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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

See all MNHQ comments on this thread

AIBU to join Hunt Saboteurs?

310 replies

DogCalledRudis · 18/05/2014 14:19

I already support them.
They put links on my facebook and i really really want to be one of them.

OP posts:
Mrsmorton · 20/05/2014 16:31

Great post maninawoman

maninawomansworld · 20/05/2014 16:54

Thank you very much.
I can't bear it when people post opinions based on secondhand 'knowledge' or prejudice as fact. If you've been on a hunt and witnessed someone being cruel to a dog or horse or whatever with your own eyes then fine have an opinion, but don't sit behind your computer being taken in by lies peddled by the rabble on faceache or whatever network they are using to spread their prejudiced bile.

I had a pal who thought I was immensely cruel being a country sports type (shooting, hunting , fishing) but I took him on a hunt about 10 years ago. He and his wife have both since learned to ride and are full and active members of our hunt!

Says it all really.

ThatBloodyWoman · 20/05/2014 17:28

Oh, I get it.
If we all followed the hunt we'd suddenly have a change of heart man ?

Dream on.

And btw 'townies' have a right to an opinion, just like country dwellers.
It's their countryside too.

Nomama · 20/05/2014 17:46

cantbelieve - well had you read the context, my personal continued dialogue, you'd have understood what I meant. It was not aimed at any poster here, wasn't directed at anyone's postings, thoughts etc. It was a continued comment re my own experiences of anti this that and the others.

I have also posted previously about my experiences with hunt followers (equally infuriating).

But your own arrogance may have led you to post at a sound bite, without considering any of that which had gone before! It must have, or you wouldn't have posted as you did - with a complete miss take on that sentence

QuestStarSearcher · 20/05/2014 17:52

How I wish the massive attention that hunting got pre-legislation and now after, could be transferred to the very real animal welfare issues that go on right in this country.

cantbelievethisishppening · 20/05/2014 18:03

Nomama. I stand by what I said. The 'fluffy bunny brigade'? Grow up FFS.

cantbelievethisishppening · 20/05/2014 18:07

manina. Well I guess that means I have a legitimate platform from which to voice an opinion. The utter disregard for animals had to be seen to be believed. For those who need a little more insight pop along to youtube and watch A Minority Pastime. But I guess all of that is fantasy and lies as well isn't it.

Nomama · 20/05/2014 18:14

Yes, the fluffy bunny brigade. Have you never met them or read about them?

I don't mean the well meaning, concerned individuals who care. I mean the utter lunatics who take things too far. Like some sabs, like some of the anti vivisectionists who lie to make money for an outdated cause.

They are the ones that believe stealing corpses is a good way to treat families who may be involved in raising animals for labs.

They are the ones who think that threatening people who work with and around such businesses is a viable, defensible act.

They are the ones who live on benefits so they can act swiftly when they see an injustice done., Got to rallies, break into peoples houses, businesses, graves....

They are the ones who seem to believe that an animal is more important than a human being. They are the ones who, despite anti terrorism acts having been passed, seem to be beyond the reach of the law.

What would you like me to call them? The ALF doesn't seem to cover it, for me!

maninawomansworld · 20/05/2014 18:29

^Oh, I get it.
If we all followed the hunt we'd suddenly have a change of heart man?^
ThatBloodyWoman
No not at all, you'd just be able to voice your opinons based on something more solid that thirdhand information and heavily edited propaganda on youtube.

For those who need a little more insight pop along to youtube and watch A Minority Pastime. But I guess all of that is fantasy and lies as well isn't it.
cantbelievethisishppening
As above - heavily edited propaganda. Even Hitler managed to make a few films and take some photos that portrayed him as the good guy. There is no substitute for going along with an open mind and seeing what happens with you OWN EYES and basing your opinions on that.

cantbelievethisishppening · 20/05/2014 18:34

I wonder where the OP went

cantbelievethisishppening · 20/05/2014 18:37

Thing is Manina I HAVE seen it with my own eyes. I worked in a hunt and point to point yard. I used to hunt.

Nomama · 20/05/2014 18:38

Well, no we are shouting at each other, they have clapped their hands and put the kettle on. Manina has even managed a Godwin.

We should have listened to the first poster who told us all to ignore....

Blush
SelectAUserName · 20/05/2014 18:40

I think that's my problem too Quest. From what little I know about the issue through my hunting friend and reading up, on both sides, it seems as though a huge amount of parliamentary time was spent framing a badly-drafted, difficult to police piece of legislation which probably hasn't made a difference to the life of a single fox.

When I think how much good could have been done if that time and energy had been focused on preventing serious abuses of animals, along with the money the RSPCA has spent on (mostly unsuccessful) private prosecutions post-ban, I just think it is rather a waste. I doubt many foxes have lived who would otherwise have died. When you take the people-following-for-pleasure side out of the equation, it seems to me that hunted foxes actually have a pretty good life. They get to live naturally, if they are hunted they are either killed outright or escape without injuries and the method of killing, while not exactly pleasant (what method is, when all is said and done?) does seem to mimic the way they would have died at the hands (paws?) of their original natural predators - wolves.

TBH to naive old me that all seems pretty natural, if a bit nature-red-in-tooth-and-claw and I struggle to see why - if, as I say, you look at it from a purely animal perspective and take the participating people out of it - hunting is deemed as more cruel than the plight of so many farm animals who lead completely unnatural lives, animals used in vivisection, horses shipped live to Eastern Europe in cramped trucks without water including foals parted from their mothers before weaning, neglected and mistreated pets, ex-racing Greyhounds tortured and dumped...I know it doesn't have to be "either/or" but given that there are finite resources to go round, I'd rather concentrate on real abuses where there is so much wrong with the way an animal lives, not just how it dies.

cantbelievethisishppening · 20/05/2014 18:43

I second that Nomama
So....how is the weather where you are? Wink

Nomama · 20/05/2014 18:45
Grin

Nice weather for ducks!

ChelsyHandy · 20/05/2014 18:46

*cantbelieve - wheres the horse cruelty? You do know you get absolutely nowhere by ill treating a horse and its the fastest route to misbehaviour? Hunting horses are very prized and since they tend to have the summers off and many are kept once retired, they have a pretty good life. Irish hunting is hard on horses, true enough, its a good background for a young horse but would you buy a 9 or a 10 year old that had done it all its life if you wanted a sports horse for competition?

I don't have the requisite permissions to watch the whole video on You Tube (A Minority Pastime) so I watched the extended trailer, and unless you are quite an obsessed person against hunting, I'm not sure what you think it does. The worst scenes involve the antis themselves and some set clips where they have used dead animals to prove their points. I find that quite sick. It seems to consist of a few women talking in very sad, aggrieved tones, as if they are under great stress, and describing things in very emotive language. The scene where the fox is knocked down by a white van and filmed by the antis, and the voiceover blaming it on the hunt, is one of the most seriously disturbing things I have seen or heard, it is so twisted to use the death of an animal in this way and what it has to do with hunting, I do not know.

Here is a synopsis:

  • A woman describing some noises of an animal being attacked by other animals with superimposed sounds of animal noises and a man making indistinct grunting noises, "Outlaw one of the last vestiges of aristocratic privileges", anti-hunting supporters speaking in aggrieved tones about things comparing hunting, amongst other things, to slavery, such as "each hunt going out 3 or 4 times a week", "this animal has a fully developed nervous system capable of feeling pain, treated by hunters as trash", "developed into a list of horrors, I started searching for information and found the League Against Cruel Sports" which "holds thousands of pictures" "evidence they say of the cruelty of hunting with dogs". More people in offices talking in aggrieved tones. Talk of images having power over people to make the sport work. Interview with a mounted Jonathon Seed asking him to comment on some photographs of dead foxes which he says he cannot comment on as he has no idea where they came from. More emotive comments from an anguished anti talking of "a horiffic mirror image, a dark, dark world, nothing was what it appeared to be, this sinister violence and cruelty but people were saying it wasn't happening". Mark Hill, a Hunt Chairman interviewed, seemed quite polite, suggested if someone wanted to find out what they were doing that day (laying trails) they could have phoned the previous day to have arranged to have been shown it better, some irritated sounding locals, 3 scenes involving horses, one next to a car, two of the rider shouting at the anti blocking them in.

tbh the worst thing I saw in the trailer was a fox being run over by a white van and one of the aggrieved sounding antis who appeared to have a video link to the incident saying "That wasn't your fault, it was the hunters" although there was no hunt in sight or sound, plus a description of a dead fox on the roof of a car by an anti which described blood as having poured out of its mouth. "It was the fox that had been coming into my garden. That was the way they knew to hurt me" and a video of a dead fox on the roof of a car (no blood but dead).

"Its now been six years since the intrusion into my village. Since then I've found out thousands of facts..." says an anguished woman, more antis screaming about their cars and for the horses to get away from their cars (why do they not go on foot or by bike?), antis complaining of abuse, violence and being stalked, in the same aggrieved, victim-esque tone, people arguing, camera shots of the ground, cuts to Celtic feel good theme tune at the end, interspersed with some shots of foxes running across land and some antis trying to get in the way of horses, the horses fortunately having enough sense to not stand on their toes.

cantbelievethisishppening · 20/05/2014 18:47

Yep....it's been raining here to. I guess summer time came and went over the weekend. What are the odds of a bank holiday wash out next week?

ChelsyHandy · 20/05/2014 18:48

cantbelieve Thing is Manina I HAVE seen it with my own eyes. I worked in a hunt and point to point yard. I used to hunt

Can you describe this cruelty and what on earth happened? Are we talking cruelty to horses? What did they do?

cantbelievethisishppening · 20/05/2014 18:49

Chelsy you obviously took a long time to type that out but I am done with arguing. Let's just agree to disagree. Brew

ChelsyHandy · 20/05/2014 18:53

No, its important. If there is evidence of cruelty, I want to see it or hear about it and do something about it, at least reporting it to the relevant agency. If people are saying there is cruelty to horses going on, I want to do a damned sight more than sitting typing replies on a bleeding internet site.

On the extended trailer for the film "A Minority Pastime", it says in the comments "Thanks for the enquiry Alex. The film is currently available for private screenings and will be available online or on DVD in the near future." That was 9 months ago.

Do you have link to the full video?

cantbelievethisishppening · 20/05/2014 19:03

This was back in the mid to late 80's. No cruelty to horses aside from the annual blistering of legs when they had finished racing/hunting for the season. These people viewed animals as nothing more than trash or entertainment. I finally left after I watched one of them drown four newly born kittens in a bucket. All they had to do was get the cat down to the vet to be spayed but no, it was cheaper to drown each litter. A lamb which had been kicked in the head by one of the horses was dumped in the barn and left to die, frothing at the mouth. They adopted the same attitude to wildlife. Dead moles hanging by their noses from a barbed wire fence. Two foxes bagged and thrown to the hounds. The terrier men were complete Neanderthals who took great pleasure in digging out foxes and lobbing to the hounds with a cheer to be torn to shreds. I think you get my drift. It is of no consequence to me if you do not believe what I have said. My only regret is that I didn't leave earlier.

ThatBloodyWoman · 20/05/2014 19:07

man I am not basing my opinions on 3rd hand or you tube.

It amazes me, the arrogance of some hunt people.

cantbelievethisishppening · 20/05/2014 19:07

I can't seem to find the full film. There is a Facebook page but the group is closed so you may have to ask to join.

ThatBloodyWoman · 20/05/2014 19:09

Btw Chelsy what do you think to seal culls and badger culls?

ChelsyHandy · 20/05/2014 19:17

Firing has been illegal for years cantbelieve and it was done to try and heal tendons, not to be cruel. I don't think you could sell a fired horse now so theres no point in going behind the law and doing it (plus it probably doesn't work). Certainly wasn't done to other than the few horses who may have suffered tendon injuries. Drowning kittens is awful, it makes me think about those people who throw away their old pets in favour of new puppies for Christmas, but I can't see what that's got to do with hunting. The lamb should have been put out of its misery, but again, what has that got to do with hunting? Dead moles I have no idea about but it may be an ancient rural tradition to ward off predators? I can't comment on people's attitudes when doing their jobs. Putting live foxes in bags and throwing them to the hounds or dead? Live foxes - absolutely awful - I hope you reported that.

I don't disbelieve any of this. I don't think you described anything that awful apart from if a live fox was put in a bag and thrown to hounds. Of course that would be. You have described things that you (and me) wouldn't like but it doesn't apply specifically to foxhunting. There are far worse cases of animal abuse happening in towns and cities all over Britain.

Personally, I'm really not happy at being linked to a video showing a fox being run over by a white van and a woman using it to make a point about hunting, and a set scene of a dead fox being put on a car roof. Its seriously disturbing to do stuff like that, sorry but that is not normal behaviour.