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The scent hunting or the tracking down (search phase) aspect’s of fox hunting causes no stress or trauma to the fox, who must be totally unaware of this major part of the hunt. With the long tracking down or scent hunting over, the real, relatively short chase begins. The dogs easily outpace it within a minute or two and kill it within a second or two. How the fox is located is totally irrelevant to animal welfare considerations. It took me ten years to realize that irrefutable fact - others will never realize it because bigotry, prejudice, narrow mindedness, class animosity and ignorance, blind people to the truth. If it is deemed necessary to kill hares, the use of fast running long dogs is probably the quickest method of killing and has an un-harmed escape or a very quick death as an advantage - There is no way that a genuine welfarist can support the killing of foxes by the use of a shotgun - To ban a dog from killing a fox whilst leaving snares in use is perverse to the extreme. - It is even more perverse to remove the most humane method of killing foxes whilst leaving in place methods that so obviously cause much greater and totally unnatural suffering - Richard Course of the League Against Cruel Sports, who led moves to ban hunting with dogs for more than 10 years - Submission to Lord Burns.
What I find sick and perverse and downright dishonest is the fact that all of those people actively promoting the banning of hunting know that if hunting is abolished the deer will disappear from the hills - Richard Course on the fate of the West Country red deer - Submission to Lord Burns.
Over the years, and many meetings with landowners and others, I have come to the conclusion that in the event of a total hunt ban, the deer population will be decimated. The end result will be a significant drop in deer numbers together with an increase in injured and wounded animals - Graham Sirl former LACS Head of West Country Operations - Exeter Express and Echo - 2001.
Hunting would seem to be more consistently humane than any of the other methods currently available for controlling fox, hare and deer numbers - Hunting: creates no wounded survivors and allows the quarry species a respite during the breeding season - Miles Cooper former LACS Researcher - 11th July 2002.
Real gains for wildlife will only be achieved by advocating and implementing realistic and reasonable policies, rather than seeking idealistic aims – James Barrington Former Chairman of the LACS January 1997 – Now advisor to the All Parliamentary Middle Way Group.
But, says The League Against Cruel Sports' John Bryant, the ultimate aim must be to end conflicts between organisations like the League and the BFSS - and the signs are that it is already happening. Could it be that both organisations although so different, are aiming for the same thing? We are getting approaches from organisations involved infield sports to see if we are able to find a basis for working together, he said. What we should ultimately like to see would be a state wildlife service, which would involve everyone from conservationists and farmers to people like ourselves, and to which we could all have access. It would be able to work on strategies for management and control of wild animals, if it were felt necessary, and then put in place suitably humane systems for doing it. It will be a completely new era for us and a very exciting one, especially if it results in better welfare of the wildlife which has to share this overcrowded country with us - John Bryant formally LACS - Western Daily Press - December 27th 1995 - Following an approach and meetings arranged with key hunting figures by Edmund Marriage. Such action however was censured by the BFSS.
It would be better for every last deer to be exterminated from the region than for stag hunting to continue within it - Dr Arthur Linley - the official RSPCA view on stag hunting given in evidence to Savage et al (1993).
There is not a single moral or intellectual argument in defence of foxhunting - Elliot Morley Former Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture.
www.britishwildlifemanagement.net –
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