Husband is insistent on joining trail hunt tomorrow

I read the report and am shocked at the high numbers of ‘hunt havoc’. There aren’t that many hunts and they’re not every weekend, so aside from the cruelty of foxes/hares being killed, it isn’t a sport I would support. If other sports were so antisocial, they would be banned.

You don’t get running clubs taking runners onto railway tracks or regularly trespassing on private land. If there are cycle races they have to work with the council to produce risk assessments on open/closed roads. Do hunts have to go through those loopholes, considering the number of people and horses, and the impact on the public?

But it's alright if you outsource it, right? Then you don't have to think about it. You just decide you want fried chicken that night.

These stupid "what about" questions are so feeble. The issue is actually enjoying and making a sport out of the process of watching an animal get hunted down and going through the process of being killed. It has nothing to do with being satisfied that a necessary job has been done in killing pests. It's not as if anyone is there encouraging the pest controller to get dressed up, go through a long drawn-out process of hunting, terrorising and chasing the rat and then cheering them on whilst they tear the rat apart, is it?

Do you acknowledge that foxes and other wildlife get caught up in it?

This happens occasionally. It is often inadvertent and most hunts operate entirely within the law.

I agree that the issue of out of control dogs is nit comparable though - the vast scale of killings through utter ignorance and incompetence far outstrips the few foxes unlawfully killed each year.

I’m not ok with the sight of any animals getting ripped apart, be that our cat that was killed by a fox or my friends ducks that were picked off one by one by a fox or a fox itself. Trail hunting is not fox hunting though. If you accept a million+ ‘accidents’ by dog owners, why won’t you accept a few accidents by hunts?

She is unable to answer a very direct question that I have asked so my assumption is yes, she does think it’s good.

It isn’t just about seeing it though is it, it’s about revelling in it. Creating a whole sport and industry out of something barbaric and cruel.

Nature is cruel. The way cats torment birds and mice is cruel. I’m not sure how logical your ‘if people didn’t have them as pets they’d not exist’ point is - surely we’d just be left with a load of feral cats causing more damage to wildlife. But I get your point.

However the best example I can think of is if a cat owner trained their cat to do this or stood outside laughing and cheering as their pet cat decimated a birds nest or whatever.

People who partake in it clearly do so for the thrill of it and think nothing of damaging wildlife, trespassing and subjecting animals to a horrific death. They actively enjoy it. That’s what I can’t get my head around.

Exactly. You have expressed it more eloquently that I have been.

The most horrific animal killing I have seen recently was a local pet cat running into and up a bush outside our kitchen, grabbing a baby bird, and running off with it. The adult birds went nuts. But the baby was gone, dragged away by somebody's Tiddles. Who would no doubt produce it for his human owners as some sort of offering.

Killing animals for fun is generally regarded as a potential sign of psychopathy.

Trail hunts do hunt animals.

I wonder what the pro hunting brigade make of bull fighting, dog fighting etc? All good wholesome fun?

You keep quoting these vast numbers without answering the question where you're getting your statistics from.

Having a reasonable belief that a dog has attacked or is about to attack farm animals is a good defence to killing them. It's not as if society condones it whilst objecting to hunting.

Why not? Eating is fun. Do you eat animals? Have they been killed for you?

But what about if you kill a rat for hygiene and are pleased or even happy once it's finally been done because say it's been a problem for a while?

This is an interesting debate. Pet cats kill millions of birds in the UK every year - often baby ones who can’t fly yet. Pet cats are mostly owned for pleasure. If they weren’t wanted, they wouldn’t be bred and so wouldn’t exist, and the wild bird population would be much healthier.

So as an owner of a cat (which is allowed outside) you do have to accept that baby birds are being killed for your pleasure, albeit indirectly You don’t see it (mostly) and I’m sure most pet owners would rather their cats didn’t kill. But they’ve still made a decision that will (probably) result in multiple wild creatures being pointlessly killed.

It’s similar to the meat eating debate. Most of us, by our choices, show ourselves to be perfectly happy for animals to suffer for our pleasure. We’d just rather not see it. We make ourselves feel better by judging people who do choose to see it.

It is, though. Cats hunt for fun, so do humans.

We've just legislated it more.

Why ask the question? Do you think killing animals for fun is good?

Sheep tend to have their throats ripped out by pet dogs or been driven over cliffs to their deaths - it happens frequently here.

I didn’t suggest you gave a dog but are you equally upset about the vast number of farm animals killed through incompetence or ignorance from dog owners as well as the 61confirmed foxes killed by hunts?

It does happen in trail hunts though. One of the key reasons people are keen to ban it. So let’s say it did happen, and there’s a high probability that it could, would you be ok with it?

I and many other posters have answered your cat question/comparison at length. So it would be interesting to get an honest answer from you too.

Yes actually many of them do, as trail hunting is used as a smokescreen. This is why trail hunting is due to be banned.

Adding 'HTH' to a post doesn't give one a moral high ground, however satisfying it might feel to type.

I again suggest that the rest of the "industry" should have taken collective responsibility for stamping out illegality over the last 22 years if they were so keen to protect trail hunts. But they did not, so Enter Consequences [stage left]

You know the difference, having had it pointed out more than once on this thread, but you are resolutely ignoring it. What cats do and what humans do is not comparable.

I do not find this hypothetical being "torn to shreds" of foxes entertaining. Because luckily, that is not what a trail hunt does.

What I am keen to try and find out is the difference between cats killing literally millions of birds each year for sport, the concept of hounds being animals of human use (like cows or sheep), and killing rats. Because apparently how you feel about it makes all the difference.

Stop being disingenuous. Even you have acknowledged on this thread that the process regularly does involve more than a few animals being chased and killed, to say nothing of the other factors such as trespass, terrorising other animals, etc etc.

Chicken shops don't kill chickens at all. And before you go on to talk about the people who do kill them, of course you are well aware that there is no valid comparison between hunting foxes with dogs and livestock farming.

Trail hunts do not involve chasing animals. HTH.

Demonising a whole industry because of the unlawful or inadvertent actions of a few is not ok.

Modern civilised societies generally consider killing anything purely for fun to be 'bad'