I don't understand all the extreme reactions to fox hunting.
I don't kill animals myself (unless by accident) but I do buy eggs, fish and dairy products. I am just getting someone else to do the killing for me.
I also know that even if I stopped eating animal products that I would still be enjoying a privileged lifestyle which depends on the position as humans at the top of the food chain/the dominating force over the nature. (Houses free of pests, drugs for when we are ill, ready supply of vegetarian food etc.)
Killing foxes is horrible (of course) but it is done because they are pests. (Nb Foxes inflict horrible deaths on their prey. All the time.)
Being a meat and/or dairy eater (which is most of us) condemns farm animals to short and often very unhappy/brutal lives. Then someone slaughters them for us. Slaughter conditions are often grim. The animals suffer. But do we care?
Could the whole world become vegan and could we then let all animals live happily ... and never ever kill one again? Ha!
Most ppl agree that rats (very intelligent and lovely animals) somehow deserve to be kicked, burned alive, poisoned etc as they are dirty vermin. (Not me but I think I am in a minority.) I don't like them in the house either, unless they are pets, but I think (like mice) that they should be killed as humanely as possible. It's not their fault we don't like them?
Well foxes are also vermin. So are squirrels and rabbits I think? And perhaps some deer?
So I say to anyone who radically condemns ppl who fox hunt, "can you really say you are any better?" Would you kill a rat in your house?
Isn't extreme opposition to fox hunting just a pet topic with which to feel one can legitimately have a go/hate rich ppl who do it?
I remember as a (small town) child that our class was given "fox hunting" as a topic in English. None of us had seen a hunt apart from on TV. We ALL were horrified by the idea fox being ripped apart by hounds. And we happily condemned it. (Were encouraged to by the teacher?) There was no real debate. It was very one-sided.
Same sort of universal revulsion when we came to the "factory farming" topic. But we were kids and that was a typical child's POV? (At least a child who has never starved or had to hunt/kill their own food.)
In the adult world, rights and wrongs are much harder to separate and most is rather grey rather than black/white. And we should understand that our very (comfortable) existence (in the modern, developed world), condemns a lot of other living things to die for our benefit.
Some living things (like ants/flies/slugs/snakes) we generally do not care about whatsoever. We only get all moral over "nice furry things".
Such an over-reaction. And so hypocritical.
Cos have a think about it - would you rather be a fox, living free and maybe ending up dead from being hunted. Or would you rather be a sow in a cage forced to give birth over and over then die, or be a rat living in a sewer and then being bashed by a shovel, or a day old chick going through a mincer before you have had any life at all?
I know which option I would choose out of those.
Humans are often very cruel to animals but foxes are in turn cruel to other wild animals. And to farm animals. So we need to kill foxes and fox hunting is one way. (And not necessarily worse IMO than being shot or poisoned?)