to think most supposed "animal lovers"

[Aribura]

only care about animals when it's convenient?

Horses die in a race you don't watch or take part in: OMG NO HOW CAN THEY BE SO CRUEL LETTING HORSIES DIE IT'S SO UNNECESSARY

Crapton of animals die for a food product which you eat and really enjoy: lol oh well circle of life we need meat to live ignoring the fact there are perfectly healthy vegetarians lol never mind

If you don't care about either or care about both then fair play. I know I'll be UBU'd by the guilty but I just had to get that out there.

Horse racing wasn't actually what I was thinking of when I mentioned killing animals for fun as there is already a long thread detailing why people are against it. I was thinking more along the lines of hunting purely for pleasure or sports like dog fighting or bull fighting.

And thank you cassette.

I do think there's a lot of hypocricy...

I think most people are actually against animal cruelty...but some take it to extreme's...it becomes their 'cause' and they don't want to believe they are wrong in their arguments..they won't listen to reasoning...and they don't seem to like human beings very much!

They are totally stupid comparisons because only one is in the name of entertainment.

It's just the sheer number of deaths in the national that gets people get up and understandably so. 1 in 20 chance
Of death the last 2 years. It's a dangerous race with too many runners and it could be made safer if people were not so obsessed with them betting odds and entertainment

Fondlewithcare I think you are right to an extent but people will always find ways to justify things so they can feel better about being involved in them. Like the poster who said she only eats animals she catches, as if the fact that she killed them herself makes the death ok, or that she believes fox hunting is humane based on gobbledygook evidence and ignoring the extreme stress the fox goes through having all escape holes blocked up then being chased by hounds. Not to mention being ripped apart. Yup, definitely the best way to deal with them

she believes fox hunting is humane based on gobbledygook evidence

That would be the independent scientific research gathered as part of the Burns Inquiry, commissioned by the then-Government, which they subsequently ignored because it didn't conclude unequivocally that foxhunting was cruel, and it was never a welfare issue for Labour in any event, it was class warfare.

That's a really great tactic to engender respect for your opinions...dismissing a peer-reviewed scientific paper which you've presumably never read as "gobbledygook" because it doesn't fit with your cosy, fluffy-wuffy-ickle-foxes-they're-so-cute world view.

Cat girl. Because fox hunting is a means to an end. Less foxes. It's no less humane than any other way of killing the fox.
Racing isn't a means to an end, and as I said on the GN tread, Im not against running horses, I'm thoroughly against the mass production if TB racehorses, around 5000 a year, when so few make the grade. It's pointless.

Anyone who reckons hunting with dogs just affects the hunted animal should bear in mind the thousands of hunting dogs which, when they reach the age of about five, are generally considered too old to be used for hunting but are wholly unsuitable for re-homing so are just destroyed.

As for fox-hunting being no less humane than any other method of killing foxes, do you honestly think that an animal being chased for hours by a pack of dogs, terrified out of its wits, until it is too exhausted to carrry on, at which point it is ripped to shreds is comparable to an animal dying immediately from a single gunshot?

And even if the culling of wild animals is necessary, anyone who treats it as a sport and gets enjoyment out of it is, IMO, pyschopathic.

I have not read the relevant document but I wanted to say that just because common sense suggests that chasing and shredding the fox must be more traumatic than a gun shot does not make it true.

I think we may be too keen to pin human emotions on to the fox. Humans aren't used to being chased by larger animals and therefore find it stressful, but foxes may not....

Like I said I dont know...but I do know that common sense =/= true.

only care about animals when it's convenient?

No, actually I don't. I campaign all the time. And those people who have been leaving comments on the Grand National thread, I'm sure some of them campaign against other animal cruelty issues too. Some people work away in the background raising awareness of such issues rather than openly ramming it down people's throats.

If only every fox in question did die "immediately from a single gunshot". The reality is, given the scarcity of trained marksmen and the risk to other land users of using a high-powered rifle (which would increase the chance of a 'clean' shot), a substantial proportion of targetted foxes are wounded rather than killed. They then die painful lingering deaths of gangrene, septicaemia or starvation through inability to hunt. That is a FACT.

Foxhunting with hounds is the ONLY method of hunting in which the fox is either killed outright or gets away entirely unharmed. The ONLY method. That is a FACT.

entropygirl has it spot on, and that's why I've been using the word "anthropomorphism" on this and the GN thread like it's going out of fashion. A fox doesn't feel human emotions. It is a fox, with a fox's instincts and to think of it as a little cute fluffy dog-like thing and project human constructs onto it is to do it a grave disrespect and betrays ignorance of animal behaviour and psychology.

A hunt mimics nature. A chase releases adrenaline, which has the effect of minimising pain. That is a FACT. A physiological, scientific FACT. So when the lead hound finally catches the fox, the pain of the killing bite is much less than a peppering of shot coming out of the blue. The lead hound will almost always go straight for the fox's throat or the back of its neck. From the moment the hound reaches it to the point of death is usually measurable in seconds. By the time the fox is "shredded", as you put it, it is already dead.

FACTS. Not emotion, not anthropomorphism, not ignorant distaste based on what you as a human would or wouldn't like to happen to you. FACTS.

Lots of FACTS there Fireandashes.

I wonder if you could be so kind as to forward me some links to the research these facts are based. It would be interesting to read.

And PandaWatch, the majority of people who follow hunts would never have seen a kill, because the hounds and the huntsman are usually well ahead of the field by the end of the hunt. They follow for the chance to ride at speed over an unchartered course (before the days of trail hunting, anyway) on land that would not otherwise be available to them - the farmers and landowners allow the hunt to cross because they're providing a pest control service and they provide an assurance to repair any damage, an invitation not extended to pleasure riders who might trash crops unknowingly or smash up fences without repair - and in some cases, for the pleasure of watching houndwork, which is a specific skill. Again, the image of crazed "psychopaths" lusting after blood is a lazy, uninformed stereotype perpetrated by the ignorant.

People see their pets as family members but happily process vast quantities of industrially farmed, processed meat and aggressively defend their "right" to do so

Lots of people are actually ignorant about where their food comes from and the processes involved. If people were educated about this at school or took time to research it then they would be able to make an informed decision where to continue buying such products and supporting these farming methods.

I personally was 100% behind the fox hunting ban because all I could see was people enjoying and celebrating death - and wearing silly outfits on top of it all.

But in light of actual scientific evidence I am always prepared to change my opinion.

It would be nice if fox hunting could have dissociated the sport, dressing up, general what-ho-ness and party atmosphere from the physical act of keeping fox numbers down in the most humane way possible though......I think that would have helped substantially.

www.vet-wildlifemanagement.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=30&Itemid=32

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2576173

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2044.1957.tb03585.x/abstract

There are a couple, for starters. I hope you find the first one particularly interesting as it shows the veterinary profession's backing for hunting with hounds as the most humane method of fox control.

I think we may be too keen to pin human emotions on to the fox. Humans aren't used to being chased by larger animals and therefore find it stressful, but foxes may not....

Fear isn't an emotion that's exclusive to humans. I don't think that is an anthropomorphistic (or whatever the correct word is) view to take

I personally was 100% behind the fox hunting ban because all I could see was people enjoying and celebrating death - and wearing silly outfits on top of it all.

I agree, there's something very distasteful about people treating the chasing to death of another living creature as a fun day out.

IF killing foxes with dogs is really the only humane way to cull them [sceptical emoticon], why the need for hordes of people to tag along and enjoy the spectacle?

fireandashes thanks!

I agree, if it is the most humane way then there should be a service/company set up to do this not everyman and their dogs dressed up to the nine's for entertainment sake. Very distasteful.

That's true, GeriatricBabyMama, but it's also about context.

To a certain extent, wild animals live in a state of fear - not terror, not blind panic, but a degree of fear nonetheless. This is what keeps them alive. They're alert to every sound, every stimulus in case it means a predator, a threat to their young or to their lair/holt/sett; dropping their guard could lead to death. There is nothing strange, distressing or unnatural about that state.

For humans, fear is almost entirely a negative emotion. In today's society, our preferred state is 'relaxed'. We talk about 'comfort zones', we talk about 'vegging out' or 'chilling'. For us to be in a constant state of fear or heightened alertness is panicky, stressful, exhausting. So we automatically assume that for an animal to feel ANY fear is wrong, cruel, horrible, stressful etc - because that is our understanding of fear.

Yes and those animal activists that lurrve animals so much are never guilty of the same thing? The anti hunting brigade never acid sprayed horses and hounds, because they clearly are less deserving animaly animals than foxes.

That's utterly horrific. If that is true and is typical hunt saboteur behaviour then they are clearly sadistic bastards and not genuine animal lovers. Please don't use their sick behaviour as a justification for dismissing the views of everybody who is concerned about animal welfare.

ariburu - I don't really understand the hypocrisy argument. Of course it would be much simpler if we all followed our beliefs to their logical extreme. But the unfortunate corollary of that would be extremist nutters on both ends and no-one holding the sensible middle-ground. Would you honestly prefer there to be more of the honest-to-goodness hunting anything that moves, eats anything that has once breathed, badger-baiting attending, dog-fighting promoting, factory-farm meat and egg-consuming, animal-welfare-mocking neanderthals? Or is it not better that most of us are mildly hypocritical if it means that more of us eat welfare-friendly meat and eggs, give money to animal charities, and tut quietly about things we think are cruel? Because it is the tutting middle-ground that eventually creates the groundswell that changes things.

Fireandashes I appreciate what you're saying about the way most living creatures apart from ourselves are constantly on the alert for threats, etc. And that we, as humans living fairly comfortable lives, don't understand the heightened awareness thing and would find that stressy.

But I really don't think that the constant low level fear/awareness that an animal would feel as part of its everyday survival mode can be compared with the terror that it would be feeling if it was being chased by predators for hours on end. And even if the death is quick when the hounds finally catch it, it's going to suffer horribly while it's being chased.