General Chat

Today's press reports accuse the PM - a strong supporter of country sports - of hatching a plan to bring back fox hunting with dogs.

“It's just a technical change“, according to the PM's spokesperson.

I presume that means a loophole in the law that he has made...tuts

*tries to look surprised*

Well as they tell us in gives employment to many country folk.

So did Cock fighting, Dog fighting, Bear baiting and public executions! ;-)

Foxes are a wretched nuisance and need to be kept under control, like all wild animals. How this can be achieved is a moot point. Poisoning is extremely cruel as is trapping, lamping, and anything else as these methods also runs the risk of ensnaring other species. Shooting is fine provided you are an excellent shot, lots of amateurs are not and the Fox dies an unpleasant prolonged death. Hunting is by far the best method as it teaches Foxes to fear human beings (no coming in the house or near the chicken coop) with the added bonus that half the time the Fox escapes.

Hunting with dogs is cruel and inhumane, no matter how much fun the boys in red have doing it. It sickens me that people get pleasure from it. This is not how a civilised country deals with its vermin.

Yes, kill them if you feel you have to. But having fun while you do so is just sick and very 17th Century. Times have moved on, sad that some people haven't.

So how would you control them? The above is a pretty grim choice particularly if you include gassing which is an option!
17th century?!! I think you'll find that no one was offended by it in the 19th century, and it was the 20th before it becomes came an issue.

I wouldn't. I'd leave them be. The fox population remains fairly stable no matter what people do.

Foxes have no natural enemies, and death in the wild is mostly pretty grim for all wild animals . No trip to the vet for them, starvation, (worn out teeth) old age, mange, broken bones, to mention but a few, but hey ho, what we don't see we don't fret about! a bit like eating meat which is ok so long as we forget the factory farm and the slaughter house. Cheap eggs are fine, so long as we don't dwell on the lives and deaths of the chickens. Sorry, but we all in one way or another contribute to animal cruelty, frankly foxes get a much better deal than a lot of farmed animals which most of us don't give a seconds thought to. How hypocritical is that?!

A marksman and a gun are the best way of keeping the numbers down. It's the same with deer. Hunting in the true sense.

Much more humane than chasing them around on horses with a pack of dogs to tear them to pieces.

I'm with you Maggie. :-)

If foxes are such a menace then why are hunts always getting found out encouraging foxes to breed near hunt centres?

But most of us don't take pleasure from inflicting animal cruelty, Magpie. Unlike the hunt.

Magpie is correct shooting foxes is next to impossible for the average shot.

The creatures are not known as wily for nothing. Hiding near a lair ( usually an old badger sett ) for ages waiting for a chance with a rifle is expensive - farmers for sure don't have the time or the money. It is every bit as cruel as traps and poison although only foxes get hit not cats and assorted wild animals as well. AFAIK the poisons popular with gamekeepers are all illegal but that doesn't stop them being used.

Foxes are often accused of taking lambs but the only time they get the chance is for a week or so each year on Lakeland fells and Wales if the mother sheep is a bit slow of the mark. One of my rellies is a shepherd in Cumbria and he says foxes are not a problem. Domestic dogs most certainly are. The French have special shelters for their sheep and lambs 'cos they also have wolves to contend with. Imagine a large pack of wolves let loose on Hampstead Heath. Bliss.

The other lot who hate foxes are poultry farmers - free range hens, ducks mostly - and they do have a point 'cos a fox can run riot in one night. Securing a working farm against foxes is just as impossible as stopping 16-18 year olds from drinking.

Which leaves the hunt as a least bad solution. I gave up on hunting mainly 'cos so far as I was concerned once the fox had gone to earth that was it. Digging him out is unfair and gross especially if all the sett exits are blocked up.

The fox has in any case become an urban native and is in no danger at all as a species. Fear more for the badgers, house martins and swallows, harriers, smooth snakes, frogs, owls, bats, hedgehogs and many others on the way to being hounded to extinction by road traffic, building development, the craze for garden decking, alien imports, street lights and greed.

I don't believe that 99% of anti-hunt protestors give 2c about the fox. What gets their goat is the site of anybody riding a horse which they see as a sign of oafish privilege. Nuts. Horses are far nicer to know and more intelligent then most people I have to meet as part of the daily grind.

In an ideal world the trained marksman would be ideal, but tell that to a hill farmer and he won't be impressed, at least not round here they wouldn't be! A lot of farmers are not trained marksmen, they are also extremely busy folk without the time to go out looking for foxes that are extremely elusive and soon get to know to avoid the person with the gun. Paying a professional would be yet another expense and simply not viable. If this was rats and not a furry fox, no one would give a seconds thought about controlling them or the methods used.

I would have a problem if someone thought killing rats was fun. It isn't civilised to get pleasure from inflicting pain. It's weird.

To many farmers, the red fox is craftiness & cunning personified. He is a stealer of little innocent lambs; a mass killer of fowl, a vagabond rogue & a thief. He also has a nasty habit of upending tidy rubbish bins in towns at the dead of night & shredding the plastic bags found inside, searching for any leftover food scraps. He accepts each gift with grasping enthusiasm.

But, according to some natural history programmes on TV, there is more to the fox than that. His amber eye is intelligent, his face keen, sense of smell acute & hearing highly tuned although his sight lets him down on occasions.

But what should we make of him? There are many who would kill him on sight. Fox hunting in the UK was banned in 2004, ending dark days of senseless savagery - a cruel sport indeed. Poisonous substances are plentiful & opportunities to use them equally so. Strychnine was once the poison of choice; now that this is no longer easily purchased other products, including livestock medicines, are used as alternatives.

Why? The traditional view of the fox as an enemy of the shepherd & the poultry man would appear to be the main reason.

no living creature should be killed for pleasure - people who are cruel to animals are also cruel to humans - well known fact

I think fox hunting is evil
I have no problem people killing animals to eat

but to me this is cruel murder :-( :-(

I read a very interesting article years ago, written by a shepherd in Cumbria.
He stayed out overnight with the sheep, and watched the foxes.
He caught one eating a lamb - the lamb was already dead.
He studied the foxes that haunted chicken coops - and noticed they tended to be females with cubs - and the male had been killed.
The female would kill as many chickens as possible, and if they were left, she would come back the next day and take a few back to her cubs. This would carry on until al the chickens were eaten. They weren't killed for 'nothing'.
It went on in the same vein, very elucidating.
His general view was that the fox wasn't such a sly animal. It was merely surviving. I tend to take that view too.

At the time I was living in the middle of nowhere, foxes all around, a rudimentary duck run/shelter, ducks loose in the garden all day, and a female who regularly disappeared into the woods to hatch her eggs, then came waddling back with a little troupe. We never lost one duck to the 4 legged fox.

When we moved into the village, It was weird. The ducks were never loose in the garden, the run was much more secure, but we started losing ducks - but strangely, never Cassidy, (Hop-along :-D) the duck with a deformed leg (and therefore easiest to catch)
Then we caught the culprit! He had 2 legs and was called Barry :-|

He didn't want Cassidy, 'cos she didn't have much meat on her withered leg.