England: What's With Fox Hunting?
 

I had been under the impression that fox hunting had been banned but i saw on TV that there are indeed fox hunts and they showed some occuring this Boxing Day?

What's the deal?

And as a tourist could i ever hope to see a fox hunt or even could i, if i were an equestrian i guess, participate in one

Like Safaris in Africa can you arrange your own fox hunt?

Thanks

My question is where do they buy their bullets? 22 caliber by the box.

Do you plan to eat the fox you have ripped to shreds? Not. Cool.

OMG
Please dont get me started.
Can people PLEASE find other forms of entertainment? Let' stop killing innocent animals.

The hunts now, like in the Netherlands are drag hunts. The hounds follow a spoor set out earlier. If they happen to come across a fox on the way then it is sad for the fox.

No you can't organise your own ofx hunt, but if you are a good enough, and brave enough, rider and have access to a good horse then you can sometimes join a hunt for a day.

I used to follow the local hunt in Oxfordshire, on a bike/foot having given up riding. If you are in the English countryside in winter there is always the chance of seeing a hunt in action.

In my town here in the Netherlands we have a drag hunt a couple of times a year. Not as spectacular as the ones in England but still good to see.

It is illegal to hunt mammals with dogs. However it is completely un-enforced and never will be.

It was jsut a bit of class-war bollocks thrown to the labour faithful to stop them moaning about the rightwards lurch of the party under Blair.

There has been one prosecution since the Act and that was a private prosecution by Tofu-munching Crusties Against Everything.

And yes you can follow the hunt if you want to.

Yes, the hunts are still going strong, despite the countryside alliance (the militant wing of the conservative party) predicting mass slaughter of hounds, the countryside full of dead horses, and starving stableboys on every corner.

Officially they are all drag hunts, or are "Flushing" foxes out of cover to be killed by marksman (Or bizarrely, birds of prey - although I am not sure if this actually happens).

I have no great love of foxes, and they are often serious pests, but I have never been a fan of controlling numbers by tearing tham apart and rubbing the blood on childrens faces. If the hunts can continue without killing the foxes being the main aim, then I am all for it.

The amazing justifications that meant that dogfighting (two evenly matched creatures) or ratting (both working class sports) were cruel, but chasing foxes to exhaustion with large packs of hounds was not, always amazed me.

I'd like to see Boris on a bicycle given a 3 minute lead then be pursued by 20 rottweilers.

The new legislation is somewhat confusing, I must admit. Apparently hounds are still allowed to follow the scent of a fox, but not actually be involved in the kill. This seems to diminish the cruelty only marginally, and one has to wonder what the point of such legislation really is. I didn't realise this barely attenuated form of hunting was still allowed until reading it on the BBC website yesterday, and I bet a lot of other people don't either. Like Willit, I have no problem whatosever with pests (including foxes) being controlled, but don't see that a hunt is a humane or efficient way of doing that.

A drag hunt is something completely different, as I understand it, with a scent trail laid by a person, and horses and hounds following it for fun. There is no fox involved at any stage, and I don't see how anyone could have any objection to that form of 'hunting'.

I've got conflicting opinions of foxes from English i've talked to - very few of course that i meet so am making no sweeping generality

but i had read a paper that referred to foxes as 'varmints'

and in Eltham by the railway tracks - in the briar typically paralleling them i'd seen foxes regularly

so i asked the old bag who ran the B&B about foxes that were running around her backyard (adjacent to the rail line) and she said she had a pet fox! - and every day went to the butcher's and bought it some chicken gizzards

i had asked her if she were worried about her cat which roamed outside and she said no that the cat would lay on the shed roof whilst the fox lay down below and it was a kumbala.

She then said 'it's not foxes you have to worry about, it's people'

During my seventeen years riding with a recognized Virginia hunt club, I saw two kills. Both were sick looking mangey reds.

Whenever the hounds ran the fox to ground, the huntsman would call them off and recast them in a different area.

Rubbing blood on childrens faces or adults for that matter is not an event that happens with every kill. A rider gets "blooded" only when observing his/her first kill.

Is coon hunting with dogs still allowed in the US?

Coon with hounds hunting going strong in my state and most i think
and maybe bear too

I never felt very strongly about this - there seemed to be such huge holes in the main arguments on both sides. Urbanites and country people alike are as inconsistent in their attitudes as humans everywhere.

We have plenty of foxes around where I live in Docklands (lots of dead land for them to live in, and lots of remains of takeaway food for them to live on), and it still feels rather unusual and interesting to see a fox walking down the street as though it owned the place.

But I expect there will be a tabloid hullaballoo as soon as some urban child corners one to play with and it bites back.

Of all the fatheaded ideas dreamt up during the 20th and 21st centuries, the idea that animals - whether foxes or the animals they sadistically and pointlessly murder - have rights has to be up there with Marxism-Leninism.

The flannerpooch, for instance, is adorable. But he's got no more rights - to be fed, to get endless cuddles, to keep on stealing my access to the study armchair or anything else - than the armchair or my computer.

Human beings have responsibilities. Those responsibilities include treating animals humanely, which is why foxhunting, as practised in Britain, is immoral (and a grave sin in any civilised religion). But that's no more the province of the law than whether Mrs F or I cheat on each other. And the systematic destruction of human responsibilities by the State has to be close up there with the concept of animal rights for sheer fat-headedness.

So, greatly though I urge PalQ not to endanger his immortal soul by taking part in anything as vile as foxhunting, I also urge him to do his bit against an ever encroaching State by turning up to a hunt and watching them next time he's over (the foxhounds, en masse, almost rival the flannerpooch for adorableness).

Finally, the MFHA has stopped being shy about publicising its meets. Go to www.mfha.org.uk for a list of what was on on Boxing Day, and go to the same places on Whit Monday.

Hi P,
Northern Ireland does not have a ban on hunting.

My family andI followed the hunt on Boxing day (my sister was riding).

I have followed the hunt and hunted for about 30 years and have never seen a fox caught by the hounds. The press on the other hand like to dramatise!!!

'Blooding'is not done nowadays.

Following the hunt is a wonderful day out but drink too much 'Hot Port'

PQ - If you are indeed sincere about wishing to see and possibly participate in a hunt, you probably have a better chance here in the US where it is legal and fox-hunting is alive and well.

There are 177 chapters of the MFHA in the US and Canada.

http://www.mfha.com/

No i am not personally interested but wondered if it were possible for a tourist to participate in an English hunt - i thought it might be totally the privelege of estated folk who have the grounds to hunt on

or do they hunt on public land?

I picture it on some huge estate with lots of forests, etc.

don't think american hunt would be the same as our foxes are no doubt smarter than English foxes

I may like to see the hounds packing off, etc. but not the kill

Perhaps you are imagining it as more exciting than it is. Here in Maryland and in Virginia we have hunting and steeplechasing; it's available if you know where to look (the bigger steeplechases are noted in the newspaper). Steeplechases are more fun because of all the tailgating going on for the spectators. I think the hunts are more private and would permit guests only at the invitation of their home club.
If you want to get the feel for it, any of the castle-hotels in Ireland have stables and you can arrange for rides about the estate. Once you have the velvet helmet on and are out of sight of the car park, you start feeling like you stepped back in time. Minus the bloodsports, of course. This is the best that a tourist can expect. I don't think the British and the Irish want their traditional activities turned into yet another tourist attraction, and can you blame them?

Hi PalenQ,
I would be pleased to welcome you to the FERNIE HUNT in the beautiful county of LEICESTERSHIRE (The home of British Foxhunting).You can certainly ride with the Hounds (If you've got the money)only in the colder months though as the scent does not carry well in the heat.
There are bigger crowds attending now since the scummer Labour Party banned it (typically British we don't like being told what we can or can't do).Hopefully after the next elections we'll see the back of this stupid ban and the country folk can get on with their lives.
Honestly would love to meet you any Boxing Day at Great Bowden near Mkt Harborough Leics and introduce you to real Country Folk following their traditions.

Foxhunting (which, BTW, is practically the only kind of hunting practised in England against mammals) is carried out ostensibly for vermin-control purposes. If you dispute (or are even puzzled over) the term 'vermin', try talking to the Cheshire smallholder I've just spent Christmas with, whose chicken farm is regularly vandalised by these pests: one actually ripped the panels off his henhouse last week.

Foxhunting can't be restricted to one landowner's territory, as deerhunting once was: it's almost possibnle to confine deer to private parks. The whole point about foxes is that you can't keep them in or out of anywhere. The hunt - a private club, that happily accepts competent horsepeople from elsewhere as guest riders - pursues a fox across a swathe of countryside, the assumption being that any local farmer will be more than happy to see foxes destroyed, and won't therefore object to them riding across his fields. Which is more or less true.

You can't organise your own hunt. Landowners ration access to their land (for which, BTW, they don't charge)

There's a bit of debate about the social structure of foxhunters. Hunts claim they're socially mixed, and practically all hunts now include a considerable cross-section of the local population. Inevitably, of course, people who can afford the upkeep of a hunting horse, and the substantial subscription to the hunt, will be more commonly found hunting than destitute local tramps.


The one part of the population hunts don't include are whining city dwellers. Or those of us who find hunting just horrible.