Would you be shouting if they were chasing big rats (Foxhunting - is this sport?)

Member Name: Mick-Gray

Product:	Foxhunting - is this sport?
Date:	26/09/06 (100 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Keeps the population down and more healthy

Disadvantages: None

I do not live in the country and I am not a follower of the hunt nor do I aspire to be. I am also very fond of animals and wildlife. Having said that I wonder how much fury this subject would raise if the hunted was not a pretty fluffy dog like creature and was a filthy disease ridden rat like creature.

Nothing would have really changed. you would still have groups of horseman with dogs chasing and ripping an animal to pieces but I suspect that a rat like creature would produce far less criticism.

So lets do away with the rose tinted bespectacled view of this poor pretty little dog like creature being anything other than at best a pest and at worst vermin.

I have seen at first hand what happens when a fox gets in amongst the chickens. It does not just take what it needs for food it kills and rips apart every hen or bird that it can lay hold of and leaves them dead or horribly wounded. Foxes will also take if they can new born lambs.

The fox population has grown to the extent that we are now seeing them casually wandering around towns they are quite often badly infected with Mange and are infested with fleas and ticks. Monday night in our area is a nightmare as it is when all the rubbish is put out for the Dustmen to collect Tuesday Morning, We are all kept awake or woken by the constant screeching as they call to each other. We are then greeted the next morning with rubbish strewn all down the street where they have ripped open the sacks of rubbish. I am constantly having to clean up foul smelling fox muck from my front and back gardens.

Fox hunting has been a tradition for hundreds of years it has never wiped out the fox population but it has kept it down and healthier as the weaker and sick animals are caught first. The alternative will be shooting or poisoning. Both of these could be far more painful to the fox than a quick kill by the hounds.

Personally I don't care whether hunting carries on or is stopped but what is the alternative to curbing an ever increasing fox population whose diseased members would soon be spreading their disease throughout the whole population and possibly on to domestic dogs and cats

Mick Gray

Summary: Foxes are not pretty fluffy doggy creatures they are pests