Hunting on Boxing Day

[GreyMary23]

I've seen numerous reports about Boxing Day hunts going ahead yesterday. What the fuck? I despise hunting anyway - like most decent/sane people - but to allow it to go ahead when so many are spending Christmas alone due to covid is utterly unbelievable. Before anyone says it's because it's outdoors, so is children's sport yet my dc haven't been able to attend rugby or football training in weeks.

How on Earth was this allowed to happen?

food getting footage of sabs is nigh on impossible. I had my phone snatched and destroyed. Not because I was filming them but because I answered it... standing in my own garden, trying to escape the masked people jeering at me and threatening to beat me up.

Between hunt sabs and badger rescuers I was slapped, threatened, spat at and filmed ... for living in a rural lane.

It has definitely coloured my opinion if those who many here think of as heroes.

They aren't heroes. Many of them are just drunk on the power of an unruly mob... and they are fucking scary!

Really need to read my posts before posting bloody autocorrect 🙄 Sorry

Oh I totally understand about you not wanting to put yourself - it's just I've never seen that kind of footage and I like to always make sure I have all the facts.

It's such an emotive issue. During the badger cull, I stoped off in a lit up pub carpark. Very rural. Supposedly safe. For me to let my nervous border collie go for a wee - didn't want to let her go in a nearby field due to livestock.

Once she'd had a wee, I put her back in the car and went to leave. I had a 6ft, burly male kick the back of my car twice. It was surreal. I got out of my car and shouted, what are you doing?! In his hand he had a tyre iron. He said, I wasn't from round there (I was) he said I was trespassing, (I wasn't), and that I was a troublemaker (definitely not). He then tried to open my car to drag my terrified pup out and let her go - across a busy road.

The man in question was a local terrierman and a group of then stood laughing and shouting. I called the police and reported it but as he'd left, and there was no damage to my car, there was little that could be done.

Aquashiv protesters are constantly reporting illegal hunts to the authorities but they turn a blind eye. It's a real problem. The hunting community are laughing their heads off about it.

@CuriousaboutSamphire personally I've always found the masked up thugs to be terriermen, the hunt's support, and the paid security "stewards" employed by the hunt - they can wash the blood off their hands of human injuries (and there are many at the hands of the hunt) whilst they absolve themselves of animal blood because it was an accident...

Unfortunately foxes kill for fun not just food, so a fox in a barn of newborn lambs is a big problem!

Can I just say that foxes kill in excess so they can cache food for later.
I believe humans are the ONLY animal to kill for fun, oh and obviously our domesticated cats!

Ah the vermin have arrived. Didn't take long

Most Hunts wouldn’t just go start hunting through a farmers land without permission. By me all farms the hunt cross give permission, as it the etiquette for all. Also if they are hunting illegally you can bet your bottom dollar they would know it was a wildlife sanctuary & wouldn’t be hunting through it (on purpose anyway

True. Unless it was before the hunting ban, and that particular Hunt had always hunted over that land without realising it had changed into a wildlife sanctuary. Maybe they thought they had permission from the landowner?

I agree no Hunt would knowingly ride through a wildlife sanctuary. They might lose control of hounds in one though, especially if sabs had called hounds in or hounds got onto a fox by accident.

Sabs running around with decoy horns, hunting whips and luring hounds onto roads and away from laid trails cause way more harm than they realise.

Ah yes, they're just drag hunting. Not their fault if their dogs accidentally catch scent of a fox and chase, torture and murder that. Theres loads and loads of evidence that hunts regularly target foxes under the guise of drag hunts.

It needs banning. There should be no sport that is the sport of killing an animal. No one should take pleasure in ending an animals life.

Of course they're still allowed to do it, it's a favourite past time of the rich and connected.

And if you dont want animals that you've put outside to be eaten by wild animals then you need to put more money into better security to protect those animals, not go out shooting any wild animal that might want to eat the animal that you want to eat.

I cannot believe how naive people are to think that real fox hunting has been replaced by trail hunting and drag hunting. There are only a couple of clean boot hunts. Its not acceptable to treat any of the animals involved the way they are. Badgers setts are filled in to stop foxes escaping. All the hounds that are killed on roads and train tracks, are they really following a trail? No. Please don't insult us by saying its all good because it is animal cruelty on all levels.

The existing law banning fox hunting is inadequate in my view. There are instances where I understand that killing vermin is reasonable if done in a relatively humane way, but this is not one of them.

I also object to it being a social occasion or in some way celebrated as an event.

Foxes don’t kill for fun, as a PP said. I don’t understand this argument.
They are predators, they follow their instinct. Faced with a surplus of food, they kill because instinct kicks in. Most predators do. It’s just that in the wild the circumstances don’t occur. When we farm, we present them with these chances by providing loads of prey in a penned in area. I’ve worked in zoos. I’ve seen predators in zoos do the same thing when animals get into their enclosure and can’t get out...

But some people use the idea that they kill for fun as justification to follow them round the countryside with dogs and horses - to kill them for fun.

Does the Hunt even have an impact in controlling numbers of foxes? Either they kill loads and that helps control things for farmers, or they don’t, and that is a nonsense argument. Which is it? Can’t have it both ways. Both arguments have been used even in this thread. “Have you seen the carnage they cause, taking lambs etc, farmers welcome them”to “they don’t even catch foxes, they are just drag hunting.”

We have sufficient brain power to out-think foxes and make sure our places are secure, don’t we? And to accept that having wild animals in our country means that sometimes we lose farm animals to them?

If we don’t, then surely we also have to accept that people who farm in, say, Africa, have a right to exterminate wildlife round them. I have worked with conservationists from many parts of the world and it does come up. “How can you tell us we have to protect animals here when you are busy destroying your countryside?”

Our local hunt must be remarkably feeble then. All they seem to do is organise dances, dinners, pub meals, raffles, silent auctions and funeral visitors. None of this dramatic violence - the local vet and GP are prominent members, so I suppose they can't risk the damage to their careers.

You would think these antis "who have devoted their life to animal welfare" would be found in equal numbers in slaughterhouses, monitoring the conditions, protesting about halal slaughter and so on...but no. Or maybe working on the animal rescue field. Or as vets. Its well known that apart from the one leading anti, the others are paid and driven down from the university campus.

Our "local" antis must be must be pretty feeble as well. Can be a bit annoying as two well known ones drive about at at speed on hunt days but won't get out their car, and are often miles from the hunt. The most law breaking is likely a speeding fine or them running over a pheasant.

Foodles I've met unpleasant hunt followers, they aren't all that scarce and they are spectacularly rude as a starting point. But I've never been physically threatened, let alone hit, by one. They piss me off but don't scare me.

Sabs, on the other hand, have scared me on plenty of occasions, in broad daylight and at 2 in the morning. They start with threats and quickly escalate to physical contact.

Then there are the hunts with pleasant followers, pleasant riders, terrier men etc.

They all exist!

@GreenlandTheMovie 🤣🤣🤣 there are plenty of activists who do monitor slaughterhouses and get footage that then makes a huge difference - Bernard Matthew's, Gressingham Duck to name a few.

There are plenty of activists all over doing their absolute best to protect animals and people.

You would think these antis "who have devoted their life to animal welfare" would be found in equal numbers in slaughterhouses, monitoring the conditions, protesting about halal slaughter and so on...but no. Or maybe working on the animal rescue field

^^
But they do, it's thanks to people like that filming in slaughter houses and farms that have exposed the horrendous conditions in these places. There are thousands of people in the U.K. who help to improve conditions for all animals.

@HappyRaven

I cannot believe how naive people are to think that real fox hunting has been replaced by trail hunting and drag hunting. There are only a couple of clean boot hunts. Its not acceptable to treat any of the animals involved the way they are. Badgers setts are filled in to stop foxes escaping. All the hounds that are killed on roads and train tracks, are they really following a trail? No. Please don't insult us by saying its all good because it is animal cruelty on all levels.

Which are those two hints? Give the names please. Because I know my hunt is - I don't hunt but I'm so emeshed in local life and gossip that I'd definately have heard of it were otherwise, so I can see if you're telli g the truth or exaggerating.

I'm a bit funny about sticking to the law and will report people who break it, even if I like them, so if the names don't match and yiu have reasonable evidence to back it up, I will make a complaint to the police if there is illegal foxhunting going on in my area.

Do not pm me - I don't want obsessives sending me me sweaty pms trying to convert me to their cause. I'm not thick and can make up my own mind. Put it on the post, keep it public. If you pm me instead, equally I'll copy it and post it here publicly too.

I despise all blood sports and anyone who participates in it.

@CuriousaboutSamphire there are all types of people in all types of settings.

I've never ever known sabs to call hounds into dangerous situations to prove a point. I have seen hounds being rescued from barbed wire, from being run over, from being left behind. Hounds that are terrified of the Whip, that cower around certain people.

Sabs do use certain equipment to buy the chased fox those precious extra seconds - but the whip, the horn, a gizmo, these are all used sparingly and there is a lot of training - the worst thing would be using something wrong and the hounds getting the fox.

No anti would ever want to be the cause of any animals demise or injury, it's just not why they do what they do.

The hunt on the other hand... I've seen horses have their forelegs whacked with metal gates as the rider was careless, horses whipped for not wanting to jump (footage was published...) super skinny hounds, hounds with injuries, hounds that are so miserable. But there are hunts that do love their hounds, that do love their horses and it's a pleasure to see.

Those loved hounds though, very few are rehomed at the end of their career...

They’ve done it for years despite it being illegal I doubt a pandemic will stop them 🤨

I tend to stay home Boxing Day. I live rurally and there’s always hunts nearby on Boxing Day. I hate it!

I don't dispute any of that. But I have seen sabs do those things, and worse!

I'm not trying to defend anyone who acts illegally. I just know that not all hunts, or even all but 2 hunts, are acting illegally. Nor that all sabs are heroes.

My own repeated experience tells me differently. I can believe that whilst also believing the experiences if others.

And thanks for having a conversation without all the ridiculous name calling and emotional overload 😃

Hunting the clean boot is a term that has been used in Britain to refer to the use of packs of bloodhounds to follow a natural human scent trail. The 'clean boot' refers to the absence of either an artificial scent such, such as aniseed as used in drag hunting or the scent of a live quarry as used in fox hunting. Wikipedia

Seeing as you do not seem to know the term clean boot.

CuriousAboutSamphire I'm not trying to defend anyone who acts illegally. I just know that not all hunts, or even all but 2 hunts, are acting illegally. Nor that all sabs are heroes.

But which two hunts are they? Still no information, or names but just all this spreading of rumour.

Sorry, but unless you provide actual evidence, I do think a lot of the anti-hunt rhetoric is increasingly ridiculous made up farce. I know the hunt in my local area isn't doing anything illegal, and I have very sound and strong reasons for knowing that which are infallible, without outing my own identity or job (not police, higher up the prosecution scale).

The word hero is overused - sabs aren't heroes - they're just dedicated and passionate people who take a stand to protect the innocent and vulnerable.

A lot of sabs are involved in various other organisations from the badger cull, badger vaccination, wildlife sanctuaries and rescue, locating lost dogs, trapping and neutering feral cat colonies, getting footage of poor welfare on farms and slaughterhouses, some might even do the shopping for the elderly neighbours...

Whatever the reputation of sabs (violent, money scrounging, jobless, benefit thieves) the sabs and antis that I know are all wonderfully caring - animal and human - who have jobs and careers from all walks of life, united by a common cause, to protect the innocent.

Super (vegan) cheesy but it's true.

I thought it was illegal to gather with more than 6 people outdoors in most tiers anyway. Surprised there were hunts going ahead.