Keep the Ban

A lot of people seem to think that the ban on foxhunting means that there are hordes of vulpine gangs that are therefore allowed to roam the countryside with impunity, taking chicken and lambs, stealing tractors, holding illegal raves, that kind of thing. But the ban is about hunting 'with dogs'. It's about chasing foxes for the fun, the thrill, the 'sport' of it. Farmers can still go out with a gun and control the local fox population if it's a threat to his livestock, and therefore his livelihood.

Of course as soon as you say the ban should remain (or called for the ban in the first place) you're simply marked out as someone who 'doesn't understand the countryside'. It's an easy get-out "You're not from here, therefore your point is invalid, therefore I am immediately correct, hah". Well, frankly, fuck off. I understand. I understand that you enjoy rampaging over the countryside with a baying pack of dogs and you enjoy seeing those dogs catch and dismember a fox. 

Stats produced at the time the ban came into place, by the hunting lobby themselves, sought to show that there weren't huge numbers killed by hunting with dogs. Which is an odd stat to make public when part of your argument is that it is to control numbers and save farmers. "We're protecting livelihoods by not killing very many! They're a rampaging menace, and we stop those massively high numbers by killing a tiny proportion! You. Don't. Understand!". I understand entirely. It's fun. For you at any rate.

With the ban in place farmers can still save their animals, using more effective, and just as importantly, more humane, methods. Repealing the ban is simply about returning to a Dickensian view of the countryside, and maintaining a blood lust. There are, of course, those that will point to the blood lust of the fox as justification, at which point they like to anthropomorphise the animal in a way which they don't like to do when watching it torn apart. "A fox," they say, "That gets into a chicken coop, will kill every chicken, and it doesn't need to eat them all!". I must apologise once again. Bollocks. Firstly, there is nothing natural about an environment with a large number of chickens roosting together 'inside' with no real chance of escape - panic in an enclosed area, movement everywhere, predator inside is (very naturally) going to be massively stimulated to attack. They also will eat everything there, if given a chance. Kill everything to stop the panic, then gradually remove and hide the food for another day. Often they are disturbed mid attack, or just post attack, and so it looks like they've just killed for the fun of it.

Ah yes, hate the fox because it kills for fun, and... erm.... kill it for fun. Pot. Kettle. Black. Except only one of those involved is actually indulging in that.

There are (weirdly) those who also think that bringing back the ban will result in lower numbers of urban foxes. Not sure how you work that one out, generally they tend to stick to what they're used to (which, contrary to popular opinion, works out worst for the urban cousin, which has a life expectancy roughly a quarter of those in the countryside, and suffers more regularly from diseases such as mange, due to the higher concentration of the population).

You may have gathered anyway, with the number of fox pics I put up, that I really like and enjoy these beasts. I see hunting and killing them with dogs as akin to bull fighting, with people taking pleasure in not just the death of an animal, but the suffering it is put through in the process of causing that death. The justifications for retaining it (from population control to jobs in the country) have been shown time and time and time again (by independent, verifiable research) to be utter garbage. I'd have more respect for those looking to repeal the ban if they simply said, "Yeah, y'know what, we just like seeing foxes killed in quite a brutal way after bounding over the land for an hour tiring it out, it's, y'know, exhilarating,' rather than hide behind clearly false claims. I'd still disagree with them, obviously.

More reading (the Guardian, natch)