Silly question I'm sure ! Old hounds?

[Judgemental]

Are they still bred to hunt and kill though? After this amount of time, I'd be surprised if hunts hadn't been selecting the best trail followers instead.

That is a very interesting point. Bearing in mind the Foxhound has been bred and evolved over about 200 years, their 'in built hard disk' to use a contemporary analogy, is never likely to be diminished in it natural power of seeking a quarry and expecting to make a kill.

Hounds are happy if they sing at night, once they are comfortable on their benches.

Apart from anything else, your comment about selecting the best trail followers is reasonable in theory, but not sustainable because to do so, would be to compromise the desire and intention to have Repeal.

 

[ester]

True but I am not sure every hunt is so sure repeal is going to happen as you are.

I just thought it an interesting point as we are now quite a few years, and hence potentially a few generations in.
I wonder if the bloodhounds feel differently because they do actually 'catch' their quarry as any tracking dog would, and how important the catch/kill element is to a foxhound compared to the rest of their work, because they do still seem to work, happily. If they weren't getting any mental reward for that work at all you might expect them to give up bothering. - Hence my comment that even if not intentionally hunts might have selected those that get reward from the trail not the kill because you want the ones that keep bothering.
What you say is true IHW but keeping in the back of mind how quickly it has been possible to alter, sometimes quite dramatically, traits in other domesticated dogs.

 

[Judgemental]

True but I am not sure every hunt is so sure repeal is going to happen as you are.

I just thought it an interesting point as we are now quite a few years, and hence potentially a few generations in.
I wonder if the bloodhounds feel differently because they do actually 'catch' their quarry as any tracking dog would, and how important the catch/kill element is to a foxhound compared to the rest of their work, because they do still seem to work, happily. If they weren't getting any mental reward for that work at all you might expect them to give up bothering. - Hence my comment that even if not intentionally hunts might have selected those that get reward from the trail not the kill because you want the ones that keep bothering.
What you say is true IHW but keeping in the back of mind how quickly it has been possible to alter, sometimes quite dramatically, traits in other domesticated dogs.

I am going to have a think about that point and question. So if you will excuse me, I will revert shortly.

 

[ester]

I love a good revert, I have only just read the post telling me that we shouldn't talk about hounds oops!

 

[Crosshill Pacers]

Why do they have to be for or against a repeal?

Ironically my current Master's wife only started hunting AFTER the ban. Prior to that she point blank refused to go along with her husband and son. Post-2004 she took up riding (in her mid-30s) and 12 years later she is now the wife of the Master. She often jokes that it took a hunting ban to get her out hunting.

So your question is a good one. I am all for a repeal for so many reasons but to enjoy hunting now doesn't require a desire to see the 2004 Act repealed. A lot of my hunting friends simply enjoy riding out across normally inaccessible land in good company.

 

[Smellycob]

Well this threads certainly has been busy! Blimey at least I can say I've made an impression! I'm loathe to do it but, as I am such a thoroughly decent person according to my sarcastic friend, I will respond...

NO I WILL NOT!

controversial questions, simpering platitudes

That's me!

Go into them hard and fast, 'shoot first' and ask questions afterwards, apart from anything else it's character building, for the challenger, challenged and spectators.

Yup or might just convince people that you are a thoroughly unpleasant person and lose support for your group or cause by default. As for character building, well I suppose it depends on what character you are trying to build...

Trust nobody and be suspicious of everybody.

What a horrible world you must live in. Having been brought up correctly (money doesn't buy you class and all that) I would say I care. Then again, that might equate to a bit more simpering and we can't have that. Stiff upper lip and all!

There are far too many lily livered Liberal Elitists.... reflected in many of the comments and barbs directed at my excellent Judgement

...I have no words....

Yet another example of Liberal Elitism.

We do not talk about the hounds in a right thinking hunting world. It is simple not done and extremely discourteous to the Masters or Trustees of the Hounds.

My crystal ball is at the menders. Without it I'm stuck. Have to ask questions if I want answers.

actually untill I came across your replies and attitude I probably would have voted for a repeal had it come up in a referendum. Now you can jog right on I will vote against repeal simply for the fact I do not like being spoken to as though I am thick or too much of a pleb to know, if that is the prevailing attitude amongst those campaigning for repeal then they are doomed to failure.

This. To my shame it does make me feel like being spiteful.

I do wonder sometimes if JM is a sab under cover, as he does such a good job of alienating folk from hunting.

I propose that Judgemental is the Troll here!

or maybe they are the Anti, they are certainly doing the Antis job for them very well!

Funny you mention it I was actually wondering if I'd been had!

Yes well one can see you are not the slightest bit interested in the hounds.

Is anyone allowed to be?

For anyone who was wondering, regarding repeal, as I didn't hunt before the ban and have yet to do so I don't know much about how the ban has actually affected the people who live in the countryside and have to work with the legislation. Apart from youtube videos that is. As far as actual foxhunting goes.... with a view to eradicating a problem pest I gather there are a few ways to do it. Hunting with hounds where if caught I can't see any way out for Mr Fox. He's dead or not. Shooting, where I would think the appropriate person would be very competent BUT there is that risk of a miss and a slow death with some horrible festering wound. And snares and poison (I think) neither of which I fancy very much. So its hounds (which I've read kill instantly) or shooting with a risk of a long death. From a fox welfare pov I know which way I'm leaning BUT it is a lean as I just don't feel educated enough about the issue to make a decision that will affect animal welfare and people's lives. Hence I thought me getting involved and educating myself a bit more would be a good thing. I gather more foxes are also killed when they are shot as opposed to being hunted with hounds. But anyway...my initial question was about the hounds and how they were dealt with at the end of their days. Humanely was my answer. I don't quite know where the Nazi's came from but I suppose you can't have a good story without them-just look at Indiana Jones.

 

[Judgemental]

The foxhunting ban 10 years on: has the countryside changed for ever?
It was one of New Labour’s defining policies – but a decade after the hunting ban came in, enthusiasts still ride out across the country. So did the law change things? Can the pursuit survive? And what’s it like chasing fox urine?

‘Hunting is completely different now’ … riders about to set off on the Cotswold hunt
‘Hunting is completely different now’ … riders about to set off on the Cotswold hunt Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian
Stephen Moss Stephen Moss
Saturday 22 November 2014 08.31 GMT Last modified on Tuesday 20 September 2016 15.07 BST
Comments
756
“Lovely music,” says the stately, somewhat forbidding, weatherbeaten woman sitting on a dark bay Irish hunter at the edge of a field in the Cotswolds. The music to which she refers is the eruption of barks and yelps from the pack of hounds in the neighbouring wood. The music, she says, is at its most lyrical in woodland, where the sound echoes through the trees

Ten years ago, before foxhunting was banned, the symphony of squeals would have signified that the 40-strong pack of hounds had hit on the scent of a fox. The half-dozen red-coated huntsmen and 25-strong field would have set off in urgent pursuit, as the hounds barrelled through the wood and flushed the fox into open country. The reality now is more prosaic: the hounds have picked up a scent laid by a hunt supporter carrying a rag impregnated with fox urine. The music may be real, but everything else is artificial.

It is a glorious morning and I am out with the Cotswold hunt, meeting a few miles from Cirencester. The music lover is Lavinia Black, a huntswoman of 50 years’ standing (or, more accurately, sitting). She is acting as an amateur whipper-in: the role entails being stationed at the edge of the field in case the hounds happen on a real fox and set off in pursuit, in which case she is supposed to stop them. Under the ban, fox hunts can do everything except hunt foxes. A roe deer, disturbed by the hounds, springs out of the wood and races across the field. Happily, the pack ignores it, so Black’s whipping in is not put to the test.

The morning on which I join the hunt – following on foot with local supporter David Hicks – is a significant one. It is 10 years to the day since the bill to ban foxhunting in England and Wales received the royal assent. The meet opens at 10.45am, when the huntsmen (two of the joint masters, the professional huntsman responsible for the hounds and two young professional whippers-in), the mounted field (most of whom are female), and the car and foot followers gather. Hicks, a retired teacher and son of a farmer who has followed hunts since he was a child, describes this brief social gathering as “a mad cocktail party in the middle of the country”. A glass of port is taken, sausage rolls and pork pies consumed, pleasantries and gossip exchanged.


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This is where I encounter the woman who makes my day. June Stevens is more than 90 years old – she won’t be more precise than that – and walks with the aid of two sticks, but she has driven to the meet to lend her support. She tells me she farmed locally (one of the few women that did so on her own in the Cotswolds), has hunted for 70 years and rode until she was 80. “I loved riding,” she says, “and was quite good. I went round Badminton [a tough cross-country course] twice and did a bit of show-jumping. Hunting fitted in well with my farming in the winter.” What, I ask her, did she think of the ban when it was introduced? “I thought it was damn stupid, in plain English,” she says. And how does hunting now compare to the way it used to be? “Completely different.”

Joe Edwards, another retired farmer and former hunt secretary, has been listening to our conversation and chimes in. “It’ll never be the same,” he says. “Even if there was no ban, it wouldn’t be the same, for various reasons, environmental, roads ...”

‘Very few of the people who ride now have an affinity with the land’ … says a supporter of the Cotswold hunt.
‘Very few of the people who ride now have an affinity with the land’: some traditionalists feel things have changed for the worse. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian
“The people who hunt now are different,” Stevens adds. “It used to be farmers’ sons and daughters who came hunting. Well, there aren’t any now. The farms are much bigger and they’re all mechanically minded – they sit on tractors.”

Stevens reckons the fact that hunters (or, if the law is being observed, pseudo-hunters) are now more likely to be professional people who have moved to the Cotswolds than farmers who were born there has changed the nature of hunting. Doctors, lawyers, business consultants, even – Hicks tells me – a woman who works on a supermarket checkout. Enthusiasts like to emphasise hunting’s classlessness, and, while this may be overegged, the pursuit is certainly not the Wodehousian caricature portrayed by some antis.

“Very few of the people who ride on horses now have an affinity with the land,” says Stevens. “In my day, we were farmers ourselves, we knew all the farmers, and we would help to look after each other’s crops. If you had a few ignorant people out riding across the winter corn, you’d shout at them.” She says a key reason to hunt then was the chance to have a nose around your neighbours’ farms.

These two, who between them have hunted for 150 years (I discover later that Edwards, also still following the hunt by car, is 96), open my eyes to the crucial truth about hunting: for all the arguments over the ban, it had already changed irrevocably long before the anti-hunt campaigners got their teeth into it. What the hunters were fighting for in 2004, and continue to fight for as they demand repeal, is a simulacrum of the hunting these two nonagenarians practised in the rooted rural England of the middle of the last century. Farmers had a vested interest in killing foxes, which preyed on their livestock; a hobby rider out for an enjoyable day’s riding in the autumn sunshine doesn’t really care what is being pursued, a fox or a scented rag. Hunting was maimed long before the 2004 ban, a victim of social change and brutal economies of scale as family farms gave way to industrialised agriculture.

James Chamberlain, one of the Cotswold’s joint masters, says these changes are by no means new, and argues that hunting remains a “social glue” that binds the countryside together. “The countryside is still a community, and there is a very strong link around hunting. We have many events – the point-to-point, the hunt ball, a team chase – and our fundraising side has got stronger and stronger. In a fortnight, we’ll have a country fair, where we raise money for charity as well as for the hunt, and people will come from miles around to do their Christmas shopping.”

There is no denying the camaraderie among the hunters – the hunt meets on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, and subscribers will ride out together regularly on one or more of those days – but if the connection with the land has largely gone, and an ever more disparate collection of people, many of them second-homers, are riding with the hunt, how rooted can it be?

Chamberlain bridles when I suggest that hunting trails rather than foxes is no more than a glorified hack – a chance to enjoy a pleasant day out with some challenging riding – but that’s the way it looks to this townie and hunting agnostic. Where once it could claim to be a central part of rural life – hymned by writers as varied as RS Surtees, Anthony Trollope and Siegfried Sassoon – hunting now seems an add-on, a quaint remnant. The artificiality of trail hunting seems to mirror the hollowness of what the hunt wants to represent – the continuance of rural traditions. If rural settlements today are, in the main, Potemkin villages, perhaps they are skirted by Potemkin hunts.

Hunters now follow an artificial trail, instead of chasing real foxes.
Hunters now follow an artificial trail, instead of chasing real foxes. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian
Seen in that context, the continuing struggle between the pros and the antis needs to be reframed. The League Against Cruel Sports produced a report this week to mark 10 years of the ban. It concluded that the Hunting Act had been successful, and pointed to the 341 convictions for illegal hunting between 2005 and 2013. The photograph next to the graphic charting these convictions is of a league investigator filming a mounted hunter in a red jacket. The clear conclusion we are supposed to draw is that these 341 convictions have been recorded against organised hunts. However, the Countryside Alliance, which campaigns for repeal of the ban, offers a different interpretation of these figures. It says only 21 of the 341 convictions involved hunts “registered with the Council of Hunting Associations”. The rest, they say, resulted from “casual hunting” and “poaching” – individuals and small groups using dogs to chase and kill wild mammals. Without condoning the organised hunts that are flouting the ban – and they undoubtedly exist – the league is arguably giving a misleading impression of where the real problem lies.

Michael Stephenson, director of campaigns at the league, insists there is no attempt to mislead. “This is not an attack on the hunts per se. It’s an attack on people who break the law. A criminal is a criminal.” He claims 20% of the convictions involved people associated with hunts; the Countryside Alliance reckon the figure is 3%; I make it 6%. Whichever figure is correct, the key fact is that hunts – now essentially hobbyist – are not the ones primarily doing the illegal hunting. Hunters are now more likely to wear bobble hats and padded jackets than red coats.

Cont/2.......

 

[Judgemental]

Page 2 of the above

The league’s report argues that the ban has largely worked, but it wants it tightened. “It needs work to iron out the inconsistencies,” says Stephenson, “and we’ve put forward three areas where we’re lobbying for change.” It wants tougher sentences, including imprisonment, for illegal hunting; the use of terriers flushing out foxes underground to be banned (at present it is legal to use two dogs to flush out a fox as long as it is then shot, and gamekeepers are permitted to use terriers to go underground after a fox); and, crucially, the league wants to stop trail hunting, which they believe is a cover for illegal hunting because, if a fox is “accidentally” caught up in the hunt, it is difficult to prove intent. Oddly, it is not calling for an end to hunting with birds of prey, which some hunts use to circumvent the ban. “We defend the act,” says Stephenson, who claims 80% public support for a continuation of the ban, “but with some targeted improvements it will be a better piece of legislation.”Tim Bonner, Stephenson’s opposite number at the Countryside Alliance, is pleased the league at least now accepts that aspects of the act aren’t working. “They wrote the law and used to say it was perfect,” he says. “Here we are 10 years down the road, and they’ve suddenly decided it isn’t. We think the issue [for them] is not whether it’s workable or not; it doesn’t deliver what they wanted. They wanted rid of hunts. The whole anti-hunting campaign was based on a strange political obsession with the people who hunt. Where’s the evidence that animal welfare has improved dramatically since the Hunting Act came in? You can still shoot a fox; you can still trap a fox; you can still gas a fox. There’s not a jot of evidence that foxes are any better off as a result of this.”

I ask Bonner whether it’s been hard to keep the show on the road during the past 10 years. “There were huge concerns when the law first came in,” he says. “Hunts were not investing or employing people, and they were very concerned about the future. But it rapidly became clear they would be able to do something, and that people were going to continue to support you whatever you did.”

'The hunting community was determined not to give up’ … A 2003 Countryside Alliance protest in London.
‘The hunting community was determined not to give up’ … A 2003 Countryside Alliance protest in London. Photograph: Janine Wiedel/REX
How relevant the arguments of the league and alliance are, however, is a moot point. The chances of a government, of whatever persuasion, taking another look at the legislation any time soon are slim. The hunters’ hope is that if the Tories win a majority in 2015, David Cameron – who comes from a hunting family – will honour his long-standing pledge to repeal the act. But a source close to official party thinking on the issue tells me that, even with a working majority, it is unlikely a Conservative government would take it on. “The political will is not there,” she says. “It’s not a vote-winner, and there is no upside for the party. Hunting people already vote Conservative, and you will just galvanise the antis.” And so the peculiar situation we now have – trail hunting in which the odd fox might semi-inadvertently get mangled – is likely to continue.

It is a typically British fudge that leaves neither side satisfied. The league realises that some hunts – the ones using birds of prey, others who are beyond the video cameras of the antis – are still catching foxes. But the true hunters, too, know that this pseudo-hunting is second best. “It’s crap,” says Tim Bellamy, field master on the day I go out with the Cotswold. “It’s nowhere near as good as it used to be. We can’t do this, we can’t do that.” It’s not just that they can’t deliberately chase foxes. Their “country” – the area over which they can ride – is also increasingly circumscribed by roads, the growth of commercial shooting estates and landowners who no longer give them access because they can’t claim a pest control function. Hunts may have survived the ban – the Countryside Alliance says numbers have held up over the past 10 years and 45,000 people still regularly follow hunts – but they are ever more hedged in. There has been no quick kill, as the antis had hoped in 2004, but hunts may instead face a lingering death.

Bellamy is a hunter of the old school – a farmer with a broad Gloucestershire accent who has hunted all his life. “I don’t want to ride from A to B; I want to ride via Z,” he says when I ask him to explain the appeal of hunting. The thrill and uncertainty of the chase; the randomness of a day’s hunting. These are the facets of the pursuit they love, and explain why, rather than laying just one trail, they lay many, so that no one knows precisely which one (if any) the hounds will follow.

Bellamy smiles mischievously as he talks, but beneath the good humour you can sense his anger. He thinks hunting’s long-term future is bleak. “As long as my generation are around, there will be hunting,” he says. “But what about the generation after me? They won’t have the skill even to simulate hunting.” Goodnight, as the hunters always say, whatever the time of day, when one of their number makes for home.

 

[Goldenstar]

I have long suspected that JM is deep plant by LACS hoping to drive us all I to their fold.

 

[Judgemental]

True but I am not sure every hunt is so sure repeal is going to happen as you are.

I just thought it an interesting point as we are now quite a few years, and hence potentially a few generations in.
I wonder if the bloodhounds feel differently because they do actually 'catch' their quarry as any tracking dog would, and how important the catch/kill element is to a foxhound compared to the rest of their work, because they do still seem to work, happily. If they weren't getting any mental reward for that work at all you might expect them to give up bothering. - Hence my comment that even if not intentionally hunts might have selected those that get reward from the trail not the kill because you want the ones that keep bothering.
What you say is true IHW but keeping in the back of mind how quickly it has been possible to alter, sometimes quite dramatically, traits in other domesticated dogs.

As I said I would have a think about your points and I hope the piece from the Guardian goes some way to answer your question.

It throws up a considerable number of other questions and the whole matter and all the issues have to be considered in a wholly intellectual genre, leaving aside any sentiment.

Plainly certain posters have to realise that there is a considerable amount of academic positioning, that needs to unfold over time.

Like so many things, much is contained in what is not said but the established unwritten codes of conduct.

Beyond that which we know and the way matters are evolving it is difficult to make any hard and fast predictions.

 

[ycbm]

That rather proves that you do not have the interests of the hounds at the forefront of your thinking. Otherwise you would realise that a well bred pack, functioning to take a deer or chop a fox, is essential for their ongoing mental and physical well being.

The Hunting Act 2004 has diluted the operational cutting edge of all hounds bred to take live quarry.

My understanding of deer hunting is that it is only ever stag hunting? The females can be stalked and shot but the males need to be pursued by hounds first. Can you explain the reason for that? I have always assumed that it's because only the males will give the hunt a decent run, but I would be really pleased to be corrected on that one.

I am against repeal of the act, just to be clear.


OP, in order of speed, it goes foxhounds on a proper drag hunt, bloodhounds following the scent of a man, foxhounds hunting trail. In general, though packs differ depending on country and whether they are a 'thruster' field.

You will also find if you go out with a fox hound pack and they accidentally light on a fox, little effort is likely to be made to call the pack off and they will be allowed to hunt it down, as this is still within the law.

 

[Clodagh]

Doe hunting takes place, it is more like fox hunting (in the old days) as the does do not seperate and run like stags, they stop sooner. It has a different season to stag hunting, and off the top of my head I cannot remember when that is.

 

[ycbm]

Thanks, I didn't know that.

Doe hunting takes place, it is more like fox hunting (in the old days) as the does do not seperate and run like stags, they stop sooner. It has a different season to stag hunting, and off the top of my head I cannot remember when that is.

 

[LadySam]

You will also find if you go out with a fox hound pack and they accidentally light on a fox, little effort is likely to be made to call the pack off and they will be allowed to hunt it down, as this is still within the law.

Is it? My understanding is that two dogs may pursue a fox if they come across one, but not a whole pack of hounds. I thought this was one reason the current law is meant to be "unworkable".

Happy to be corrected - this is a genuine question. I very well may have misunderstood something I've read.

 

[Judgemental]

Doe hunting takes place, it is more like fox hunting (in the old days) as the does do not seperate and run like stags, they stop sooner. It has a different season to stag hunting, and off the top of my head I cannot remember when that is.

No such thing as Doe hunting because the 'Doe' is the female of the Fallow Deer.

What you are refering to is Hind hunting which is the female of the Red Deer.

 

[AmyMay]

Is it? My understanding is that two dogs may pursue a fox if they come across one, but not a whole pack of hounds. I thought this was one reason the current law is meant to be .

Yes, you are correct.

 

[Fellewell]

Judgemental, if this op is genuine I'll eat your old Patey ;-)

There's a very good piece, written by Andrew Sallis in this weeks Horse and Hound magazine. Do have a read.

 

[Clodagh]

No such thing as Doe hunting because the 'Doe' is the female of the Fallow Deer.

What you are refering to is Hind hunting which is the female of the Red Deer.

You are absolutley right, I knew it looked wrong when I wrote it. I may have been talking about female rabbits!?

 

[Clodagh]

Is it? My understanding is that two dogs may pursue a fox if they come across one, but not a whole pack of hounds. I thought this was one reason the current law is meant to be "unworkable".

Happy to be corrected - this is a genuine question. I very well may have misunderstood something I've read.

You may find it takes some time for the huntsman to stop them. As he was intending to hunt a trail no law has been broken, as it is intent to hunt that is the deal breaker.

 

[Roasted Chestnuts]

Op as long as you stick judgemental on your ignore list (as many do for the amount of seriously one sided and twisted drivel that erupts a lot of the time) then you will get on fine.

As far as I am concerned no question in the pursuit of knowledge is a stupid one, it's what one does with the knowledge is what defines the person, not the question.

 

[Judgemental]

Judgemental, if this op is genuine I'll eat your old Patey ;-)

There's a very good piece, written by Andrew Sallis in this weeks Horse and Hound magazine. Do have a read.

Thank you for that Fellewell. I will have a look at Andrew's piece shortly.

I don't care what flack comes in my direction.

At the end of the day, the Old Hands (Hounds) owe it to Horse and Hound to hit the correct line and ensure that there is no embarrassment generated for the Editor etc. If we allow younger hounds to run a heel line or end up drawing the wrong covert, with a timely check, at least we have done our best to properly whip in. Also not to pay any attention to Cur Dogs speaking and to say it's a Cur Dog.

So far as this thread is concerned, I feel we have Tufted the OP reasonably well but it's still not smelling quite right to put the pack on.

 

[conniegirl]

Op as long as you stick judgemental on your ignore list (as many do for the amount of seriously one sided and twisted drivel that erupts a lot of the time) then you will get on fine.

As far as I am concerned no question in the pursuit of knowledge is a stupid one, it's what one does with the knowledge is what defines the person, not the question.

well said, i've often found that judgemental posts are normaly totaly irrelevant drivel or totaly paranoid drivel! either way its total drivel.

I'm fairly sure Judgemental is a SAB now and in league with LACS as they are currently doing a 5* job of re-enforcing the stereotypes that got hunting in the position it is now and driving people into the Anti Camp at one hell of a rate of knots!

 

[Judgemental]

well said, i've often found that judgemental posts are normaly totaly irrelevant drivel or totaly paranoid drivel! either way its total drivel.

I'm fairly sure Judgemental is a SAB now and in league with LACS as they are currently doing a 5* job of re-enforcing the stereotypes that got hunting in the position it is now and driving people into the Anti Camp at one hell of a rate of knots!

LOL :devilish:

I can understand you are infatuated. I am used to it, happens all the time out hunting. Superb horseman, good looking, especially charming to the ladies both mature and more youthful, kind to children, well mounted x 2nd horses, fast and fearless across country, polite gate opener, shutter and exacting damage steward, all in all thoroughly:cool3:

 

[Fidgety]

LOL :devilish:

I can understand you are infatuated. I am used to it, happens all the time out hunting. Superb horseman, good looking, especially charming to the ladies both mature and more youthful, kind to children, well mounted x 2nd horses, fast and fearless across country, polite gate opener, shutter and exacting damage steward, all in all thoroughly:cool3:

You sound like Rob Titchener (when he's not beating his wife and sabs)

 

[Roasted Chestnuts]

LOL :devilish:

I can understand you are infatuated. I am used to it, happens all the time out hunting. Superb horseman, good looking, especially charming to the ladies both mature and more youthful, kind to children, well mounted x 2nd horses, fast and fearless across country, polite gate opener, shutter and exacting damage steward, all in all thoroughly:cool3:

You sound like Rob Titchener (when he's not beating his wife and sabs)

Pfffffft sounds like someone's been on the gin and is in lalaland more likely

 

[Smellycob]

Judgemental, if this op is genuine I'll eat your old Patey ;-)

There's a very good piece, written by Andrew Sallis in this weeks Horse and Hound magazine. Do have a read.

Hope your hungry x

 

[ycbm]

You are absolutley right, I knew it looked wrong when I wrote it. I may have been talking about female rabbits!?

Oh now I have such a fun picture in my head! Hunting rabbit on horseback . Good way to teach zig zag half pass, maybe?

 

[Stark Dismay]

Wow! Just wow.

Not only is JM arrogant, he is deluded too. One overbearing voice such as his in a public place, whether it be in the press, on the hunting field or on a public forum such as this does considerable damage to the reputation of hunting

 

[Judgemental]

Wow! Just wow.

Not only is JM arrogant, he is deluded too. One overbearing voice such as his in a public place, whether it be in the press, on the hunting field or on a public forum such as this does considerable damage to the reputation of hunting

Gets your attention. Call it Trumpery.:clap:

Part of the new world order, in case you have not noticed.

 

[Fiagai]

Well this threads certainly has been busy! Blimey at least I can say I've made an impression! I'm loathe to do it but, as I am such a thoroughly decent person according to my sarcastic friend, I will respond ...

My crystal ball is at the menders. Without it I'm stuck. Have to ask questions if I want answers.
...
For anyone who was wondering, regarding repeal, as I didn't hunt before the ban and have yet to do so I don't know much about how the ban has actually affected the people who live in the countryside and have to work with the legislation. Apart from youtube videos that is.
...
As far as actual foxhunting goes.... with a view to eradicating a problem pest I gather there are a few ways to do it. Hunting with hounds where if caught I can't see any way out for Mr Fox. He's dead or not. Shooting, where I would think the appropriate person would be very competent BUT there is that risk of a miss and a slow death with some horrible festering wound. And snares and poison (I think) neither of which I fancy very much. So its hounds (which I've read kill instantly) or shooting with a risk of a long death. From a fox welfare pov I know which way I'm leaning BUT it is a lean as I just don't feel educated enough about the issue to make a decision that will affect animal welfare and people's lives. Hence I thought me getting involved and educating myself a bit more would be a good thing. I gather more foxes are also killed when they are shot as opposed to being hunted with hounds.

But anyway...my initial question was about the hounds and how they were dealt with at the end of their days.

Smelly cob- excuse my random editing of your last post as some of JM's posts appeared to have been truncated therin.

My first response to your initial enquiry would be welcome and that it is always good to ask questions.

However considering many posters experience of antis using questions to render division and argument on this forum in the past, it is perhaps not surprising that some may be be a tad reluctant to answer at all.

I would add that to find the answers to your enquiry - don't use Facebook / youtube or similar in a fact finding mission. In my experience 'facts' derived from Facebook and such ilk are perhaps best placed under the descriptions as fantasy and cracked.

What I would suggest is that you seek first hand experience - find your nearest local hunt. Get involved - gain experience and most importantly meet people who look after hounds and those who volunteer as puppy walkers. See how hounds are exercised and work together as a pack. See how the live and interact together. This more than anything will provide answers to your queries.

Best of luck.