Woman saves fox from hounds

Nitefly said:
Sometimes things are really hard to explain when you break them down, even if they seem instinctively right. An obvious one is the fact that adultery isn't a criminal offence. It seems incredibly obvious that should be the case, but when you look at it closely, it can cause more harm than things that should obviously by criminal. At face value it would thus appear that criminality it determined only when harm is tangible, but tangible harm can in fact be relatively harmless.

Perhaps a better example of the blurred lines is libel, which can destroy people, their careers and their families, yet is somehow obviously deemed to be less harmful than petty theft, despite the fact a petty theft can be compensated with damages whereas libel can't.

Been awhile since I had a good ramble.
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I understand that, what I am trying to say is the in the case of fox hunting itself there is conflicting evidence about the very nature of the outcomes when we compare the various methods of killing foxes...of course you can argue that killing any animal is unethical and immoral but that would be ignoring many of the other factors in Wildlife Management and how we control and manage our countryside which would have an impact on how we inform that ethical position, not to mention the ethical dilemma such a position would have on a persons consumption of animal products and products that derive in whole or part from Animals.

A lot of people would be pretty horrified by most Animal Husbandry and Wildlife Management techniques to be fair, but are they unethical? That depends on the individual to a great degree.

The apparent savagery of hound hunting is also subjective and doesn't necessarily imply greater suffering of the Fox (the supporting argument being that on the whole the fox is dead within seconds or escapes unharmed and is rarely if ever injured...not to mention the 'natural selection' management argument ) and I think that many people just can't see past the act itself to objectively look at the entire subject in the context of Wildlife Management and the relative ethics, I cannot see how traditions and social conventions that revolve around such things can make them more or less moral. There is currently an ethical debate going on about Badgers and TB for example.

There may well be good reason to not use hounds, but the evidence is simply not conclusive and there are a significant body of animal welfare experts, including Vets that have offered supporting evidence for the hunt.

I just don't know, I shot foxes not because I like killing for the thrill of it but simply because I was asked by the local hunt master as they could no longer let the hounds get the fox and I was available and far better than their alternative.

The problem is that ethics are not that black and white or easily disseminated.
 
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Do you think Vets support the Hunt for anything other than the financial aspect of looking after the toffs horses and packs of hounds?

What do you think makes more money for a Vet: Some soap-dodger bringing in a half-dead Fox or the landed gentry with their huge farms and livestock? You'd have to be pretty damned foolish or amazingly dedicated to not support the side that butters your bread...
 
So I take it before the ban, hunting foxes with hounds was a pest control service provided by, I don't know, Cavendish-Bentinck Enviromental Services and others? It seems crazy to ban a humane, legitimate, pest control industry :confused:

How many jobs were lost? If the service was provided even six days a week, 8 hrs a day countrywide that's a lot. Not to mention the uniform suppliers for each employee/hunter and a horse etc :(
 
doofer said:
Do you think Vets support the Hunt for anything other than the financial aspect of looking after the toffs horses and packs of hounds?

What do you think makes more money for a Vet: Some soap-dodger bringing in a half-dead Fox or the landed gentry with their huge farms and livestock? You'd have to be pretty damned foolish or amazingly dedicated to not support the side that butters your bread...
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I suspect that the Livestock Farms, Studs, Polo/Racing Stables and Riding Stables etc...are the main income source for rural vets, aside from people's pets that is. I doubt the few Seasonal Hunts in a region really contribute that great a proportion to their incomes.
 
He never said that the hunt contributed that great a proportion of a rural vet's income, he said it's no great surprise that vets often support hunts, given that the participants of hunts are the vets' customers.

Not sure why the hunt has to be a large proportion of the vet's income for this to be a valid point, especially since you seem to have ignored the cross-selling aspect of hunt members potentially also have riding horses, owning livestock, etc., meaning that not supporting a hunt could lose you business in areas other than the hunt itself.
 
The size and popularity of this thread suggests to me the big issue isn't animal welfare but how the well off and rich folk are seen by us common folk.
 
Naffa said:
If you're going to argue in favour of removing the ban, you don't get to talk about your second point. Controlling the fox population has absolutely nothing to do with hunting with hounds, as anybody that had a fox problem and sought to fix it via such a method would be intellectually defective. Perhaps that's what we have a case of here.
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Personal attack.. Brilliant.

You do realise some areas of the countryside are vast and remote, making it incredibly difficult to lamp across, due to not being able to get a quad across it, and the most effective method is to use hounds in these regions.
 
It really is quite simple.

Getting dressed of a Sunday and rolling around the countryside with pack of dogs with the sole intention of killing and animal for sport/fun is disgusting.
 
I find it funny how all these people are banging on about "toffs" etc.

There are plenty of other industries/people that profit from animal cruelty on a much larger scale such as halal or kosher slaughterhouses.

I think a lot of people have the blinkers on when it comes to animal cruelty because we buy all of our meat pre-packaged from the supermarket. I think if people had to raise and slaughter their own animals they would have a much different viewpoint on such things.

I take it all of you people who are opposed to fox hunting are vegetarian/vegan right?

You criticise the hunt for its traditions, yet you will all be eating a turkey dinner on christmas day in the name of "tradition" without a care for the widespread cruelty that goes on in the poultry industry.
 
McGray said:
So you eat the remnants of the fox do you?
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Was that directed at me?

It is common knowledge that foxes are a problem for farmers that produce the meat that we eat. Have you failed to make this connection?

I was also pointing out the hypocrisy regarding people's views on fox hunting tradition that involves minimal animal cruelty, and other traditions that involve far more widespread animal cruelty.

Do you seriously believe that poisoning a fox is less cruel than using hounds to kill it? I know that it looks worse, but just because something looks bad it does not make it less humane.
 
McGray said:
Hunting foxes with dogs/horses/ridiculous outfits is not done for pest control.

It's not complicated.
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No, but it is a tradition.

It is a sport that doubles up as pest control. The pest control element is still valid, no matter how you are dressed.

If you want to hate fox hunting that's fine, but it does make you a hypocrite because you partake in other "traditions" that involve cruelty to animals. It sounds more like you hate that fact that they're wearing the outfits than the fact that they are killing foxes though. What they wear is actually irrelevant.

Horses are just better for the purpose than quad bikes. Why do you think the police still use horses rather than quad bikes? It allows them to pass some of the control over where they are going to the horse to avoid obscacles etc.

As for whether using hounds is more humane than poison/trapping/shooting, this is up for debate, but the fox would generally have a quicker and more humane death being ripped apart by the hounds than it would via the other methods. The problem is that it looks more gruesome.
 
It's odd that so many are focusing on the end result & ignoring the reasoning behind the action.

Is killing somebody in self defence the same as killing somebody for a laugh? - of course not, the end results may be the same, but we can't ignore the moral reasoning behind the decision.

So why exactly is this pretty basic behavioural judgement being ignored by many in this debate?.

Killing an animal for consumption is a better reason to kill an animal than the simple pleasure derived from killing another creature.

Also, the arguments saying "oh, well the meat industry is bad" - how exactly is that an argument in favour of hunting with dogs?, pointing out hypocrisy is another persons point of view doesn't give validity to the activity of hunting with dogs.

So just because X, Y & Z activities harm animals we should allow all activities which harm animals to appease some theoretical almighty "god of consistency"? - no.

Progress towards greater social attitudes towards animal treatment will happen in small steps - the first step being revulsion at the idea of "killing for fun".

grimm said:
As for whether using hounds is more humane than poison/trapping/shooting, this is up for debate, but the fox would generally have a quicker and more humane death being ripped apart by the hounds than it would via the other methods. The problem is that it looks more gruesome.
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It depends on if you focus on the actual point of death, or if you include the stress of being chased by a pack of dogs intent on ripping it apart.

Let's not beat around the bush here, people don't go fox hunting on horses with dogs for pest control - it's an activity for enjoyment.

To be honest, most of my problem with the whole idea is that we have people in our modern society so primitive that they still enjoy the act of killing.

Somebody working in Dignitas because they like helping people by ending extreme suffering isn't the same as working for Dignitas because you get kicks out of killing old people, the apply the same kind of reasoning to this.

It's the extraction of pleasure from the activity I find disgusting.
 
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Its not for fun though, it provides a service to the farmer. If people should wish to dress up in REGULAR horse attire and view the huntsman at his job, whilst hacking across land they would not normally have access to then so be it.

The horseback riders very rarely witnesses a fox being killed and when it does it is quite a solemn occasion. It's not like a football match where everyone cheers and pats each other on the back. The anti groups have done a good job of portraying hunting as done solely by the rich for the pleasure of the kill.
 
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