The UK and the fox hunting ban

Great Debates
41

The provision of safe areas to encourage foxes is a feature of our countryside.

Foxes obviously want cover to hide and to lair, both for breeding and for self protection. Too much cover is no good for the hunt, too little and there will not be enough foxes.

You will see areas in our countryside set up for cover - this will amount to a copse of mature trees, not too big and not too small. Its from these that foxes will build their territories. If you look on old O/S maps you’ll see these copses are surprisingly old, sometimes several centuries.

Of course this is also ideal for Badgers, and Foxes often will take over little or underused setts.

If you don’t think such things are managed, then go over to France, take a look at the depressing expanses of filed, where hedgerows no longer exist, and where there are none of these set aside covers.

It would be pretty easy to rip these out in England to make agricultural use of them - but then you’d have no hunt. The gamekeepers obviously know where these are, after all they also need to control foxes to ensure that the game birds are also in adequate supply for the guns. Its all a balancing act, hedgerows, cover, foxes game birds, and in some areas - deer. You can’t have too much of one, or too few of another.

42

When “fun” is derived from taking pleasure in cruelty and torture, yes I am.

Likewise, I’m opposed to bullfighting and bear baiting.

43

Forgive this ignorant Yank, but this law was really not a ban on fox hunting? A person in the countryside can still take a rifle and shoot foxes during a hunting season? The only thing this law forbids is a particular type of hunting where the hound dogs themselves kill the foxes?

If so, then I can’t say I oppose it. I thought it was some lefty animal rights law that wanted to protect foxes from being killed. I don’t see how banning a particularly gruesome form of hunting is bad: no different than laws against rooster fighting or dog fighting.

Also, a quick question that I don’t mean to hijack the thread with: Don’t UK gun laws prohibit hunting weapons? Say I’m a regular bloke living in the countryside. Can I keep a lever action Winchester .30-30 in my house for protection and fox hunting?

44

It’s a general ban on hunting with dogs, specifically fox hunting and coursing (where greyhounds or other sighthounds are run against rabbits).

And as to your other question, UK gun laws don’t prohibit hunting weapons. You need to apply for and get a firearm certificate , which requires “good reason”, of which hunting is a"good reason" Basically, as long as it’s a rifle or shotgun with a barrel more than 24’ in length and bolt or lever action, it’s allowable. Here’s a guideline from the Home Office talking about acceptable and unacceptable guns.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/417199/Guidance_on_Firearms_Licensing_Law_v13.pdf

British gun bans tend to focus more on pistols than rifles.

45

Huh. I don’t see how this law is that controversial. Sure, some people have enjoyed this past time of letting their dogs kill foxes, but the same could be said of certain cultures and rooster fighting in the United States.

I fully support hunting and keeping wild animal populations in check. But there seems to be no reason to allow a barbarous method just for the amusement of a few. Am I missing something?

46

Probably best not to mention “protection” when you apply for a firearms licence, but demonstrating that you go hunting is a good enough reason. The people I know who have rifles use them for deer rather than foxes though.

A shotgun licence is easier to obtain, a sufficient reason is that you enjoy clay pigeon shooting, for example. Self-loading shotguns are also legal in certain pest-control circumstances

Both licences are dependent on you meeting certain criteria: criminal background check, secure storage, visit by a local police officer. It’s also somewhat dependent on where you live I think. The granting of a licence is up to the local Chief Constable, so I guess it’s easier to get a licence if you live in the sticks.

47

Concerning equestrianism, I’ve no wish to deny anyone the pleasure of riding a fast horse over challenging country; as I understand the “steeplechase” is a time-honoured tradition that need harm nobody. But if you need a terrified and monstrously outnumbered animal running for its life in order to give you something to ride after, then I’m quite happy to bracket you alongside the bear-baiter and the cock-fighter.

There’s a famous old taunt “The Puritans despised bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators”; but you could perfectly well revisit that and argue that the issue is not with all pleasure, but with taking pleasure in another creature’s suffering.

48

You are not missing anything, its a class issue.

Here is how it works, blood sports have largely been banned in the UK over the last 200 years or so.

Its been a steady move, with bear and bull baiting going out, through to dog fighting and cock fighting. These have been seen as ‘lower orders’ sports - the stuff that entertained the working classes.

We have seen badger baiting banned, and not much controversy - that was relatively recent, and yet another so called working class blood sport.

Now when you get to the ‘upper class’ blood sports. that’s very different. The working class blood sports were seen as entertainment of the ignorant, ill educated masses, those with little real power - these are the cheaper forms of blood sports.

Now we get on to the more expensive forms, these tend to involve owning lots of land, and lots of horses and dog packs. To take part at the socially highest levels, you need country estates, social connections and lots of status. Imagine trying to run a stable with just two horses - that will not do it, imagine a fox pack with three dogs, nope.

Those assets also have to be trained and maintained over the whole course of a year, and not just for a hunting season. Yet more costs.

That used to exclude working class people very effectively - all except those who were employed in running the hunt and the facilities. This would involve employing people to breed and feed game birds, protect the habitat in large country land holdings, and to ‘beat the heather’ to raise the grouse.

Naturally the upper classes who legislated away the cruel working class blood sports would never do the same for their own cruel activities - they blithely overlook the unnecessary cruelty and instead they will always heavily promote the social benefits - which of course exclude the working class people they so despise.

Don’t forget how unacceptable it is nowadays for the white rich Sahib to go hunting tiger, lion and other big game in countries inhabited by brown people, yet its all part of the social system that kept the wealthy land owning classes in their positions of social respect and political authority. They simply see working class people as no more worthy than those little brown people.T hose little brown people have kicked them out over the last 50 years, so where do our upper class people go for their cruelty jollies?

I have often seen comments on tv about how ‘ordinary people can become involved’ but these are just token gestures to tolerate us and justify their own activities.

Now when legislative power changed toward the lower orders, guess what, the lower orders exercised their new found rights to vote by supporting those who opposed unnecessary cruelty. After all, if blood sports bans are good for the lower classes, then its good enough for the upper classes - you cannot defend fox hunting if the same arguments of cruelty also require bear baiting to be banned, the arguments and ethics are hardly any different.

Some of us have long recognised that high social status does not trump the right of living thins to be treated with some dignity where possible. The wealthy do not tend to agree, and of course their large retinue of hangers on will also not agree.

Instead we are told of the importance of tradition, how we don’t ‘understand their ways’ If you happen to live as a tenant of such land owning classes, you are hardly likely to voice your view on the cruelty of blood sports.

Maybe this seems a diatribe, but just think, if you actually really did want to control fox numbers, you would never go down the stupid fox hunt route - its too expensive, too inefficient - risks actually dispersing foxes over a wider area (not a great idea if you are trying to prevent the spread of rabies) No, what you would do is to poison, gas and shoot them - but upper class land owning types don’t enjoy that kind of sport, its not fun for them.

Oddly enough, you might be surprised, but I actually have no problem with the deer stalk, controlling numbers is highly important - its just the sheer savagery of using dogs to run an animal to exhaustion and to death and then have them tear the animal apart for fun that I find repugnant

49

I agree with much of your post, but rabies is not a problem in the UK fox population.

50

I keep reading posts saying fox hunting is ‘too expensive, too inefficient’, but no numbers. Anyone got any?

51

I doubt there are any numbers, to be honest. A simple sanity check would suggest that maintaining a pack of hounds, and all the horses, in order to ride a few times a year, and then not always kill a fox, sets the efficiency hurdle at quite a low level.

52

We did have a situation some time ago when there was a rabies scare, and they pretty much shot everything that moved. Foxes and badgers were thought to be the most likely vectors.

As for the costs of fox hunting, lets add it up, how much to own and operate a stable with perhaps 30-40 horses?

How much to operate a hunt pack of around 200 dogs?

How much land do you have control over to ensure you have hunting rights? How much would that cost? Typically land owners have hundreds if not thousands of acres which they rent out to tenant farmers, and part of that tenancy includes hunting rights.

What about the costs of vehicles, horse boxes, vets, staff?

The cost of a set of pinks (the huntsmans outfit) can be into the £thousand, the rest of the tack commensurately expensive.

Hunts are phenomenally expensive nowadays you can join some hunts as a member by paying a subscription, however that does not even begin to cover your personal costs, that fee only helps with maintenance of fences, pack costs and such - you also pay per event too. The subscription go somewhere north of £300, but that is very little compared to the full outlay - as I say your riding clothes will cost many times that amount, your tack will add up quite a lot more. If you can afford a horse then the upkeep and livery is pretty high.

Now having member subs is only for the more public hunts, the real top end ones you don’t join so easily, you need the connections, money is vitally important but so are the social circles in which you move.

Oh, I forgot to mention another cost, one that is borne by the public, you see this sort of hunting is extremely controversial, and so there is a real risk of violence and disorder, on both sides of the argument - and yes hunters have been prosecuted and imprisoned for their violence to the public and protesters - its not all one way traffic.

It may surprise you but hunt saboteur activity is largely not illegal, or perhaps there may be civil offences, these are not usually criminal charges - not until the physical assaults occur - and those can be pretty much the fault of both sides. There is no law against laying down a false scent. This naturally riles up the hunt enthusiasts, nor is making a lot of noise to scare away foxes illegal, again it riles the hunt members - and that’s when they attack the protesters, with criminal violence. The Protestors unfortunately give it out every bit as much.

The result is the law enforcement is often required, and that costs money, lots of it.

Somehow hunts seem to think they can have police there for free, whilst organisers of other events, working class events like soccer, have to pay for their police presence.

Its this double standard that is class based that really gets the emotions of activists, if you are rich you expect the law to work for you for nothing, and gives you a pass to be as cruel as you like, if you are from the lower social order of course, you get the full weight of the law on your back - it was ever thus.

53

Why is the expense an important part of the debate? Whether it costs 100,000 pounds or a few pence to do it shouldn’t change the debate which is: Is this particular method of hunting so cruel as to be banned?

54

When was that? The only person who contracted a rabies-like disease from a mammal in the UK since the early part of the twentieth century got it from a bat.

55

Well, I’m not arguing about expense, but Malden seems to want hard figures that I don’t think exist. It’s not a cost/benefit analysis type of deal anyway - charging about the countryside on horseback is a lot of fun, that’s all, but it’s in no way population control. The hill farmers about here just shoot foxes around lambing time, it’s no big deal.

56

Here is a report that contains some statistics on foxes and foxhunting.

It is quite an interesting read and it quotes academic sources.

http://www.thefoxwebsite.net/foxhunting/huntban

It is worth bearing in mind that the UK the countryside is highly managed, every bit is owned by someone and the are long established practices for controlling wild and domesticated animals. We don’t have the sort of wilderness that exists in the great open spaces of a huge country like the US. The UK is more a country of gamekeepers than hunters. Moreover, the ownership of land is the basis of the political system. Hunting rights were reserved for Kings and aristocrats, an ordinary joe caught hunting illegally could easily have found themselves transported on the prison ship to some hideous colony.

The country versus city debate persists in the UK, as does who has claim over the right of access to land.

57

When “fun” is defined as a) running horses across people’s properties and fields, damaging those in the process b) for the purpose of frightening a small critter half to death then watch it being torn to bits and c) wear silly hats and blow French horns, then yeah, yeah I’m pretty much against it.

Can’t these people just have wild, ingeniously perverted drug-fueled orgies for their fun, like anybody else ?

[QUOTE=jtgain]
Forgive this ignorant Yank, but this law was really not a ban on fox hunting? A person in the countryside can still take a rifle and shoot foxes during a hunting season? The only thing this law forbids is a particular type of hunting where the hound dogs themselves kill the foxes?
[/QUOTE]

Yup.

[QUOTE=jtgain]
Why is the expense an important part of the debate? Whether it costs 100,000 pounds or a few pence to do it shouldn’t change the debate which is: Is this particular method of hunting so cruel as to be banned?
[/QUOTE]

It’s brought up because proponents of fox hunting “the posh way” have been asserting their fun is justified as pest control. Which is a fat load of tosh and doesn’t fool anyone.

58

That was at Camberley in 1969. After a dog that had recently been released from quarantine was thought to be rabid the police organised a drive to shoot all local wildlife mammals, using local gun owners to do it. The experiment was not repeated.

59

The foxhunting ban has probably not made a lot of difference to rural fox numbers. Predictions of financial disaster to rural interests, or of large numbers of foxhounds and horses having to be destroyed, or of the countryside overrun by foxes, did not come true.
‘Hunting’ here, means foxhunting, on horseback. It does not mean ‘hunting’ in the American sense. An earlier contributor drew a distinction between the morality of US hunting and British foxhunting. Such a moral dis-equivalence would not be drawn here, where shooting for sport and foxhunting are commonly seen as two sides of the same coin, and anti-hunting campaigners make little attempt to disguise their intent to start on shooting once foxhunting is done and dusted - something which has turned out to take longer than they thought.
An inordinate amount of politics and parliamentary time, was devoted to the process of legislating for a ban, which could probably have been used for something more useful. Tony Blair, in his memoirs, rues the day when he bothered, saying that if he had realised the strength of feeling about the issue, he would probably have kicked it into the long grass and left it.
Of course foxes continue to be destroyed with guns, but gun ownership is not easy or common here, and hemmed about with numerous restrictions that Americans would consider intolerable.
In large measure, it is a class-based issue, though for a small section of the population it is an animal rights issue. Some Labour Party MPs saw it as payback to the ruling class, who used to run the country and still own much of the countryside, for the coalminers strike of the 1980s

60

The foxhunting ban has been an inarguable win-win for me. It bans this barbaric practice, something I applaud. The sport of fox hunting has also increased during the period, propping up economic activity in the area: I can get behind that as well. 700 direct jobs are involved, as well as a number of indirect jobs.

No hunts have gone out of business; only 10% have seen a decrease in suppliers. According to a 2010 report on the effects of the hunting ban: [INDENT] [ul][li] the number of foxes killed by dogs has increased since the ban (as hunts continue both illegally and using trail hunting. Accidents happen when hounds trace a scent and can‟t be stopped from killing the fox);[/li][li] that hunts have reported an increase in membership;13 and[/li][li] that around 320,000 people (their highest recorded number) turned up to fox hunts[/li]on Boxing Day 2006. [/ul] [/INDENT] PDF! http://www.niassembly.gov.uk/globalassets/documents/raise/publications/2010/agriculture-rural-development/12310.pdf Some stats are in that report.

Also: [INDENT]Also according to the article, 42 hunts use birds of prey due to a loophole which allows a full pack of hounds to flush out a fox in order to kill it with a bird such as an eagle. [/INDENT] Eagles hunting foxes? Sign me up. The 2004 law rocks.