Fox Hunting poll Yeah or nah?

17 Sep 2004

Quote by Clare_Lincs
Just ask yourself this,Would you like to be torn limb from limb by a pack of dogs???
No i didnt think so.

I don't much fancy being shot or slowly vomiting to death either.
The Burns Report concluded that 22000 foxes a year are killed by hunting with hounds. It's exceedingly unlikely that farmers are going to be willing to cease killing these foxes, with the consequence that they will be poisoned or shot instead. These are methods that carry their own cruelty and risk:

17 Sep 2004

Yeah, everything Neil said.
That said, I will however seriously consider culling my cat soon, seeing as she wouldn`t leave me alone whilst I was trying to roll a fag.
I`m smoking cat moult. confused

Venusxxx

17 Sep 2004

Quote by Clare_Lincs
Ok yes i do eat meat,but when animals are slaughtered for food then generally it is a painful death and they are not torn limb from limb by a pack of hungry dogs.
Yes foxes do slaughter their prey,but is that not nature?
You can't stop the food chain and you can't just blame foxes for that either.
Just ask yourself this,Would you like to be torn limb from limb by a pack of dogs???
No i didnt think so.

I know I will (literally) be torn limb from limb for saying this, but people shot in war tend to say it didn't hurt at the time, and the reason this is so is because the body kicks in to protect it. At the moment of death the fox is, (I presume because I have never been there), fighting like mad against the pack that has cornered it. Death will be swift and bloody and I doubt it would suffer pain.
Food animals on the other hand are driven hundreds, sometimes thousands, of miles packed into freight trucks up and down the country from farm to auction to farm to slaughterhouse. They know their fate in advance, they can smell it. Pigs, an animal much more intelligent than your mut or pussy, are very well aware of their fate by the time they reach the slaughterhouse.
Chickens are treated worst of all, who cares about a chicken? Kept in a battery cage for its short and miserable life, deformed for our convenience and then packed with thousands of others into a truck, hung upside down on a conveyor, electrically stunned and then given the chop.
I frankly do not think ANY of these scenarios are BETTER than the fox living in freedom and dignity under the stars until, (if it should be particularly unfortunate) it comes up against the hunt, and is not one of the many who get away. Characterise 30 seconds death with a lifetime in a cage, or a pen, to taken from your mother before your time, fattened and bullied until at last you come up against the slaughterman. I don't think there there's the slightest doubt which I'd choose for myself, a free life with a 99% chance of never ever meeting a hunter, or a miserable life leading to certain death. Which would you choose?
Compassion in World Farming? Not yet anyway.

17 Sep 2004

i AM a vegetarian.. though i dont condem other peoples choice to eat meat.
i do however condem peoples choice to hunt animals for sport.
i agree that there is much scope for improving the lives and methods of killing for animals that are slaughtered for human consumption....though regardless of any changes i could never bring myself to eat an animal.
however, i can NEVER imagine any legislation being brought in that would make me accept the hunting of foxes... it is totally barbaric and un-needed.
fine, if farmers wish to humanely kill the foxes on their land.. let them do this but do NOT prance around in fancy dress, taking pleasure from ending life.. and then have the cheek to claim you are performing a vital service!

17 Sep 2004

Quote by neilinleeds
i could follow that very same logic, and take the argument to it's absolute extreme, and say therefore is ok, cos clearly some people like it and think it's ok?

There have to be limits and I'm not suggesting otherwise. Within the limits of normal established lifestyles in the UK people should be free to do as they wish.
I don't see the difference between ratting with your dog, rabbiting with your dog, fox hunting with hounds, or fishing.
Shooting foxes, wounding foxes, poisening foxes etc. are all dodgy potentially painful and difficult methods of control. Hunting with hounds on the other hand produces a certain outcome, the fox lives, the fox dies. No other method of control offers anything like the same level of certainty for fox or man.

17 Sep 2004

Quote by well_busty_babe
fine, if farmers wish to humanely kill the foxes on their land.. let them do this

But how could they do it better than by hunting?

17 Sep 2004

ps.
in reply to musketeers comments...
i am with you all the way RE the treatment of animals bred for food, however does it have to be an either or???
just because there are SOME animals even less fortunate than the poor foxes.. it does not in any way make it right that they should have to suffer in anyway.. even if it IS to a somewhat lesser extent.
is it so rediculous to think that we could perhaps treat ALL animals with some compasion?

17 Sep 2004

Quote by musketeer
Death will be swift and bloody and I doubt it would suffer pain.

So to be eaten alive would be totally painless then???Im sorry but i think your talking out of your backside :shock:
And killing in the name of sport is rediculous and should be and simple and theres nothing more to it in my opinion!!!

17 Sep 2004

in reply to musketeer:
i am not claiming to be an expert on methods of pest controll.... i cant say that i DO have the answer.
however.. i am sure that if as much effort was put into thinking up a way to stop foxes causing a nuisance.. as there is effort put into grown adults prancing round chasing them... then there would have been a solution by now.
like i said.. if a farmer was to kill a fox, i would still feel sadness... the same as i would for the death of ANY creature in any circumstance.. however i would accept that it was a part of life.... survival of the fitest etc.. and the fox HAd to be got rid of in order to preserve something else.
....it is the fact that it is done for fun that i have a problem with.
i doubt one old man walking round his own land with his dog and shotgun - culling the foxes on his own land would cause the same amount of anger, and effect people so strongly as a pack of blood thirsty pleasure seekers rampaging through the countryside does.
this is something i feel VERY strongly about, along with all other isues that effect the lives of creatures less able to defend them selves... weather they be human or not.
for this reason i am not going to get into theis debate any further.. for fear of it becoming personal and causing animosity between myself and other people.
i will however make one final point.... just because i hold THIS issue close to my heart.. it does not mean that i consider any other current issues any less worthy of my attention.... it just so happens that i can think about many things at once.
i am sure that most people are this way.
WBB
x

17 Sep 2004

I'm not declaring any view on this debate but just want to point out that the banning of hunting was a manifesto pledge at the last election so it's not just a masking activity, it's the attempt to fulfil an election promise.

17 Sep 2004

Ok I see it like this ..........either it's cruel............or it isnt.
An idea for you. Twenty four 16 year old skinheads are sat on there bikes in Newcastle. They got 14 rottweillers and they gonna chase down all the urban foxes on the estate on their bikes to get the rotts to tear em to pieces. I'd say the Daily Mail would plaster that over it's front page as cruel.......wouldnt you?
Ok so what's the difference? substitute horses for bikes and fox hounds for rottweillers. End of day there are better ways of keeping the fox population in check than setting dogs to chase em till they are exausted.
Oh, to nail my colours to the wall my brother farms in west Country. Like most farmers he has a fox problem. He stopped the hunt using his land years hunt didnt cure his fox problem and damaged the fields.
Just because it's been done for centuries dosnt make it right.......remember slavery was considered fine 200 years ago.

17 Sep 2004

I don't see the difference between ratting with your dog, rabbiting with your dog, fox hunting with hounds, or fishing.
Shooting foxes, wounding foxes, poisening foxes etc. are all dodgy potentially painful and difficult methods of control. Hunting with hounds on the other hand produces a certain outcome, the fox lives, the fox dies. No other method of control offers anything like the same level of certainty for fox or man.

i see no difference either? have i not made myself clear? my staffie will quite happily kill your cat and toss it aside. the collie i had would quite happily kill a rabbit and toss that aside too. i protect those animals from my dogs cos i know they are killers! should i have them exterminated? the dangerous dogs act very nearly required me to do so? luckily staffies escaped that one, and he's an old codger now so he can't catch owt!
i do not accept that foxes are vermin. i believe they were here a very long time before us? and long before we deforested the land to grow barley on, and stick sheep and chickens on? the idea that farmers are conserving a landscape, and doing us all a favour by hunting foxes is complete bollox. they are preserving an income. i will never accept that we have the moral right to exterminate other species to protect the chicken i have for my sunday dinner. ***you*** protect your stock! by protecting it. not by extermination. i can imagine few better sights than an early morning watch of a vixen and her cubs. the thrill of seeing a badger these days is denied me, cos there ain't so many left where i live. cos farmers *still* pay the lads with staffies and lurchers to go lamping on their land and digging badgers?
it is just wrong to believe we have the right to impose *our* will on the rest of gods green earth in this way!
neil x x x ;-)

17 Sep 2004

musketeer...the differance between the food chain from which we all eat and the hunt...is that we don't all stand there glorying in the death. we don't all stand around and cheer at the death.
I have been at the kill on a hunt.......In my youth more than a some 20 years ago now i did attempt to disrupt the local worc hunt. We used to try and lay false trails for the hounds...which i have to say had varying levels of success. However i did on one occassion witness the kill. the fox could not be seen under the thrashing of hounds all baying for blood. the hunts men all cheering.....and then slapping the dogs as blood dribbled from there mouths and loose flesh hung from their teeth. Not a pleasant sight and certainly confirmed to me that it is not something a civilized community should condone.
I state again it is not the death or contol of foxes that I oppose....it is the glorification of that death that i can not accept or condone.

17 Sep 2004

I have 3 horses and 3 fox furs ......... I'm so so confused.....

{ before i get thrown in my midden.. it was joke the horses are fake... no sorry the furs are fake ..erm! }
.xX Joanne Xx.

17 Sep 2004

Quote by Clare_Lincs
Death will be swift and bloody and I doubt it would suffer pain.

So to be eaten alive would be totally painless then???Im sorry but i think your talking out of your backside
You may be right, neither of us have ever been there to know. However there is loads of documentary evidence that in the heat of battle people do not feel their wounds, the pain apparently sets in later, which, if you're already dead, would seem not to matter too much.
I hope neither of us has to find out.

17 Sep 2004

Quote by neilinleeds
I don't see the difference between ratting with your dog, rabbiting with your dog, fox hunting with hounds, or fishing.
Shooting foxes, wounding foxes, poisoning foxes etc. are all dodgy potentially painful and difficult methods of control. Hunting with hounds on the other hand produces a certain outcome, the fox lives, the fox dies. No other method of control offers anything like the same level of certainty for fox or man.

i see no difference either? have i not made myself clear? my staffie will quite happily kill your cat and toss it aside. the collie i had would quite happily kill a rabbit and toss that aside too. i protect those animals from my dogs cos i know they are killers! should i have them exterminated? the dangerous dogs act very nearly required me to do so? luckily staffies escaped that one, and he's an old codger now so he can't catch owt!
But Neil, that's your personal view and I don't disagree, but THE LAW allows you to do all the things you don't let your dog do, (well OK not the cats), while banning one specific form. I'm not in favour of hunting, I'm just more against the erosion of one groups civil liberties. Next time it might be your turn or mine.

17 Sep 2004

Quote by Jewcy_Joanne
I have 3 horses and 3 fox furs ......... I'm so so confused.....
{ before i get thrown in my midden.. it was joke the horses are fake... no sorry the furs are fake ..erm! }
.xX Joanne Xx.

:rotflmao: :rotflmao:
Just to throw a little extra into the fray, the terror a fox experiances before the kill might be worth taking into consideration. This is hardly a dumb animal being led blindly to the slaughter.
Venusxxx

17 Sep 2004

Quote by rox_n_speedo
Ok I see it like this ..........either it's cruel............or it isnt.
An idea for you. Twenty four 16 year old skinheads are sat on there bikes in Newcastle. They got 14 rottweillers and they gonna chase down all the urban foxes on the estate on their bikes to get the rotts to tear em to pieces. I'd say the Daily Mail would plaster that over it's front page as cruel.......wouldnt you?
Ok so what's the difference? substitute horses for bikes and fox hounds for rottweillers. End of day there are better ways of keeping the fox population in check than setting dogs to chase em till they are exausted.
Oh, to nail my colours to the wall my brother farms in west Country. Like most farmers he has a fox problem. He stopped the hunt using his land years hunt didnt cure his fox problem and damaged the fields.
Just because it's been done for centuries dosnt make it right.......remember slavery was considered fine 200 years ago.

No problem with your point of view at all, PROVIDED the law deals equally with everyone. This means you cannot hunt rats or rabbits with dogs either. Why then are these activities not banned? Nobody in answering this thread can tell me why. My point is not whether the hunt is good or bad, but the separating out of one group for class war purposes. That seems to me to be fundamentally wrong. I also cannot help thinking that although fox hunting is distasteful, the fox has a much better life than all farm animals as well as hamster, budgerigars, all wildlife caged for someones entertainment or fancy.

17 Sep 2004

Quote by musketeer
No problem with your point of view at all, PROVIDED the law deals equally with everyone. This means you cannot hunt rats or rabbits with dogs either. Why then are these activities not banned?

They are. It's a blanket ban on hunting wild mammals with dogs. You can hunt foxes or rabbits or mice if you want. You just can't use dogs.

17 Sep 2004

Quote by VenusnMars
Just to throw a little extra into the fray, the terror a fox experiances before the kill might be worth taking into consideration. This is hardly a dumb animal being led blindly to the slaughter.
Venusxxx

Exactly imagine being chased until you can run no more or get caught hiding knowing by instinct that your about to die,yeah what a great sport,i dont think so.

17 Sep 2004

Quote by well_busty_babe
i doubt one old man walking round his own land with his dog and shotgun - culling the foxes on his own land would cause the same amount of anger, and effect people so strongly as a pack of blood thirsty pleasure seekers rampaging through the countryside does.

Possibly not. However, this is not the reality of 'more humane' hunting, suggesting, as it does, that the occasional fox might meet Nice Mr Farmer with his 12 bore and meet an instantaneous death. Trapping, lamping, gassing and poisoning are the alternatives that will be employed, and I struggle to see that they're more palatable than the existing approach, which provides employment for 6-8000 people (Burns report again).

17 Sep 2004

Quote by casp1965
Foxes breed well in the enviroment they live in, and are very terratorial, leaving the younger foxes with no terratory to hold they either starve, or move to an area where they can feed easly. this normally means are towns and city centre's. not a problem at the minute, but no hunting will mean more foxes, more in towns and cities means damage to property and annoying mornings cleaning up your tipped over bins......

I live in an urban area where foxes are as common as cats and dogs. If they're very territorial, then stopping hunting wouldn't affect the urban fox population because there are already more of them in the towns than in the countryside. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the hunt that drove them here in the first place.
I've never lived in the countryside, so I don't know how necessary it is to control them there, but I do think that a mob of dozens of horses and dogs charging about the fields trampling crops all day to kill one fox has to be the least effective method for a so-called cull ever devised. I do not believe for one second that the traditional form of hunting reduces the fox population. All it's likely to do is strengthen the species by ensuring that only those who can outrun the pack will live long enough to reproduce and pass on that strength.
I doubt, however, that there will ever be a fox who can outrun a gunshot.

17 Sep 2004

I voted to ban it, after seeing it at first hand for 14 years living on a private estate where hunting and shooting were the norm
But there are more important things that could be debated, such as violence against children.
TS

17 Sep 2004

Quote by JonJon
... which provides employment for 6-8000 people (Burns report again).

They'll find other jobs ... I remember how businesses were arguing against the introduction of the minimum wage because it would result in companies having to make people redundant to cover the extra costs ... same arguments being used now against the Working Time Directive ... didn't happen did it?
The issue of fox hunting doesn't exactly keep me awake at night and it's not really what I'd consider high on the priorities given all the other things that should be dealt with ... but I wish they'd just go decide to either do it, or let it drop. All this farting around indecision nonsense gets on my nerves!
Anyhow, I voted 'No', it's a cruel sport, end of story.

17 Sep 2004

Were not voting on this one until UKHiker answers our questions about why he didnt find any weapons of mass destruction . Also why isnt there a thread about the decline of the national health and education funding ( maybe cos its a swingers fun website doh ! ).
Anyway we think hes just trying to distract us from a stealth condom tax.

18 Sep 2004

Quote by J3diMast3r
They'll find other jobs ... I remember how businesses were arguing against the introduction of the minimum wage because it would result in companies having to make people redundant to cover the extra costs ... same arguments being used now against the Working Time Directive ... didn't happen did it?

The 'best guess,' and that's all we've got to go on, is that it will take 10 years for the rural economy to fully recover. What other jobs are there to go to in rural areas ?
The manner in which the minimum wage was introduced was such that it had very little effect on business. It had very little effect because it had almost no effect on the lowest earners ! Under pressure from the CBI and others it was set at a level, and with exclusions, that resulted in almost no-one who wasn't already earning it being affected by the legislation. The Working Time Directive is likely to be similarly fudged, I would suspect.

Quote by J3diMast3r
The issue of fox hunting doesn't exactly keep me awake at night and it's not really what I'd consider high on the priorities given all the other things that should be dealt with ... but I wish they'd just go decide to either do it, or let it drop. All this farting around indecision nonsense gets on my nerves

I agree that it's high time it was simply dealt with. I'm at a loss as to why they haven't followed due parliamentary process (and they've had 7 years !) and got it out of the way, rather than damaging democracy through the use of legislation designed for national emergency and aggravating all sides with a 'possibly, sometime, perhaps, maybe' approach mad

18 Sep 2004

I agree that it's high time it was simply dealt with. I'm at a loss as to why they haven't followed due parliamentary process (and they've had 7 years !) and got it out of the way, rather than damaging democracy through the use of legislation designed for national emergency and aggravating all sides with a 'possibly, sometime, perhaps, maybe' approach mad

yjet did get it passed with massive majority once through the commons but it was overturned in the Lords..and sent back. The answer is the government is simply keeping one of its electoral promises....
Also it is interesting to note that this site, where its members it would probably be fare to say are a little more liberal minded than most, still have post a 72% majority in favour of the ban !!

18 Sep 2004

I messed up on the poll. I thought I was voting on whether I think it should be banned, so I put my tick in the wrong box.
Doh!

18 Sep 2004

Quote by deancannock
The answer is the government is simply keeping one of its electoral promises....

Through the use of a mechanism that was designed for enforcing legislation in the event of major public upheaval, not relatively trivial measures.

Quote by deancannock
Also it is interesting to note that this site, where its members it would probably be fare to say are a little more liberal minded than most, still have post a 72% majority in favour of the ban !!

In fact nobody's voted in favour of the ban, since that isn't what is asked in the poll. In addition a number of people have expressed concern at the government taking the actions they have, particularly at this point in time.

18 Sep 2004

Quote by musketeer
Clare you must be a vegetarian, and if you are I commend your position. If, on the other hand you eat meat, your argument doesn't stand up. Also, since you mention it, in what sense do you regard the fox, THE slaughterer of innocents in the countryside, as innocent?

What has being a vegitairian got to do with anything

Do you agree with Fox hunting?