which has given pleasure to people since the 16th century, and it kills off vermin.
Now, obviously, if the hunt is causing damage to farms, that needs to be fixed somehow, but isn’t there a less drastic alternative than to stop it altogether?
Maybe the thread title should be changed to “England wants their dogs back?”
Does anyone know when, approximately, the traditional peasant hunt morphed into today’s traditional fox hunt?
Setting traps which are likely to cause a slow and stressful death would be considered cruel, even if you were after pests such as foxes. Fox hunting is rather similar - just shoot the buggers and be done with it. It has very little to do with fox control and everything to do with dressing up and prancing about on expensive horses and drinking sherry and everything, and I’m siding with villa.
Damn right it’s about class, but it’s not inverted snobbery. The only reason fox hunting persisted in this form for so long was nothing to do with its effectiveness and controlling fox populations, but precisely because it was/is a past-time of the upper classes, therefore remaining unscathed while other bloodspoorts such as cock- and dog-fighting were outlawed and (mostly) consigned to history.
Did you read anything else that I’d posted in this thread, where I addressed this very question?
As to the Appeal to Antiquity, a similar case could be made out for dog-fighting, cock-fighting, bear-baiting, bull-baiting… need I go on? If there is any salvation for fox-hunting, it’s not to be found simply in that it has given pleasure since the 16th century.
I’ve read the entire thread, but nothing you’ve said has convinced me that there’s anything wrong with fox hunting. Gorillaman and you say that it’s cruel to foxes. I’m not entirely convinced that that’s true, but even if it is, so what? It’s just a fox. Why be so concerned about kindness to foxes?
In spite of what people say, I’m still convinced the anti-foxhunting people are like Macauley’s Puritans on bear bating.
Basically that is what the protest boiled down to. It has nothing to do with guns. The rural population who have a realistic view of the food chain, are now a very small minority, compared to the urban majority who get their food from a supermarket and think of foxes as delightful anthropomorphized cuddly creatures. And are upset about having their voice ignored.
Of course despite that I’m not entirely convinced that in this day and age, its cool to kill pest animals by tearing apart by pack of dogs, when theres a perfectly good rifle (still perfectly legal in the UK, incidentally, the ban was only concerning handguns) that does the job far more effectively. As another poster pointed out the only reason it has not gone the way of bull baiting and the like long ago, is unlike those “sports” it is practiced by the landed elite, not the working classes.
I didn’t say all that much about cruelty to foxes, but I did say a bit about how the pest-control argument was a crock, in view of:[ol]artificially maintaining fox levels to ensure that they will be hunted next season too,[li]hunting being a random killing of any fox that happens to be in the vicinity and crosses the hunt’s path, and not necessarily the specific fox that’s making a nuisance of itself, andhunting consuming vastly more resources than the foxes it kills ever would[/ol], and you’ve not even addressed the question, far less refuted it.[/li]
“The Puritans despised bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators”, and you know what? I side with the Puritans on this. Not because I object to giving spectators pleasure per se, but because there is something very wrong to pandering to the base urge to take pleasure in tormenting a living creature to death - even if it is “just a fox”.