I've been on many shoots with my dogs, and on training days. If we see a fox, our guns will take them. They are NEVER left to die! The dogs are trained to retrieve 'runners' (winged birds or animals- even foxes) Our trainers and landowners who offer us the ground for shoots, field trials, and training shot over days, are always very adamant that no pricked game is left to die.
That's all very well on well-run, organised shoots where all participants are inclined to be responsible in the execution of their duties. The real picture is very different.
Foxes are a menace anywhere, and many people care not a jot whether they die a clean death or a lingering one, as long as they die and cease to kill stock. Much of the time a fox will be shot at regardless of how far out he is, or when in thick cover with only a split second to get the barrels onto him, and there are many foxes lost after they have been hit.
Not all fox-killers are armed with guns or rifles. Many people use snares, illegal traps, poison, or gas to kill foxes, and none of these methods are humane.
I see hunts as a hobby for the participants, not a method of control. It is much more efficient to go out and shoot them. The correct animals can be culled that way - old and infirm dog foxes for instance, which might otherwise have a long slow death.
How can anyone identify an old or infirm fox at 40 yards when it is running in cover?
Hunts were, and still are, a selective method of control. Fit, well foxes have a greater chance of survival than do weak, sick, or old ones when hunted with hounds. Hunts were always willing to come out with a few hounds and hunt troublesome foxes in the early morning (when the antis were still in their pits) after the stockman had witnessed their depredations on the lambs or poultry. The hunt would harbour and protect a certain amount of foxes throughout the summer months, as long as they didn't cause problems, so that there would be foxes to hunt come the autumn. Now, without such protection, and with many more hands turned against them, the foxes are killed indiscriminately, and in far greater numbers than pre the 'ban'.
I don't like foxes that much. I have had rare breed poultry killed and have felt the pain, but deep down I am a realist and a conservationist at heart, and I see the value of each link in the food chain. Cats are much more of a threat to native wildlife, as are mink in some areas, than are foxes. Hedgehogs have the potential to devastate populations of ground-nesting birds. However, people have rights, including the one to keep a cat. Regardless of the evidence, they will defend that right to the end over the conservation of wildlife. How many people complain about fox damage but turn a blind eye when Tiddles kills young blue tits or field mice? People also seem to have the right to choose which of the 'pests' they wish to protect, and this even extends to a perceived right to influence parliament on matters of which they know very little, even if it affects other peoples' rights and livelihoods. Ivory towers are the new maisonettes.
Annie, have you, who seem not to be able to prevent your 'well-trained' HPR dogs from molesting your own stock, ever considered the skill and the mutual love and respect required to manage and hunt a kennel of hounds?
