Thursday 27 December 2007

Hunters Go On Hunting

According to the Countryside Alliance, over 200,000 people turned out to support it's annual Boxing Day tradition of slaughtering foxes.
Despite the 'sport' being banned in 2005, the red breasted and small brained among us continue to gather their horses and hounds and chase foxes across the countryside until it is to exhausted to continue and is then ripped apart by a pack of frenzied dogs.
The Countryside Alliance said: "A lot of the support you'll see today is about people who don't like the fact that this is an illiberal piece of legislation, they don't like the fact that the reasons for it were completely unjustified. So they're coming out to support the rights of individuals to carry out a perfectly reasonable activity in the countryside."
Unless you live in a cave and rub two sticks together to make fire, it is impossible to defend hunting of any nature but to call fifty men on horseback and as many as a hundred hounds chasing down a fox a 'perfectly reasonable activity' goes to show what mentality we are dealing with.
The hunt saboteurs have changed tact to compensate for the law change and now film the hunters breaking the law with a view to taking them to court so we can hopefully see some of these morons in the dock.
Meanwhile, lets hope that none of the hunters fell off their horses and spent Boxing Day evening having limbs set in plaster. That would just break my heart.

11 comments:

Paula said...

It's horrible. I don't see how anyone gets joy out of "winning" a rigged fight where the opponent has no chance at all.

Falling on a bruise said...

I cannot see how they can even attempt to defend it. We should not be killing things for fun in this age.

Cody Bones said...

Very interesting post Lucy, it definitely got me to thinking about the issue. Let me first say that chasing a fox on horseback until exhaustion ranks very high on the silliness meter. That being said, I'm not sure that I agree with your statement "Unless you live in a cave and rub two sticks together to make fire, it is impossible to defend hunting of any nature"
I fish, and occasionally have hunted for bird and deer. I do eat what I kill, but to be honest, I do enjoy the sport as well. We as a race kill insects or rodents when they bother us, cattle, chicken, fish, etc. to eat, bacteria when they make us sick, and tigers when they escape zoo's. My point is not to defend needless cruelty (my definition)rather to point out that we, as a species, kill to survive every day. I don't know if I have an inner predator that I need to get in touch with, but I do know that "hunting" is something that we all do to some extent every day. The big question is, what does differentiate a mouse, fox, deer, fish, bacteria, or rat from each other? What is ok to kill, and what isn't? Interesting..

Falling on a bruise said...

With you a hunter, and I as someone who abhors hunting, a concurrent posting could be formulating here Cody. We seem to be at opposite ends of the scale and we are due another one.
Would be very interested to hear how you, and anyone else who hunts, can defend the killing of the occasional deer or bird that was no threat to you or anyone else and you had no need to kill for fear of dying of starvation. Would also like to know how much sport is involved in you shooting a defenceless deer with a high powered rifle.

Anonymous said...

I kill deer because they taste good, just like chicken, beef, pork, salmon and any other food you put in your mouth that once had a heart that beats. If I was a deer I would rather be killed by a high powered rifle than having my back broken by a mountain lion and then having my hams eaten while I lay helpless blinking my eyes hoping to die before the lion decides to play with me before I expire. Nature is very cruel and so people are very uninformed about the real outdoors. I am totally against killing animals for no reason except enjoyment of the chase and kill.

Falling on a bruise said...

On the first reading technopops i thought, wow, he is saying that he is doing the animals a favour by killing them.
Then i read it again because i thought i must of misread it because nobody can make up such a bizzare and
laughable defence of killing a living thing and and realised that actually, you just did.

Anonymous said...

lucyp: Even though we use the same vocabulary, I think we speak a different language and I know our culture is different. With that said, most hunters, except the ones you see on TV don't hunt for just the kill. The harvest of an animal is a sum of many experiences that doesn't end with the kill. There is satisfaction of feeding my family a very nutritious meal that I harvested, just like my ancestors did. What is the difference between me killing my own dinner or paying a butcher to kill my dinner? Many of us in America grew up on farms and, living off the land was not a sport but a necessity and keeping my heritage is only part of the reason I hunt. For someone who has never hunted I realize it may be hard to understand the taking of an animal’s life for just the sport. Again the kill is not the entire experience and is somewhat over rated. You can probably twist my words again to justify your agenda but the fact still remains that hunting and fishing is part of my heritage and something I will fight until death to preserve. It may seem barbaric to some, but not to us that don’t care much for the opera, movies and other mediums that some people enjoy to escape the daily grind of working to put food on the table. We are in agreement on the fact that killing just to kill is a crime. My wife was not I hunter when I first met her, in fact, she laughed at me the first time a buck walked out in front of our stand. She couldn’t understand why I had to work to control my breathing. I have been hunting for over forty five years and a nice buck still takes my breath away when he suddenly appears in front of my stand. Sometimes it almost feels like an electric shock that travels through my body and when the day comes that this excitement is lost I will quit hunting and search for another sport that takes by breath away. I can only describe it as a sensation very similar to your very first kiss. It probably took your breath away and sent an electric shock through you that you still remember. It is the sum of the entire experience and no play, opera, movie or whatever you do for enjoyment has ever induced the excitement that hunting does for me. You asked the question: How much sport is there in shooting a defenseless deer with a high powered rifle. I’ve tried to answer that but you really can not understand unless you come from a culture that understand the ecosystem and the part that man plays in the ecosystem. I could write another book about mankind and his responsibility in the ecosystem, but not here. I have probably lost you alone the way, so my question for you is: What have you done this year that took your breath away and ran a shock through your body almost as good as you first kiss?

Anne said...

kissing feels like killing something? wow, i MUST have been doing it wrong, all these years. deep sigh.

Cheezy said...

My first kiss was rubbish. Probably because it was her first kiss too (i.e. can you see how I'm spreading the blame here?) ;-)

Well, it sounds like I'm missing out on a vital part of life - seeing that I'm not into shooting stags and watching foxes get torn apart by dogs and stuff - so I guess I'll just have to continue to compensate for this gap in my life with my usual regime of 'sex/drugs/techno' and all of that :)

(Actually I do enjoy nature as well. I particularly enjoy seeing animals that are breathing. Different strokes for different folks, I guess).

Falling on a bruise said...

Cody and I will be posting concurrent posts at some point this weekend on our differibng views on hunting so i will not answer you here technopops but i will try and answer some of the pro hunting points you make in it and i appreciate you trying to explain your feelings here.
Not covered is my first kiss which as i recall was about as electric as a gas fire and was such a disaster it could only be compared to Dick Cheney blasting that guy in the face if i was to put it into a hunting analogy.

RaeJane said...

I don't get the appeal of killing something...
Why is that fun?
How is that fun?