FoxHunting being Encouraged?

[BeeHoney]

I do find it terribly peculiar when someone has zero experience with an activity and has never researched it using firsthand sources but has a passionate opinion based on their…er…intuition.

It’s also strange to me how some animal rights people focus on fox hunting. Fox hunting probably kills a handful of coyote a year. It’s quite…um…inefficient. Plus we are generally preserving the land the coyote live on as well, so many healthy groups of coyote are living thanks to us. And our hunts in cattle and sheep country reduce extermination efforts by farmers. Meanwhile, a quick google search reveals that an estimated 400,000-500,000 coyote are killed in the US each year via trapping, poisoning, and shooting.

I can only presume that someone who chooses to vilify fox hunting and fox hunters has some kind of weird chip on their shoulder that has nothing to do with animal welfare.

The negative references to deer hunting puzzle me a bit also. Letting deer populations expand unchecked results in overpopulation, malnutrition and disease (including tick borne infections that affect humans), damage to native species of plants, and increased numbers of car accidents. Deer hunting is an important source of protein for many people where I live (midwest). Hunting licenses provide income for fish and game agencies. Also, at least in my area, many people invest in and specifically maintain and preserve large private tracts of woodland and meadows for deer hunting–preserving land that otherwise might be subject to logging or development. If the OP’s area has many deer hunters, then her local wildlife agency should be well funded and she should not hesitate to report poaching and illegal hunting.

[SLW]

It has been my experience that landowners in hunt country territory will dispatch problematic coyote on their own. In my state coyote may be hunted year round, they are abundant.

[beau159]

@LeatherLover

Every hunt should end without ANY wildlife harmed…not most…

Why is your user name “Leather Lover”? You realize that in order to get LEATHER, some sort of animal has to be harmed and killed?

In case you weren’t aware, leather is dead animal skin.

[Rel6]

But they bought it at a store, so it doesn’t count!

[lolalola]

This is my local hunt. They hold special days regularly, such as their Yellowstone meet and their Standardbred meet, since this is prime harness racing country. They hunt in the Assunpink Wildlife Management Area, which is open to all sorts of hunting.

[Farosh]

I grew up foxhunting and I did mostly drag and maybe 10 live hunts. I was young and very naive honestly and not aware of the laws or controversy around it… or even really aware that we were actually hunting foxes lol I just sort of thought I was on a fancy trail ride where I got to wear a stock tie and jump cool XC jumps that I didn’t get to do anywhere else which yes I’m aware sounds dumb but I felt like most people there were on the same page as me. I’m a vegetarian lol.

I learned more about it as I got older and liked the traditional stuff around it but tbh out of all the live hunts I did I only saw an actual fox once. It was in Ireland where they supposedly are more serious about catching foxes than where I’m from and we saw 5 of them pop out of a bush and escape extremely easily. Tbh it sort of felt like when I take my dog to the barn and l tell her to go get the birds and she runs with her life to get them but yeah in 5 years of chasing them everyday she’s never even come close to catching an actual bird.

I don’t have enough knowledge now to genuinely condone it or not, hunting in Ireland was definitely one of the coolest experiences in my life but tbh at home doing weekly hunts, the drag hunts were way more fast paced, organized, and fun and no foxes were harmed or intended to be harmed lol.

[StormyDay]

@MorganMaresVT

That said, I think some people here are being a little over the top in their defense of all sport hunters as virtuous conservationists who take only what they need to feed their families and leave no trace on the land they hunt. That has not been my recent experience.

Agreed. Just like anything people do, most hunters are good but some are lazy or unscrupulous. Most obey the rules, but every year someone’s horse/cow/dog gets shot because someone got trigger happy and shot it thinking it’s a deer. Every year I hear of people getting caught hunting at night, or feeding corn during season, or hunting from their car on the highway. The hunters I do know take it very seriously and obey the laws (and therefore sometimes never shoot anything) but unfortunately there are ones out there that don’t.

As far as fox hunts, because they are so dependent on the land owners they tend to be very careful about everything. Locking gates behind them, calling and warning neighbors about a hunt the next day, etc. Many hunts spend a lot of the summer maintaining property and jumps they don’t own so the land owners don’t have to do it. In the whole time I’ve been in my area I haven’t seen one negative post about the many hunts (though a few weeks ago a private pack broke into a chicken coop and the local hunt was blamed for about 5 seconds until someone pointed out they don’t use that breed).

However; caveat; I lived somewhere else before this and there were issues with that hunt. It got to the point that some land owners said if you bring your hounds near my property again I will shoot to protect my livestock. Some members dropped out because of the bad manners. As far as I have heard the issues got sorted out very quickly after that. I bring it up not to slander fox hunting but to point out how the consequences of not following the rules catch up FAST with fox hunting.

[kenyarider]

I don’t think the opposition to fox hunting is the damage to land, it’s the damage to animals, tame and wild, that causes folks to be opposed to it.

[trubandloki]

@kenyarider

I don’t think the opposition to fox hunting is the damage to land,

Yes, but… The point is that in many areas with an active hunt (horse type), the land conservation movement in that area is spear headed by people related to the hunt.
Areas with development and loss of open land, where the remaining open land is there because of the conservation efforts of the hunt.

[kenyarider]

You may be correct but the anti hunt people are not going to be persuaded by a bunch of fox hunters portraying themselves as environmentalists.

[StormyDay]

@kenyarider

I don’t think the opposition to fox hunting is the damage to land, it’s the damage to animals, tame and wild, that causes folks to be opposed to it.

Yeah and that was the problem that one hunt got into. They angered the land owners because the livestock was being negatively impacted by the hunt. But they also had to change their ways really fast because they didn’t want to loose the land and the riders (money). So, my point was more that most hunts self police because you can pi*s off the land owners and you don’t want to upset your rider base that pays your bills.

[enjoytheride]

Pretty much anything that involves horses except petting them has been classified as “causing damage” by some.

[Tackpud]

Growing up we had an old hound who would leave our house every morning, pick up his girlfriend at another house on the farm, pick up a couple of terriers, and off they would go to hunt the farm fox. We watched many times as the fox loped along ahead of them, sitting and waiting if he got too far ahead, and then ultimately breaking it off to go home when they were done for the day. They all enjoyed their daily “fox hunt” and we got a kick out of watching them. No hounds, dogs, or foxes were harmed in anyway.

[xeroxchick]

Well put. As a fox hunter of 33 years, I can say that it is not the most efficient way to remove coyotes, and any hound that takes off after other creatures is quickly culled. We do kill coyotes. That’s what the land owners want. I think the OP would probably find that their riding would improve if they fox hunted, and their horse might blow a gasket.

[xeroxchick]

Exactly this. Got to keep land owners happy. No respectable pack would have any hound that harassed livestock. Plus the land owners want the coyotes killed.

[hoopoe]

I did a quick trip out and about yesterday and saw 2 road kill coyotes. This is ex-urban Seattle Metro.

perhaps we should ban cars

[Willesdon]

The UK 2004 Hunting Act banned hunting of mammals with dogs. It took up 700 hours of Parliamentary time in heated debate to get the Act passed and the results of scientific research and previous Government enquiries, largely neutral on the effects of fox hunting, were ignored. At the same time, the UK Parliament was deciding whether or not to commit troops to war in Iraq, based on dodgy evidence to justify participation. Many who were against the Act saw it as a very cynical move by the Government to deflect MPs’ attention from a dubious war and to be a class-focused political move rather than anything to do with animal welfare. The anti-hunting side at the time believed they had finally ended the barbaric practice of hunting and, also tangled up in it, kicked the Tory toffs in the teeth. The Hunts subsequently adapted by keeping up their social community structures and continuing the supportive rural activities, such as collecting fallen stock for farmers, and largely turning to trail hunting. The Activists remain vigilant and attempt to bring prosecution against Hunts for illegal fox hunts (the “monitors” take their evidence to the Police, the Hunts have to prove they are innocent - it’s very poor legislation) but far more prosecutions are made against poaching and other unregulated hunting. After 2004, foxhunting went onto the political back burner and the Act was not repealed even under subsequent Conservative Governments. The majority of citizens do not see foxhunting to be an important issue.

Now we have a Labour Government once again and the Activists are working very hard to ban currently legal trail hunting because they believe, with little actual evidence, that it is a front for killing foxes. There is more video propaganda and steadily rising heat. Hunts move openly under the public gaze pursued by saboteurs wearing paramilitary clothing with their faces covered. Currently, the Hunting side trails behind the Anti-hunting side on social media, fund raising and moral superiority. Both sides blame the other when rural violence does occasionally break out (shouting and fisticuffs, criminal damage to property, we don’t do guns). Activities such as summer fun rides have been reported as fox hunting because large numbers of mounted people are seen in the fields.

Post-ban, from personal observation,I believe the number of rural foxes has decreased. As vermin, it is still legal to gas, poison, shoot and trap them. Paradoxically, hunting is a successful conservation tool.

Will fox hunting survive? Probably not in the long term as fewer and fewer children are riding or enjoying the countryside and the UK is already overwhelmingly urban. Urban foxes live on fast food waste and domestic garbage bins. There are loads and loads and loads of urban foxes!

[MapleFarm]

If this person has never had a bad experience with wildlife and lives in the country, it is in fact BECAUSE of the hunters.

Without apex predators (mountain lions, grizzly, etc) and abundant edge (farms, suburbs), the coyotes are the only predator who can kill deer and turkeys so they are also growing in number. Side note - does anyone else notice that documentaries have gotten a lot “softer” over the years? If you watch one from the '90s, you’ll see the way animals die in nature and perhaps have an appreciation for a quick death.

And I sincerely doubt that there are that many unethical hunters in her area - I’ve lived rural most of my life and every hunter I know wants to catch the poachers and hire more game wardens!

[ParadoxFarm]

@hoopoe

I did a quick trip out and about yesterday and saw 2 road kill coyotes.

I did see a coyote cross the road in front of me in the City of Detroit of all places. Crafty, adaptable critters, coyotes are.

[hoopoe]

the only place I have seen foxes is in central London, once in an underground station, once on the foreshore. They just cannot be bothered