Would hunting have been banned

[Cpt Black]

Would fox hunting have been banned 150 years ago, along with Bear Baiting, Dog Fighting, Cock fighting etc., had it not been the sport of the upper class? I accept that there were public order reasons why these other activities were banned, but it was also because it was felt that deliberately torturing to death defenceless was not a civilised way to behave.

[andy hughes]

I suspect it has more to do with the argument that fox-hunting is a viable form of pest control, and the pleaseure for the participants is simply an advantageous by-product, wheras the other sports serve no useful purpose other than to provide entertainment for the masses.

[andy hughes]

I only said that I thought that was the argument - I did not intend to offer its legitimacy, or to infer that it is defensible, merely that that was the argument used. Of course it is not a viable form of pest control, but it is an inherent aspect of country life, which country people contend is misunderstood by city dwellers. I am happy to accept that as a city dweller, I do not have the same laissez-faire attitude to the lives and deaths of dumba nimals, but neither do I attempt to defend the barbaric practice of turning the torture and possible death of a species into a social event. Pest control is the argument, it just depends whom you feel is the 'pest' in question!

[FredPuli]

Quite likely. It's the only 'pest control' where care is taken to ensure that ther are always enough pests left to breed again to control next year ! No ratcatcher works like that ! And in killing a fox you save dozens of rabbits, their food, which are serious pests ( but they don't eat young gamebirds, meant for shooting). Compare ear -cropping and tail-docking of dogs. The former was outlawed about 100 years ago in the UK as a cruel, unnecessary mutilation ( it survives in the US ). It was originally done to dogs used in dogfighting. Docking survived because it allegedly saved gundogs working in thickets of brambles etc from injury to the tail (really, that's still the argument; like amputating a leg spares you risking a broken ankle ! )It is, of course difficult to find any vet to do it, as it is disapproved of by their professional body. Breeders still do it for supposedly aesthetic reasons and 'tradition'.You may guess who did the shooting with gundogs to flush game and so on and whose 'sport 'was the dog-fighting.

[Cpt Black]

I like your line of reasoning Fred. To try and justify this activity on the grounds of it being a necessary method of maintaining the countryside as we know it, is surely an insult to most peoples intelligence. I can not really see how the British countryside is going to turn into some sort of post apocolyptic Orwellian wasteland, with hoards of ravenous foxes terrorising the remaining population. This argument was never even mentioned before it started looking like a ban was likely. As I alluded to in my original question a society that tollerates this kind of institutionalised cruelty, can not really call itself truly civilised. Child cruelty, wife beating and abuse of those below one in the social strata were all commonplace and to some extent acceptable, within the last hundred years, but this kind of behavior would now, quite rightly, get one locked up. Without being too flippant it sometimes seems that people who wish to justify a continuance of fox hunting are the same people who were outraged when slavery and child labour, and the "droit de signeur" were abolished. They probably also think that women should never have been given the vote and we should never have given our empire away, but that is another story.....