They are certainly proper foxhunters (i.e. riding and jumping) but like in any hobby there are different levels of seriousness, expenditure and commitment.
Outside of keeping a horse (probably in a livery stable, possibly shared between owners) the hunting is not a big financial drain. No more than multiple other hobbies you might consider.
In the countryside equestrianism is not necessarily the sport of the elite, same thing with golf in Scotland (particularly) and cricket (a working class sport at heart) and skiing in Austria (it is just what everyone does on winter weekends). My sister owner a horse for nearly 30 years (same horse) and went hunting and she is as common as muck (as am I) and she did so with a collection of friends of similar background and means.
I’m by no means a hippy lefty but I have a very special place in my heart for foxes. Back when I lived in the country side, we used to get several in the garden every night. I know we shouldn’t have but we started to feed them. Eventually they would let your stroke them. Very cute animals. 1 day I’m pretty sure they left us a dead rabbit by our back door. Maybe i’m reading too much into that though!
Currently in London and you’ll see them roaming about everywhere, very passive. City foxes are generally scrawny looking and pretty unhealthy though.
Anyway… I have no problem with farmers killing them to protect them, in fact they have my support. I have a problem with rich pr*** coming from the city and killing them for sport. No respect or appreciation for nature at all. It’s just some social event for them which is why I don’t recognize them as real hunters (of which I have great respect for).
Just my opinion.
Foxes kill a lot of hens, when they get into a hen house. My sister keeps hens and ducks in her front garden (in a hamlet, in the countryside) for eggs, and a fox got in and slaughtered every one. It ate a meal, probably carried some out for the next day’s meal and left a lot of dead birds behind. Foxes are vermin and predators, in Australia, over several days a single fox once killed eleven wallabies and 74 penguins, eating almost none. In the UK there are a couple of reports of foxes attacking babies, and many of cat fur being found in their droppings. They are not cute and cuddly, they’re wild meat-eating dogs. Not hunting them leads them to believe humans are not a threat, which is why they’re being seen so often in cities.
“Not hunting them leads them to believe humans are not a threat, which is why they’re being seen so often in cities.”
hmmm. Or the reduction in habitat as we build on every square inch of land and easier food opportunities form bins are leading them into the city.
When the ban was being debated last time I don’t really recall pest control being part of the argument. Everyone knows hunting with hounds is very inefficient for pest control compared to the farmer (or a hired sharp shooter) plinking them with a rifle. The big argument was the lose of countryside jobs and slaughter of hounds as the hunts folded. But the Economist article quoted above seems to show that that’s bollocks.
I suppose that, too. Foxes are very territorial, you put an urban fox in a rural area and it could possibly starve. They have to ‘learn’ survival tactics, so I’m assuming they’re not learning that humans are dangerous and to be feared.
Hunting should be seen as an innate human right, the only real hunting restrictions or bans I can morally support are those that are designed to protect human life or promote proper sharing of limited resources. For example in the States typically during hunting season, Sunday is a no hunting day. This is so families that do not participate in hunting can go into the woods without fear of being shot by hunters or without having to worry about the constant ringing of gunfire. Additionally, of course, in many built up areas hunting is not permissible at all for safety reasons. We also limit the hunting seasons to avoid over-hunting, and have bag limits additionally.
As for fox hunting in particular, as an American I view it as essentially foppish and stupid both in how it looks and in what I view as the enjoyment of it. Sport hunting is a great thing, but the concept of sport as it refers to fox hunting is very alien to my concept of sport hunting which (in my biased view) involves stalking and skilled pursuit and taking of an animal. But, that’s a cultural difference, such hunting styles are essentially unknown here but that doesn’t mean they have to be wrong or stupid, just not my cup of tea.
Fox hunting definitely has an image problem which is exacerbated by the silly clothes, upper-class twittery of tradition, ‘blooding’, and it being seen as reserved for out-of-touch Lords that use their powerful horses and trained dogs to hunt down and tear to shreds a poor, little, cuddly, innocent furball (which is good training for dealing with the riff raff, if necessary).
I’m not a big fan and have never been on a hunt, but to me part of being English is having silly idiosyncrasies, traditions and habits that look peculiar to outsiders. The majority of people, that I’ve observed, against it are using it as a proxy for class war and/or don’t live in the country and get their chickens from the supermarket, so have never had their ‘pets’ (livestock) slaughtered by a fox. I’m all for ridiculing toffs doing antiquated, absurd traditions but I don’t think a ban is the correct way to go about addressing peculiar (but obviously enjoyable for the landed gentry) pastimes.
This isn’t true. The no hunting on Sundays is due to state blue laws originally put in place for religious reasons. I hunt on Sunday because my state allows it, but some other states do not. There’s no safety aspect to this. Anti-hunting groups want to see all hunting banned, so they of course like the no Sunday hunting rules as they view it as a good start.
They try to use the safety angle in that argument, but it falls short because hunting accidents are:
Very rare, as hunting is extremely safe, especially when compared to other sports.
When accidents occur, they usually involve falls, not firearms.
When firearms accidents occur they are extremely rare and almost always involve a hunter getting shot. Non hunters being shot by hunters is something that happens maybe every decade or so in most states, despite there being millions of hunters every year.
Not really. Most “built up areas” that ban hunting are simply cities that don’t like hunters. Bans are usually based on anti-hunting sentiment, not safety.
There’s hunting and there’s hunting, in my view, and I call it pretty poor sport to set fifty large trained dogs on a single smaller one just for the sake of seeing Reynard run for his life before being torn to pieces; just as you, I imagine, would feel contempt at someone who stood by with an automatic rifle while someone led a deer by on a rein.
I accept it as a part of tradition the same way I accept bull-baiting and bear-baiting and dog-fighting and cock-fighting, i.e., not at all.
What’s left? Hunting as a way of punishing foxes for killing chickens? That might be well if there was any particular link between the fox that got into Farmer Giles’s hen-run last week and killed the little red hen that was his daughter’s pride and joy, and the one that has the ill-luck to fall foul of the hunt this weekend. In practice, of course, there isn’t; and while it might be a fine and noble thing to set out to hunt the particular tiger that’s turned into a man-eater and killed three defenceless natives already, it would be verging on the contemptible to go out and kill the first tiger you happened across and congratulate yourself for your worthy deed. (Editorial “you”, of course)
Were I to keep chickens, I think it would be my own responsibility to make sure they were protected from foxes. I create the situation where there’s all this tasty food in one place where it can’t get away; it’s not for me to call for the fox’s head because he behaves like a fox.
Foxes can dig under chicken wire, you can do your best to protect your chickens but they still get in. Then they’ll kill every chicken in there and eat half of one or two of them. If a tiger killed every gazelle in a herd and then only ate the soft underbelly of the babies would you think that fine and noble? He’s acting like a lion, destroying whole herds of gazelle but he’s a lion and that’s okay? What other animals, apart from humans, kill other animals without needing them for nourishment?
Were I to keep chickens, I think it would be my own responsibility to make sure they were protected from foxes.
That has already been tried. It didn’t work. Just as slugs will still eat lettuce when your best attempts try to stop them to, foxes will find a way to circumvent your best efforts.
dog-fighting and cock-fighting
Not even in the same category, not in the same sphere, those heinous practices are so far removed from the issue we’re discussing and they’re a very ugly, emotive and disingenuous comparison you’re making.
Nobody is disputing that. Foxes can be a menace, and need to be kept under control. Not many people will dispute a farmer’s right to shoot or poison a fox on his land.
But presenting this as a justification for hunting on horse with dogs is absurd.
Just for a start, they don’t just happen to find foxes. The gamekeeper finds a fox den beforehand, keeps it alive and protect it until hunt day. It is a game animal kept alive in order to hunt it. How many chickens might it kill in the mean time? They are just sacrificed in order to have something to hunt.
Why so? Al three are about taking pleasure in cruelty, in the sheer joy of watching one animal tear another to shreds.
The gamekeeper finds a fox den beforehand, keeps it alive and protect it until hunt day.
That I find disturbing, are there credible cites for that as a widely-held practice? I ask because the practice is very emotive. I expect there would be many arguments on either side, politically-speaking.
Why so? Al three are about taking pleasure in cruelty, in the sheer joy of watching one animal tear another to shreds.
Maybe on an individual basis there may be some truth to that. I’ve ridden, and raced friends in mountains in England, Egypt and Sicily on magnificent Arabian, fearless and well-trained horses. The joys we experienced were so far from seeing a helpless animal torn to shreds, I expect those on hunts would also be more thrilled in riding fast. Of course I’m only projecting my views, although I still think foxes are a menace, possibly the chase and diminishing the danger of your community’s livestock (and your income) being in danger would be even more exciting? I’ve not really thought about it, before.
This is all about the protection of our countryside, it may be better to also include the opinions of farmers, wouldn’t you agree?
And if fox hunting on horseback with a herd of dogs across fields and private properties were an efficient way of culling foxes, you might have a point there. If it were *really *about killing foxes, instead of half a dozen guys on horseback and 20 dogs chasing after the one fox you’d see half a dozen guys with half a dozen dogs (but not the same kind of dogs) looking for fox dens to obliterate, and probably also setting traps all over.
Didn’t the Act that banned recreational fox hunting in England and Wales also effectively ban hare coursing? I wonder if that grand old sport will be brought back too?
That’s probably weasels, not foxes. Foxes do make extra kills, but prefer to store them for later. Not that it’s unknown for them to go on a rampage, but they’re less aggressive about it.
Unless people hunt within very close proximity to a farm that has actively had attacks, there’s probably no point to the hunt. Plus, foxes replace their numbers pretty quickly, so that hunts do very little to control them. Laying down scents they dislike, however, does work fairly well, as does tearing up their dens.
