She used to fox hunt?!

[Boxingdayhunts]

name change urgh

long story short - over Xmas got talking about newspiece about Boxing Day ‘trail hunts’. Got shock of my life when family member (married in not blood) revealed she had on occasion when younger joined hunts. actual fox hunts.

this is something I feel strongly about. I would never have thought this about her.

aibu to feel shocked, disappointed, and look a little differently at her now?

None of those examples are remotely close to the depravity that is murdering wild animals for sport.

Lots of people where I live are/were really into a Boxing Day hunt. They saw it as ‘tradition’, something that they never questioned as they had ale done it.

I was the one handing out flyers on how cruel it is.

I forget about the puppy hounds we looked after for the local hunt. Ours lived in the barn with the other farm dogs. Subsistence farming even 40-50 years ago was exceedingly tough few if any can now make a living on 30-50 acres and 25-30 cows and a small number of sheep and handful of chucks.
Hunting was a a poor farmers hobby.

I bet a lot of those who joined a hunt didn't go for the blood sport but the actual cross country horse riding.

Unless they own a gun or a pack of hounds of course!

Hunting is horribly cruel absolutely - but so is factory farming and it's arguably much worse due to the numbers and the hideous sustained abuse to which we subject intelligent animals such as pigs. This is how most meat gets to people's plates.

Well you can, hence drag hunting (artificial trail) and bloodhound hunting (natural scent of a human runner).

Both existed pre-ban.

Some former fox hunts now just run group rides without hounds in order to preserve the social aspect.

The trouble is that people hear the word hunt and assume killing. Hence why drag and bloodhound packs who never killed their quarry even when it was legal have been sabbed.

Steeplechase is very different and not at all equivalent.

You discovered this on Boxing Day?

Assuming you were eating a nut roast 🤔

@wintersgold “None of those examples are remotely close to the depravity that is murdering wild animals for sport”
You see it as sport my experience is of farmers in rural communities who see birth death and the struggles of rural life as part of every day life. Foxes take new born lambs this is part of life, all farmers I knew accepted a certain loss as part of life, at lambing time any dead lambs would be put out in a field under a hedge they’d be gone by the morning; a free way of getting rid of a carcass no form filling involved. Rabbits are a bloody nuisance for small farmers eating much needed grass damaging soil causing erosion, foxes kill rabbits so no farmer wants to exterminate every single fox off its land. I’ve also sat with many farmers on summer evening watching young fox cubs playing. But there’s a tipping point when too any young lambs are lost those scratching a living will take action. It’s no less cruel to hunt foxes with hounds than it is to shoot them or put illegal snares down or poison.

Times change. When I was younger I was quite pro hunt, I believed all the stuff about it just helped cull the old and sick foxes, etc. but it was a big part of living I. The countryside and that was the rhetoric I heard all the time. My boyfriends mother was master of the foxhounds, she hosted the annual hunt ball, I worked at a stable yard with a load of point to point horses (they have to be hunted to be allowed to race (or did).

by the time I got to my early 20s I thought totally the opposite and now support the sabs.

I often say to my young adult children;

”I made the decisions I did, based on the information available to me, at the time.”

”Now I know better, I do better.”

This can be about decisions I made when they were growing up, people I socialised with, activities I took part in as a teenager. YABU to judge someone without knowing all the details.

YANBU. It’s sadistic and repulsive. If someone told me they used to go to dog-fights I’d feel much the same.

It’s no less cruel to hunt foxes with hounds than it is to shoot them or put illegal snares down or poison.

yeah, I used to believe that too. Obviously the poison and trapping is illegal and Inhumane. But you can’t say that chasing a terrified animal around the countryside for hours is no worse than an instant clean shot. Hunting is significantly more cruel than shooting a fox.

for some reason I’ve had a load of Boxing Day hunt videos (taken by hunters not sabs) come up on my tiktok feed yesterday. All with the same sound at the start which says “we’re about to do something illegal”. Then videos of hounds illegally chasing foxes. Sadly I’ve no idea which hunts they are or I’d be reporting them.

Fox hunters are sadists. Barbaric and cruel.

People who talk about chasing terrified animals never consider the terror of constrained animals in the queue to be slaughtered, hearing the sounds and smelling the blood and the fear, do they?

I grew up in the countryside and had a horse but I would never have gone fox hunting, even in the 80's I thought it was barbaric. There was one girl in our year group who did hunt she was asked a lot of difficult questions in heated discussions whenever it came up. I really don't think the excuses people are making here cut it at all.

That said you can't control other people and you don't have to agree with everything everyone does, especially things they did in the past. If you like this person generally then I certainly wouldn't end the friendship over it.

YANBU but appear to have forgotten you’re on MN 😂😂

Pedantic point

Bloodhound hunts don't hunt a set trail. They hunt the clean boot, which is the natural scent of a human runner. The route is normally only known to the runner and one or two members of hunt staff who were responsible for agreeing access with the local landowners. It is amazing to see the bloodhounds at work and they are totally disinterested in any wildlife as they are focused on tracking their quarry. I have seen them run right past hares and deer. I agree though it is brilliant seeing them catch their quarry, it is all a big game to them.

Drag hunts follow a set trail. They may be bloodhounds but can also be other breeds such as fox hounds. The trail is normally aniseed and can't be confused with natural animal scents. These hounds have normally never hunted a live quarry and the hunts were hunting an artificial trail pre-ban.

There is a separate governing body that oversees draghounds and bloodhounds, it is nothing to do with fox hunting.

Some fox hunts have converted to trail hunting using scents that can be confused with animal scents because their hounds were trained to animal scents and accidents sometimes happen. Some fox hunts still hunt fox using the loopholes within the law, such as flushing to a gun or flushing to a bird of prey.

It is absolutely worse than a quick clean shoot. The poor animal is chased for hours, terrified and and exhausted.

You simply cannot compare the two.

“worked at a stable yard with a load of point to point horses”
Theres a very strong case for saying that they way many horse are kept especially race/competition horses is far crueller. Horse have evolved to walk about 20 miles day only eat fibre e.g. grass and live in small herds. But we coup them up in the equivalent to our downstairs loo where they stand in their own piss and shit for all if not the best part of a day, feed them a diet they were never evolved to eat and then wonder why they get colic etc deprive them of their intrinsic desire to live in a herd with fellow herd mates and most people dont bat an eyelid because we’ve put a rug on their and give them a nice cosy bed (I’m writing this is a life long horse owner). Frankly I think a wild fox even one eventually killed by hounds have a more natural and less cruel life.

It's too uncomfortable for them and they may have to confront the fact that they happily eat meat without a second thought,.

I had several friends growing up who fox hunted. Not my thing at all but you can still get on with others even if you don’t agree on the same things!

Actually many racehorse trainers/yards are changing their practices and allowing horses daily turnout etc and no livery yard near where I live allows individual turnout any more. Wherever humans interact with animals there is cruelty sadly

You’re assuming a clean shot I’ve found a 1/2 dead maggot infested shot where the shot was not clean.
Friends hunted with hunts in the home countries no fox was even seen let alone killed all day.
Where I was brought up (50 years ago) the hunt lasted about 3 -4 hours max as most farmers had to get back for milking etc the majority of time was spent hanging around in the covers discussing the cost their calves made in the local market, who’d died/was getting married or most importantly “finally gone out of milk” maybe a couple of foxes were caught on a good day so hardly chased for hours.
In the wild animals as chased terrified and often exhausted before being killed.

@JesusMaryAndJosephAndTheWeeDon our previous fox hound pack are now a blood hound one. I'm so delighted, if I'm brave enough I might take the kids pony out myself which I wouldn't have considered with the fox hounds (Scotland so tighter laws anyway) . The use of the word set trail was just as you describe - a planned route (by the runner/hunt master/farmer) .

Look, people change and we all make good and bad choices along the way.

I have been fox hunting.
I won’t even own a cat now