Ban Fox Hunting?

Ban Fox Hunting

  • YES!

    Votes: 29 64.4%

  • NO!

    Votes: 15 33.3%

  • Not Sure

    Votes: 1 2.2%
  • Total voters
    45
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Star_One

Registered Senior Member
What are peoples veiws on fox hunting in the uk? Do you think it should be banned, is it cruel????

Post your thoughts....

Just in case you dont know what exactly fox hunting is, below pretty much sums it up.

Basicly it involves a fox(S) being chased across miles of countryside by a pack of beagles to the point of exaustion, then being ripped apart to the enjoyment of the huntsmen.

Its just utterly pointless and makes me so angry that these fools go on telly and say "oh, it's totaly humaine bla bla bla bla"
 
Savage, barbaric, and strangely alluring under the lights

It doesn't seem to have much point. But I'm not British, have never been on a fox-hunt, and generally only know superstition, folklore, and so forth. I've met folks who insist that a fox-hunt is the height of sportsmanship, dignity, and intellect. Apparently you have to know how to coordinate your riding outfit and not fall off a horse. I don't say that as a joke; someone has actually pointed out to me in the past the dignity of uniform.

It seems roughly comparative (though the actual circumstances are indeed different) to a guy I once met whose friends called down to Oregon to let him know their dogs had treed a game cat. He said, "Keep it there." Long story short, the dogs kept the cat in the tree for three days while he traveled up to Alaska, hiked out to the site, shot the cat, took its carcass, and headed off to a taxidermist to arrange stuffing, mounting, and shipping before he flew back to Oregon. That's all well and fine, I suppose. Some people tell me I ought not be judgmental about that, either. But I don't think he should include it in his tales of how great a hunter, how courageous a hunter, how masterful a hunter he is. I mean, the man literally wants to kill two of everything so he can mount them in coitus around the house. To the other, a relative of his was a state game warden somewhere, and resigned of his own volition after he realized he chose his hunting site from an outdated map and had killed an elk--otherwise legally--within a certain range of a road he had not known was there. Nobody knew; he never had to say anything about it. And he did. People found out about the incident when he announced his resignation and explained his reasons: "I broke the law. That's all there is to it." Extreme in its dignity, but that's a man who invests much pride in his hunting, and won't tolerate such an apparently-stupid stain in his conscience without acknowledging it.

For reasons similar to the above comparison, I find the idea of fox-hunting rather barbaric, stupid, and so forth. But who knows? I can't say I've ever seen "English riding" fashions at any gay club ever, but my first thought, literally, is that those outfits are "gay," as in How quickly could I get my ass nailed if I wore that to a club?
 
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I am a hunter who does not understand this "sport". They do not hunt for food, or financial gain or even as effective pest control. They hunt for, what seems to me, simply a sadistic sense of pleasure of inflicting pain and terror on the fox. These appear to me to be the same sort of people who would enjoyed bear baiting, cock fighting, and dog fighting.

:m: Peace.
 
I think there is a real difference between the pseudo hunt we have today where a huntsman buys his snipers outfit from his outdoorsman catalog and waits up in a tree or stalks through a bush with his military surplus rifle and high powered scope, covered in yak piss to keep his scent masked, or whatever he does, and the fox hunt. To my knowledge (and I may be wrong, we don't hear much about this practice in the US) The fox "Hunters" just sort of ride behind and follow the animal while their foxhounds do all the work. That’s not a hunt its just sadism.

I'm not really for either form of hunting, the first is a one sided contest, a ritual I don't understand because I don't need to kill animals for any practical reason, and I don't like things to be hurt. However it is still evocative of the real hunting of the olden days when you needed to feed yourself on what you killed. And besides, with elimination of natural predators, human hunters are necessary. The fox hunt seems like all the suspicions I have about hunters being sadists come true. They don't even want to try to outwit the fox themselves, they just want to see it torn apart.

So I say, no more fancy uniform, no more horse back. If you want to hunt a fox, get a rifle, some military BDUs crawl through the mud on your belly, and pretend that stalking the animal makes you a big man. Otherwise you are just a sissy with some mean dogs.
 
I find it a bit ironic that typically the fox is depicted as a clever or sly animal, but we chose to hunt it with a pack of angry dogs. . . I suppose he's not so clever that a few larger animals chasing him until they tear into his throat can't kick his ass. What a shame. If the idea is to show man's dominance over nature, wouldn't it make more since to pit his own cunning against a fox and prove that man's wit is dominant over that of even the most tricky of beasts?

I guess what I'm trying to say is hunt foxes with intellect, if you want to test your brute strength (or that of your pack of trained dogs) go hunt a rabid bear or something.

Rehashing a matter that Tiassa bought up: As a gay man I can fully understand the alure of dressing up in a "uniform" of sorts, to get together with your male friends, and have a bonding experience as you peruse a symbol of sexuality and physical attraction. However to then have that symbol mauled by a pack of dogs once you catch it seems to me something of a strange departure from the ritual I am familiar with, and I'm not entirely certain how it fits in with everything else.
 
I am opposed to being cruel in general and more specifically to those who are unable to give their consent. It is ethically wrong to torture people or animals. If you have to be brutal support blood sports but do not rip helpless animals apart because of an old outdated tradition.
 
I am all for hunting, because man naturally has hunted for fur and meat and bones for thousands of years.
I am against hunting if it changes the ecosystem.
After reading up on wolves and the way they were hunted in US, I realized, that if man is allowed and somewhat encouraged to hunt, he becomes unreasonably vicious.
 
I think you may be confused whitewolf. We HAVE to hunt to change the ecosystem. Granted, thats because we already hunted to change it in the first place to eliminate large preditors, but that dosn't mean that we now just let the deer and rabbits and whatnot just breed and breed till they boil out of the forest as a mass of cute fuzzy animal flesh. We need to keep them under control ourselves if we cant have preditors do it.
 
Bring the wolves back, they'll hunt down your damn deer. And get rid of some moose too :p JK
 
hehe, that still leaves us with the problem of living with wolves. They are cute and all, but they do attack things... things we like.
 
Technically nature controls itself and we have no need to interveen, if the population of prey increases then so does the preditor population due to increased food availability, nature keeps itself in check, except we mess that up, especially with over fishing.
The wolves would canabalise themselves or die of starvation, i believe the point to the banning fox hunting arguement is its a pointless killing of a creature for fun, they would not be allowed to hunt a human, or even a domestic animal, so why should they be allowed to kill a fox? If i want to go out on a hunt to capture escaped cons and kill them for fun, i would not be allowed to.
 
I have a friend... my father has a friend, who captures escaped cons for fun and profit. Well... actualy he is licensed to do this for the state, and most of them are still in the innocent until proven guilty phase, and have merely failed to appear for a court date.
 
They are cute and all, but they do attack things... things we like
Click to expand...
I knew you'd bring that up. They did many, many studies and observations. I'll quote a few in a week.
Wolves hunt on mice. You like mice?
 
No no, generaly the point is to bring them back so they can be detained and made to attend thier trial, though this bounty hunting is potentialy dangerous, as popular media reminds us. For instance, in the news a few years ago, in my state, bounty hunters for the state broke into somones house and shot and killed too people. Oopse, it was the house next door they wanted. That caused a flap about perhaps ending the practicce of licensing bounty hunters but Im not sure anything was done about it.
 
Exactly, my point is nature runs its course with animals if we leave them and you cant have one rule for one thing and one for another, if i wanted to hunt somebody at random and kill them i would become a murderer(should i succeed) and that is unacceptable, the most common arguement for keeping fox hunting is tradition(and sometimes those have to be broken) and the jobs that would be lost, but thats what retraining is for, i simply dont think hunting anything down for sport is fun, its just barbaric.
 
The infliction of suffering for pleasure is revolting and should be made illegal. I can see no difference between partakers in this particular pursuit and those whom have a proclivity for nailing frogs to trees.

The British aristocracy is so hopelessly inbred* and pampered they have lost the ability to inspect their traditions beneath a modern, humane spotlight. The French had the right idea - "Orf wiv their 'eds!"

(*How do you circumcise an aristocrat? Kick his sister in the chin)

f
 
I believe that hunting is an acceptable past time as long as it is not deliberately cruel. If you want to shoot the fox then that is ok if you want to watch it be torn to pieces then that is just cruel. Man is always going to affect the population balance and eco system in some way. My objection to the fox hunt is that it is cruel without a purpose. The fox is tortured and then is not eaten or skinned it is just so much dog food.
 
Unfortunetly, shooting is not always as painless as being chased to the point of exaustion and then being ripped apart.

I watched some footage on Newsnight, wich showed a "goverment employed fox hunter" shoot a pregnant fox, he didnt kill it outright so he preceeded to kick it and then throw it in the air before smashing its brains out, the noises the fox was making were spine chilling.
 
Its all very well to say fox hunting is cruel along with shooting and that they should all be banned, nature is itself very cruel but you cannot ban nature.

Everyone fails to see the fact that in fox hunting they hardly ever kill a fox or even spot a fox on the hunt, its a rareity. All us townies see this as cruel and want all these things banned outright because the little fluffy foxes have done no wrong but the fact of the matter is the fox is a vermin, it kills livestock and the media would have you believe every time that a hunt takes place at least a few foxes are torn to bits - this is a myth generated by the media to dramatise the whole affair.

Ok in the grand scale of things you could say that its not man's place to try and rid his fields of vermin because man should be taming the land or whatever other excuse you may come up with but this is reality and vermin must be controlled some way.

I have no idea how you can relate fox hunting to shooting, two entirely different sports. Shooting is way more humane, usually the animal is killed outright instantly and these cases of shooting in the stomach or whatever so the vermin is not killed instantly is a rarety so please dont get confused. Usually the animals are shot an eaten so its not just a waste.

I voted no simply for the reason, you start banning one thing for cruelty and then it leads onto the banning of other activities because rarely is the banning of one thing enough. Where can you distinuish one sport being more cruel, you cannot, Im sure shooting and fishing could be classed as cruel - scientists have found that fish do infact feel pain - also so that means they too must be banned. Itll carry on until there are no field sports left and as a consequence the farmer's fields will be overrun with animals destroying his crops.

See that peice of premium steak sitting on your plate, the cow that was killed to get you that peice of steak was infact killed by electrocution and thats not completely painless either, so you must ban the killing of all animals because in whatever way its done its cruel as the animal feels somesort of pain in the process.

:)
 
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