Dare I bring up hunting?

[Amanda3266]

Just seen a report in The Times about Hare coursing. It said that even though this doesn't usually start this early - an event took place so they could fit it in before the ban.(?!)

Okay - I can just about understand the reasons given for fox hunting. I live in the country and am surrounded by hunting, shooting and fishing folk. I don't necessarily agree with all they say and do but I don't interfere with them. Each to their own etc. However, just what is the point of hare coursing? As far as I can see it's just a lust for blood. It was reported in the Times article that anti-hunt protesters there were taunted with pieces of ripped up hare and bloody foxes tails. Real nice!

So are you for the ban? Or against it?

As a lifelong country dweller I am going to nail my colours to the mast here and say "Thank God this is being banned" - anyone who taunts those who don't agree with them by brandishing bits of dead animal needs a kick where it hurts to stop them breeding any more like themselves. And "yes" I know that not all hunt people behave in this manner, I live among them. They are not well served though by the ar*eholes who do behave so shabbily.

Gets off soapbox.

Awaits abuse and protests from hunting folk

You're describing my teenage years, Caligula!

Many happy hours spent hiding in ditches waiting for my mother's hounds to find me (I'm not joking here folks!). Boy, am I going to be a goldmine for some happy therapist someday.....

For the record though, it's not "hoity-toity people" who will lose their jobs as lilsmum put it. I agree that 50,000 jobs lost is too far-fetched but in my mum's immediate village there are 4 people who will be unemployed and lose their homes (as housing goes with the job). These are middle-aged men who are quite socially diffident and whose levels of literacy aren't all that high. Realistically the government isn't going to be able to set up any additional skills programmes for them as the population is spread too widely (15 miles to nearest town with library, small Somerfield etc.) and there simply aren't that many non-seasonal unskilled jobs in rural Herefordshire.

how do the police know if it's a rabbit or a hare?
Just a thought, as there are loads of people around here who run their dogs greyhounds and lurcher types against hares and rabbits, some are wondering how to teach the dogs the difference?
Have hunted before, don't anymore
Can't argue that it is good for foxes - it is not it's pretty gross actually, can argue though that it really pisses one off to lose all your chickens and several youngstock though.
Can't see a ban saving any foxes though, the huntsmaster will simply carry a gun, lead with two dogs to flush and then shoot it...
I'm neither for nor against if that's possible, I just do not see how in reality it is going to change anything.

better coops!!!! and you lot all want free range chickens?

Totally agree with SenoraPostrophe. It's a waste of parliamentary time. The average battery-farmed chicken has a far more unpleasant existence than the (few) foxes that are killed every year. I have friends who hunt with a large hunt and they are all so drunk and crap they get on average 4 foxes a year. We are happy to say that we MUST BAN HUNTING and spent thousands of pounds of taxpayers money on it, but then we go and buy cheap meat as though THAT animal suffering has nothing to do with US. It's crazy.

But morningpaper I thought one of the pro-hunting brigades main arguments was that hunting is the most effective way of controlling the fox population.

Wordgirl: Don't get me wrong, I think hunting and hunters in general are repellent. And they will use any argument to keep hunting of course, bollocks or not.

I live in the country and get fed up with people moaning on about the town country divide, I'm against hunting, basically because everyone who does it does it for fun, and I think its morally wrong to kill an animal for fun - I used to ride and people used to try and persuade me to join them by saying we don't kill foxes that often! There are better ways of controlling the fox population where it needs controlling. And free range chickens can be bought into a secure pen at night and have an electric fence around their run during the day. They won't need to tell rabbits and hares apart as hunting with hounds is to be banned whatever the animal, will be illegal to send dogs after rabbits too! And I do get really fed up with the Countryside Alliance saying it represents rural people when it only seems to be interested in blood sports, what about the issues that affect many more rural people such as rising housing costs/low wages, transport problems etc. Sorry thats my rant overwith, could go on for pages.

The welfare:effectiveness issues are interesting.

Average hunt (IME) meets 80 - 100 times year, kills perhaps 70 - 100 foxes per year.

Shooting/gassing/trapping foxes can kill as many as you want - you can completely eliminate a fox population in an area if you really want to and keep at it as a long term project.

So no contest in terms of effectiveness. Of course, whether removing a whole species from the local ecosystem is desirable is a different issue...

On the welfare front, it is a closer run argument. The Burns report concluded that hunting seriously compromised the welfare of the fox (lovely use of language that) but that shooting (using a shotgun) and snaring also have serious adverse welfare implications. In the case of upland hunting the report suggests that hunting may be the least worst case scenario from the welfare POV.

Basically, it seems that any method of fox control is going to seriously compromise their welfare. Well, stop the press! It's also worth recording that the primary natural causes of fox deaths - disease, malnourishment, accident - are hardly likely to be a bag of laughs either.

So if (and it's a big if) you believe the fox population should be controlled then from an effectiveness point of view you should probably go for shooting (even I can't stomach trapping/snaring). But personally I don't believe that it is a categorically better outcome on the welfare scale for the individual fox concerned.

There was a very interesting little thing somewhere in the last couple of days (was it this morning?) on R4 about the difference in attitude and perception of hunting in England and France.

In France, before the revolution, only aristos where allowed to hunt, so it is seen as this great liberated thing where the peasants get to hunt too; so the hunt is seen as another blow for liberte, egalite and fraternite. Whereas in England, as in France, it was also confined to the aristocracy - one of the first things the Normans did when they occupied the country was to ban landless peasants from hunting-and the whole hunting rigmarole grew out of their symbolic show of mastery of the land. As time went on, peasants joined in and followed the hunt, but it essentially remained a symbol of who owned the land. Hence its upper class connotations in England, versus revolutionary and republican connotations in France.

Quite a persuasive argument, I thought. I've never quite believed it's just about animal cruelty, I do think there's a class element for lots of people in the anti-hunt camp (although obviously not all, before I'm jumped on). And nothing wrong with that, Comrades!

Hehe true Caligula! Are people allowed to hunt in France now?

Yes, apparantly a whole load of English toffs are going over to the Loire valley to chase foxes.

So there goes lots of people's holiday plans!

OT, but The Metro printed a letter from a reader who wrote that hunters should be made to run a course through two of the biggest, roughest estates in Glasgow (one of which boasts the lowest male life expectancy in the entire UK) with 'neds' (scallies, chavs, etc.) pursuing them on bicycles, then let us all know (those who are left that is) how they feel about fox-hunting and hare coursing

Hey, that sounds interesting Caligula, was that on the Today programme? I might be able to pick it up on 'listen again'.

Certainly there seem to be two classes of debate I get into. One with anti-hunt people who are worried about the welfare issues. These are always fun, sometimes heated, but normally principled and I kind of feel both sides learn something. Spent a nice afternoon with a hunt sab sitting on a hillside watching nothing much happen like that.

Other sort (and the killer is - you don't know what sort of debate it's going to be until you're in it) is identified at some point by an expression of visceral dislike from the people I'm talking to and a stream of abuse, the gist of which is largely that I'm a posh b**ch and deserve to die (to put it nicely).

This obviously is upsetting but it's not worth wasting much sympathy on me since I've had it lucky most of my life (being posh and all). What is more annoying is that where I come from, 50% of the people who hunt could be described as working class so I rather feel I'm letting them down by sticking my head above the parapet.

Hey ho, such is life

I can't remember where I heard it. I think it might have been today on the today programme. The English/ French thing was what they concentrated on, the class thing is my opinion, prompted by the report - don't know if they touched on that, I was only half listening. I think it's perfectly acceptable to be against hunting on class grounds, if you make it clear that that's where you're coming from. There's an awful lot of denial about it being a class issue though, on both sides.

FWIW I completely agree that agribusiness is MUCH worse for animal welfare than a bunch of pissed idiots hurtling around the countryside on horseback, killing roughly a tenth as many foxes as are run over...I just don't think that makes it OK to kill things for fun.

Caligula

I don't think I'm in denial about it being a class thing, but I don't understand could you explain, simply, what the aims of class war are?

A subsidiary question: if hunting was (like ratcatching) an activity largely confined to people who I suppose the sociologists would label 'working class' would it be less worthy of a ban?

I wasn't thinking necessarily of you Gizmo, just in general on both sides. I think a lot of people cling on to the cruelty thing because they don't like toffs on horses with champagne and red coats but don't feel they can articulate that, and lots of hunting people feel it's a part of their heritage that they're really attached to and they don't even admit to themselves that it's a class thing - but look at their attitude to the law - in every other area of life they'd consider themselves perfectly law-abiding (except perhaps with their car use - speeding and parking) but with the hunting ban they feel the government simply doesn't have the right to stop them, because it's some kind of inherant right. And lots of people who are fairly neutral on the subject also kowtow to this mysterious inherant right these people are supposed to have to pick and choose what laws to follow, as if hunting is somehow different from whatever other law the govt. wants to bring in.

As for class war, I can't explain it to you, not being familiar with their particular brand of anarchy.

And no, I don't think it would be more or less worthy of a ban if working class people were the majority participants - but then, all the "working class" bloodsports - bear-baiting, cock fighting, badger baiting - have been banned, haven't they?

Not fishing, though. Labour have always deliberately excluded it from 'blood sport' status in their manifesto so as not to alienate the working class vote.

Yeah, too many people do it. But also, up until quite recently, there was a genuine opinion that it wasn't at all cruel because of invertebrates not being able to feel pain. That's now being challenged. (I haven't followed it particularly closely though, because I have no interest in fish apart from if they're covered in lime juice, soy sauce, chilie, coriander and honey, and cooked and served with rice and steamed vegetables. But I digress!)

Sorry, perhaps misphrased that (example of my ignorance!) - didn't know that 'class war' was a specific strand of thinking. Also may not be fair to ask you: just you seem to know what you're talking about.

I'm just rather confused about (this is the best way I can express what I see) the manifesto that seems to say 'I don't like this particular group of people, they have had unfair advantages in life and we should try to reduce that advantage by taking things away from them, irrespective of whether that generates any advantage to anyone else'. I get the impression there are other issues on this agenda which are much more serious than hunting. Genuinely I think I must have misunderstood: missed what the advantages may be?

And you're right, it isn't profitable to personalise these debates and I'm slightly sorry I mentioned it now.

But it is relevant to my experience of the debate.

The 'ignoring the law' thing is dodgy ethically, I agree. The law is of course the codified behaviour we should all abide by or society goes to hell in a hand cart (so they say). I shall not go out to hunt wild animals deliberately (a lot of my hunting is of people anyway).

IMHO it is true though, that a lot of accidental law breaking is inevitable: foxhounds are not obedience trained and (like toddlers) you have to be consistent. If we've spent the last 200 years breeding and training them to hunt foxes it's going to be a h*ll of a job to stop them doing that. You can take existing packs out to hunt an aniseed trail or the clean boot - but they won't recognise it as something interesting and will just try to do what they have always done.

On the other hand, using existing packs, it's probably entirely legal to hunt a fox in the standard fashion and have someone carry a gun who can shoot the fox shortly before the hounds catch it. This is more or less what is happening in Scotland and it's a mighty efficient form of fox control, but I can't help thinking that every side in the debate has somehow lost out.

I think it's because the debate hasn't really been honest. Neither side has really said what it thinks in public, because they're all manipulating the PR to ensure that the public and therefore the government are on their side.

And I have to say, the CA has done a wonderful PR job, convincing a lot of people that they don't have the right to an opinion and that foxhunting is somehow absolutely crucial to country life and anyone who doesn't have ancestors going back 200 years in the country doesn't understand the mystical bond with foxhunting and the way of life of country people, as if they're a completely different species to townies. No-one seems to have picked up on the total silence of the CA on the subject of affordable housing for country people and realistic jobs which will enable them to continue living in the countryside. As if the countryside is just this big hunting ground, where nothing else happens. It is so bizarre.

Very funny parody of Toad Hunting in this week's Private Eye.

I am an animal lover but am against the ban.Since when have the govt banned anything that's cruel?It is cruel the way some people treat their kids etc but it is not banned.I think if you hunt and don't think it is morally wrong then to you it isn't.I wouldn't do it myself but it is a tradition and many traditions around the world are cruel.It is up to individuals to come to their own conclusions about what is and isn't cruel not the govt.Different communities have different traditions and values and I think we have to accept that.

Well, it is a complicated topic which was not well explained. Actually, not complicated - none of it is rocket science - but just with more detail than the simple 'toffs get on horses and enjoy themselves tormenting wild mammals' scenario.

There was no organisation to explain and promote hunting before the early 90's (beyond the BFSS - and if you think the CA are a bunch of tweedies you should have seen them!) and the result was that there were two well informed minorities (those for and those against) and a large bunch of people for whom it was not exactly an important issue (quite right too) but who often believed the most extraordinary things (cf the throwing cubs to hounds thing) because no-one in the hunting world had the nous to get off their bottom and make some sensible explanations.

And now: today it is banned. Whether that will work remains to be seen. However, I think many more people now understand that there is more to hunting than simple sadism and obviously I think that is a good thing. It seems to me that largely that is the work of the CA, and although I think they could have been more straightforward about their agenda, I'm still glad they got themselves organised.

Not a member though!