Husband is insistent on joining trail hunt tomorrow

[FairViewRosie25]

Not happy. I know they trail hunt but they still take dogs and have their fair share of the sabs.

Where do you get the 2.4 million figure from? Google puts it at more like 20K. Still too many, but hardly comparable. Plus it's very firmly illegal, to the extent that it's a full defence to any charge resulting from killing a dog that a farmer had reasonable cause to believe that the dog was attacking or about to attack their animals - so the law doesn't condone killing by dogs whether through hunting or in other contexts.

There's a big difference between an exercise in cruelty and hunting to eat.

In an ideal world, hunting to eat would be a practice of ensuring a varied diet of free-range, local, organic meat, killed quickly & cleanly, with skill and respect as opposed to the intensive over-farming of beasts bred solely for meat and shipped to freezers hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Fox-hunting is barbaric, with both hounds and fox subjected to the most appalling cruelty. Many hunts also abuse their mounts and will literally ride roughshod through property they have no right to access, causing damage & intimidating property owners & other locals.

There may be a select few people who enjoy the thrill and pomp of a trail hunt, behave lawfully and respectfully towards humans & animals alike but most remaining hunts in the UK are nothing more than a bastion of upper-class bullies and savages.

Animals are killed by humans every day, either for something (meat) or because they can no longer supply something (milk). I'm not sure what your point is?

Hunters respect their animals. You don't have to love an animal to hunt with it.

This!

I agree but dog ownership is not the issue being discussed here. Trail hunting is a blatant ruse for fox hunting in many cases. It astonishes me that people who do this for fun still exist, it’s medieval. A bit like how everyone used to turn out to witness a public hanging or flogging. Deriving entertainment from another’s suffering, except in this case it’s an innocent animal not a criminal. Just mind boggling to me.

Literally no one eats foxes (or hares, cats, people's pet dogs etc) that have been ripped to bits by a pack of hounds (that had to be trained to rip animals to bits. It's not their natural instinct)

It's not in anyway hypocritical to be okay with eating meat that has been bred and kept and killed in as a humane a way as possible but not be okay with having a fox chased across fields, terrified, then ripped to bits by hounds all as part of a jolly day out.

If trail hunting genuinely wasn't chasing foxes. Then why do I see the hired heavies with masks, quad bikes and terrier boxes drive past everytime a hunt gathers in my village?

You're going to be really upset when you find out what humans do to rats.

Irrelevant, as humans do not keep them for that purpose or make a whole sport out of following them and training them to hunt.

Killing rats for fun is still illegal.

Unless you are vegan who cares 1

I find it interesting that no one minds gun hunts of foxes that kill way more foxes than hunting with hounds (when it was legal) ever did.

Also the issue with gun hunts is that so many foxes were not killed outright but were badly injured and crawled off to die a slow death whereas with a hound hunt it was pretty clear that there was a quick death.

If trail hunting genuinely wasn't chasing foxes. Then why do I see the hired heavies with masks, quad bikes and terrier boxes drive past everytime a hunt gathers in my village?

I guess because of the sabs? Who will protest even though it's trail hunting.

No, we're not. Trail hunting is too often used as a smokescreen for illegal fox hunting.

Right, so if I call Rentokill in but I'm really upset with them laying poison, that's OK by you?

Sorry, but it is.
I grew up riding and around horses and hunting, but never hunted myself. I’ve seen the results of the trail hunting smokescreen. Not just a fox being torn apart by hounds, but the prolonged chase of an exhausted and terrified fox plus other animals who have been caught up in it. There have been hundreds of prosecutions under the act since it was law and many more that didn’t make it to trial. It is a vile activity, often undertaken by cruel and entitled human beings.
You may have ex battery hens and buy high welfare meat, but no animal lover could ever support hunting.

The problem, which I have already explained on here - and you know anyway - is animals being hunted by humans for fun.

Or own a domestic cat. Because they hunt for fun, too.

A prolonged chase of a terrified and exhausted animal is not a ‘quick death’

Thank you for mentioning, I should have taken more time to interrogate the numbers. I’ve double checked the farm animals killed and 2.4 million is the monetary value of those killed. That is still a horrific number of animals ripped to pieces or driven over cliffs to their deaths by pet dogs every year. My original point about the vast imbalance in how worried people are about 61 foxes being killed vs £2.4 million worth of farm animals (as well as other pets and some humans). That’s before we consider the millions of animals killed without being stunned first for halal and kosher food.

The 64,000 dogs killed by other dogs stands.

https://www.nfuonline.com/updates-and-information/nfu-mutual-livestock-worrying-statistics/

https://www.directlinegroup.co.uk/en/news/brand-news/2017/dog-fights---64-000-canines-die-in-12-months.html#:~:text=In%20the%20last%2012%20months,nearly%20%C2%A3400%20per%20animal.

Animals are killed all the time by humans. Are you going to go and protest outside your local chicken shop?

Also hunting rats or rabbits with dogs such as terriers is still perfectly legal, whereas hunting foxes with dogs is definitely illegal.

Presumably because foxes have had the "Disney makeover" as adorable cheeky chappies whereas rats haven't, despite foxes causing the substantial loss of lambs and chickens.

You know what, being the sap that I am I would probably feel a bit sorry for the rats who are, like us all, just trying to survive. However on balance and by using critical thinking skills, I could determine that it’s a necessary evil as rats in my home could cause a lot of damage and spread disease.

What I wouldn’t want to do is chase them, watch them die a horrific death and laugh about it with my friends. Because it’s just a bit sick isn’t it?

We go!
I’m a vegan leftie.
It’s basically a cross country ride with dogs. No foxes involved. 🤷‍♀️

Irrelevant. We are not cats.

The vast majority of trail hunts operate totally legally. Are you demonising a whole industry because of the unlawful actions of a few which may also be inadvertent? I thought we weren’t allowed to do that any more?