Hunting with dogs

[Gloi]

We are vegetarian, which is one of the reasons we try to get our own free range eggs rather than eat battery ones. If we were vegan it might solve the problem, but I like milk and eggs

[Jiggy9]

Yea - I'm vegan ! lol

[leo]

I see nothing wrong with dogs "tearing up foxes".

 

To a dog murder and rape is ok..in nature a fox will feast on its prey BEFORE the animal is even dead.

 

As someone who keeps livestock I have lost 40 chicks in one night last year alone. A few weeks later I had 20 adult chickens killed. Predator did this BRUTALLY just for the joy of it took one left the rest. I had to finish off what was left of some them. To put them out of their misery.

 

 

[Don Gwinn]

Guys, fox hunting is not my thing--and if it were done in the U.S., it would probably be done with a rifle the way we hunt coyotes.

 

However, I think we're missing a few things here.

 

First, yes, it's cruel for a fox to be torn apart by dogs. How do you think the food that fed that fox to adulthood died? It wasn't tickled until it died of pleasure. A fox essentially IS a dog and it lives the way all canines do--it rips its victims apart until they die and then it eats them.

 

Second, you've already heard the reason fox hunting became popular in the first place. Foxes are predators that interfere with man. Unfortunately for foxes, we're a little better at this game than they are.

 

Third, I hunt only meat animals and only what I have use for, but I don't begrudge the varminters their sport. Woodchucks, prairie dogs, crows, coyotes--these all seem like terrible prey because people don't eat them, but not all prey is food. These animals eat crops, destroy fields, and kill pets and livestock.

 

Fourth, animal populations will balance without human hunting, but the mechanism is starvation and horrible, wasting diseases. We went through this with deer populations in the U.S. a couple of decades ago and it's coming again in a few places. I'll never understand people who think it's worse for a dog to tear an animal up than for a wolf or coyote to do the same thing, or that it's worse for a human to kill a deer with one well-placed shot than to let 20 deer starve to death or die of blue tongue a little farther down the road.

 

 

[Zin-Ju]

you dont seem to understand what this is like in our country, 5-10 people with about 20 dogs each trained to find a fox and rip it to shreds, this is complety different from killing it with a single shot, with a bullet the animal doesn't know whats happened till its to late, but with dogs the fox is scared sh*tless running away tring to hid but it has no where to go, not fair really is it

 

 

[Don Gwinn]

No predator in the world hunts fairly. Prey generally learns dirty tricks, too. I repeat--every meal that fox has ever eaten has been an animal that was ripped to shreds while still alive by a small dog. We are to shed tears because the fox will be torn up by dogs?

 

My smaller dog, Ginger, who looks like a fox with a bad attitude, actually caught a blackbird in midair yesterday. If I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't have believed it. The bird suffered a cruel fate, but I'm sure all the insects it ate suffered too. Of course, they weren't as cute and cuddly as a fox is (to those who don't have to pick up the pieces of their own animals every couple of days.)

 

In my in-laws' neighborhood near Chicago, IL, the foxes eat house cats and leave the heads in the front yards near the road.

 

Don't get me wrong. I think the whole idea of hunting that way is downright weird. But that doesn't make it evil, and it's really none of my business.

 

Be honest--does the average Englishman really object to the cruelty of fox hunting, or just see a chance to stick it to the elitist "toffs"? I know fox hunting is percieved as an upper-class sport.