Fox Hunting

If foxes weren't so cute would people still be bothered about them being hunted?

In Atherstone, Leicestershire there is a hunt held 3 times a week from September to February, and in those 6 months last year only 12 foxes were actually killed.
To the hunters – who are mainly the local farmers, the foxes are seen as vermin, they don't just kill one chicken they go into the hen house and kill the lot – saying that this is only the fox trying to survive has got to be wrong as we don't eat whole cow farms for our Sunday lunches do we?

Of the people who are actually involved in the hunt, many go only for the social aspects, they never even see a fox. The riders who take part in the hunts are able to ride over terrain where they would never normally be allowed and they are able to do jumps that would not normally be possible in artificial situations.
Should we put a stop to this inhumane way of killing the foxes? Many people say that it is pest control but if the foxes are not chased off the land then the farmers still need to get rid of them… so when they find the fox holes some farmers pour slurry down them, effectively drowning them. Shoot them? It is highly possible that if a fox is only shot in the leg or something then it will survive – they are very resilient creatures- but most injured foxes will attempt to chew off the injured limb.

In the Lake District they do not hunt regularly. When a farmer finds the carcass of a dead animal that they believe to have been attacked by a fox, they call in local hunters and they set the dogs on that specific fox's scent trail and that is the only fox that they will kill.

If the hunt is banned, then they would have to put all the hunt dogs down (kill them), well yes the dogs that take part in the hunt are not exactly domesticated and there are few who keep them as pets today they are bred specifically for this purpose- however, thousands of animals are put down each week due to the lack of available homes. Just because an animal is 'out of the job' doesn't mean that they have to be wiped from the face of the planet.

Links to Useful Websites

The Jitty does not support either fox hunting or the banning of fox hunting. The links below represent both sides of the argument.