According to Research…
Brer Fox has no morals and doesn’t feel a thing.
‘Well, it was a crisp autumn day, don’t ya know, and Brer Fox, he decided he wanted to go hunting,’ so says a Georgia Tall Tale retold by S.E. Schlosser. He may be pleased to learn, according to research by the Committee of Inquiry into Hunting with Dogs in England &Wales (The Burns report 2000), a fox upon being torn to shreds by a hound, doesn’t feel a thing.
‘What is more critical is how quickly insensibility and death result… There seems little doubt that in the vast majority of cases the time to insensibility and death is no more than a few seconds’.
This is quoted by the Countryside Alliance as mitigating evidence supporting fox hunting in England and Wales. If I’d have realised how humane hunting with hounds was, I’d have taken my ailing cat, Maddie, into the woods and had her chased by the baying Duke of Beaufort’s hounds. I even hear they will pay for the privilege, although thinking about it, this refers to the land owner. Interestingly, Lord Burns lists a farm in Powys under a category 5: Land and Property declaration of assets on www.parliament.uk.
Instead I took her to the vet, poor thing, where I paid to have her painlessly put to sleep and cremated. Her ashes were placed in a cylindrical container decorated with a forest mural — sentimental old fool.
In light of the 2004 Hunting Act which prohibits the hunting of foxes by hounds you could argue the Burns report is irrelevant. But fox hunting isn’t banned completely. It’s hunting a fox with a pack of hounds that’s banned. The League against Cruel Sports says, ‘The Hunting Act has been the target of considerable attack from the pro-hunt lobby which has waged an on-going and concerted campaign of disinformation about the Act.’
I examined the Hunting Act 2004 and there’s plenty of grey areas. There is provision within the Hunting Act to hunt foxes with two dogs; if this is to flush out the pesky devil to die by firing squad or by bald headed Eagle, or other bird of prey. ‘Sorry officer, of course I wasn’t intending my pack of dogs to kill the fox, it’s just my Aquila Chrysaetos, Eagle to you, appears to have flown off to roost.’
The Country side alliances website says, ‘hunting is natural to them.’ I wasn’t sure if this means it’s natural for the fox to hunt? Or do they mean the fox doesn’t mind being hunted? Because it’s used to that sort of thing? I’m not sure what they’re getting at. To be fair, I’ve never asked a fox if it feels fear but Professor John Webster may have. He states a sentient animal ‘may come to recognize fear as a constructive motivating force that produces its own reward, not as a source of suffering’ (Animal Welfare — a Cool Eye towards Eden’, 2005.)
I understand fear being a constructive motivating force. Isn’t it something to do with Walter Bradford Canons theory of ‘fight or flight?’ (The Wisdom of the Body). Yes, this is a useful instinct for a prey to possess and even more useful for a potential pursuer who’s more interested in the thrill of the chase. My vegan daughter points out, as a meat eater, I am a hypocrite. But I don’t want to tie my Lidl chicken to a long piece of string and have my wife drive it up the road at twenty miles an hour whilst I chase it on a mountain bike and then cover my face in its slimy gizzards. Then again the fox isn’t being killed for food and a fox hunt is more akin to The Hunger Games without anyone having an appetite.
The alliances website has a section on morality. They say, ‘The world we now live in has been created by us and we therefore have a duty of care to the management of wildlife’. The trouble is in the past nature managed itself and the fox would have been culled by its natural predator the wolf. Unfortunately, the wolves in this country were hunted to extinction.
Check out the Countryside Alliances website or the league against Cruel Sports, maybe when you’re sitting in Costa having a latte. It’s worth looking at both points of view.
I’m just suspicious of the type of person who enjoys watching a defenceless creature being torn to pieces; especially when Lord Burns acknowledges hunting ‘seriously compromises the welfare of the fox.’
No sh** Sherlock.
My advice to the fox is to take a leaf out of Brer Rabbits book. When asked by Brer Fox if he’d like to go hunting with him, he replies, ‘I’se tired today and intend to take it easy”.
I might suggest Brer Fox stays in bed as well.
