Yes, youre quite right Fiagai, terrierwork amounts to fox baiting.
You asked for a real scenario: fox evades being ripped to pieces by going to ground. Hunt terriermen called in, who make sure exits to the earth are blocked, and terriers are entered. Terriers confront fox, which is unable to escape bloody battle ensues.
You prefer the term terrierwork, I prefer fox baiting two phrases to describe the same activity. Its telling that so far no one has been prepared to defend fox baiting, an activity which is part and parcel of organised fox hunting.
No, Paul, terrierwork does not amount to fox baiting. They would, if fox baiting actually existed, be two entirely different things. Just because two activities involve dogs and animals does not make them the same, any more than Formula 1 and Stock Car Racing can be considered the same thing, just because they both involve cars on a track that sometimes bump into each other.
Personally, I suspect that you are fully aware of the differences between the two in which case, what you are doing here is no more than an attempt to deliberately mislead the viewing public. Why, I ask myself, if the case against Hunting is supposedly so strong, do you antis always seem to feel the need to embellish the evidence? Does it not stand on its own merit? Seemingly not, if you so constantly feel the need to give it a little help
For the benefit of those not in the know, this definition of the term baiting, usually used in the context of bear baiting or badger baiting, is an activity where dogs are used to torment an animal of another species for and this is the important part the entertainment, if you can call it that, of an audience, most usually involving gambling.
Dog-fighting and cock-fighting are similar activities, but are not generally referred to as baiting because they involve two animals of the same species. However, the principal features are the same. The activity will be conducted in some sort of enclosure, very close in front of an audience and the animals involved will be specifically chosen to maximise the amount of physical injures inflicted upon one or both participants. Apart from the gambling revenue, the only gratification available to the audience of these activities is the sadistic enjoyment of the suffering of the participants.
These activities were all rightly made illegal a long time past.
The anti-hunters often bleat that if they were made illegal and if hunting with dogs is the same thing then why wasnt that made illegal at the same time. But the answer is in the question Hunting with Dogs was not made illegal, because it is not the same thing. It is different in most or all of those crucial aspects.
In hunting, the audience is nearly always well removed from the place where the dogs kill the animal, so they cannot enjoy the suffering up-close-and-personal and we use a large number of dogs, anyone of which can kill the quarry single-handedly the complete opposite of how the dogs are chosen in baiting and fighting.
Baiting and fighting are specifically designed to allow sadists to get the most out of the activities. Hunting is carried out in such a way that it would be extremely difficult for a sadist to get any pleasure out of it all.
With Terrierwork, the situation is different to hunting and we should not forget that (a) terrierwork carried out by hunts is only a small proportion of the total terrierwork carried out in this country; (b) that (prior to the Ban) hunt terrierwork was the only terrierwork carried to a code of practice and (c) that terrierwork was specifically allowed to continue by the Hunting Act in that, by necessity, the activity is carried out in an enclosed space. However, the crucial difference between it and baiting is that it is not in view of an audience.
In terrierwork properly carried out (prior to the ban), the dog should not even fight the fox at all. It should either have merely held it at bay by barking until the terrierman could dig down and shoot the fox (which is now contrary to the Hunting Act) or scare the fox out of the hole so that it could be shot (which is still lawful under the Act).
Occasionally, animals being animals, there would be instances where the dog and the fox would get into a scrap. However, this would still not count as baiting, because all there would be for the audience to enjoy would be a load of muffled yapping and growling noises coming from somewhere underground which would provide none of the up-close-and-personal action that a sadist would need to get his or her kicks.
So, no, Paul, as you are, no doubt, fully aware Terrierwork is not fox-baiting and your attempt to link the two is either extremely misinformed or just plain dishonest. Care to enlighten us as to which?