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Can hunters and their supporters spell hypocrisy

9/3/2016

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Hunt supporters, led by Tim Bonner, CEO of the Countryside Alliance, are waging war on hunt saboteurs. Their latest modus operandi is to try to change the law to prevent sabs from effectively sabotaging illegal hunts by attacking their right to cover their faces in public.

A vitriolic and one-sided spiel against the sabs in the Mail Online on the 6th March gave pro hunt Victoria Prentice, MP for Banbury, a platform from which to explain her plan to discuss hunt sabs and face coverings during the debate on the Police and Crime Bill in the Commons. It is not currently illegal to cover one’s face in public, but Ms Prentis omitted to mention that the pro hunt supporters also avail themselves of this right whenever they intend to commit acts of vandalism or inflict personal injuries onto those who are against their cruel form of entertainment.  

Ms Prentis told The Mail on Sunday: ‘It is simply not acceptable that extremists can carry out harassment and assaults without fear of identification or prosecution.’

Only thing wrong with her comment is that hunt saboteurs are most definitely not extremists. It is not extreme to care about animals and want to stop them suffering at the hands of thugs who set dogs on foxes as a form of entertainment. Not all hunt sabs cover their faces, and those who do do so to prevent reprisals from the thugs who follow the hunt.  

No one would argue about stopping masked thugs causing mayhem however, but the problem with the lady’s comment is her breath-taking hypocrisy.  More often than not when the saboteurs go out to monitor the hunts they are met with taunts and threats, and often actual bodily harm from masked up hunt bullies who cover their faces so they cannot be identified and punished for their crimes.

In one incident, as recently as March 6th masked supporters of the Ross Harriers hunt attacked a vehicle belonging to hunt saboteurs, smashing the rear window and showering the passengers in glass. The police are investigating and have retrieved the weapon used in the attack. Often tyres are slashed, and mutilated animals or excrement is left on the sabs’ car bonnets.

In November last year a hunt saboteur underwent plastic surgery to his hand after he was knifed by a masked hunt supporter at the Southdown and Eridge hunt, near Crowborough. Simon Russell suffered nerve and muscle damage during the assault. A 20-year-old hunt supporter was arrested on suspicion of grievous bodily harm relating to the attack. Mr Russell, who has been sabbing since he was 17, said doctors were unsure if he would regain the feeling in his thumb and he was lucky not to have lost his fingers.

And it’s not just the males who are violent. A Bedworth woman supporter of the Atherstone hunt was arrested in February 2015 after she failed to turn up in Court. She was filmed assaulting an anti-fox hunt protester in order to stop her filming the hunt chasing a fox.

Laura Caines was found guilty on two counts of assault by beating after she raked her nails down the saboteur’s cheek. The attack occurred just inside the Warwickshire border, near to Whittingham Farm in the north of the county. The Atherstone hunt denied knowing the woman, something they do regularly when their followers are caught in the act of breaking the law.

No masks this time, but in September of last year the Atherstone were again in the news. This time a hunt steward taunted the hunt monitors with a simulated sex act on a dead Canada goose. The video, released by West Midlands Hunt Saboteurs, shows a young man in a ‘hunt steward’ hoodie spinning the goose’s head around before another steward launches a kick in the direction of the lifeless bird. He then goes on to simulate a sex act with the corpse before forcing the bird’s beak open in an attempt to mimic talking. The Atherstone hunt denied knowing goose man at first, but filmed evidence showed the girlfriend of one of the hunt joint masters dressed in hunting gear laughing up on her horse and taking pictures.

Below is an extract from Outpaced, an online source for information about hunts and their thuggish behaviour. This account is particularly upsetting because the victim was a lone monitor whose only crime is that she loves animals and she is a gentle and courageous woman.
Outpaced  

“I recently watched a video of a hunt monitor being taunted as she was sprayed with water pistols full of piss, and the anger that this gave rise to was almost overwhelming.  Every instinct in me wanted to be there, to rip the pistol from the tweed-clad arms and to wipe the rictus grins from their faces.
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The only thing that kept my rage to heel was the overpowering admiration for the way that hunt monitor (a small-statured, inoffensive and kind woman) kept her poise, her dignity and her absolutely unshakeable courage in the face of such treatment from a bunch of baying morons who sought to intimidate her.  She was nothing less than awesome as she stood strong, kept a reasoned tone, and took that treatment in the knowledge that it was the price of perhaps saving a fox that day.  It is humbling.”

Week in week out, brave people like that woman, are assaulted and threatened. The thugs on horseback and their brutal followers are emboldened by the indifference of the police to illegal hunting. They are not afraid of confrontation because they know the police usually believe their lies and the Courts rarely offer any punitive incentives for them to obey the law. There is an army of lawyers who specialise in hunting law waiting to use the loopholes in the hunting Act to get them off, and pro hunting MPs like Victoria Prentis are always waiting in the wings for any opportunity to argue a case against the thin line of saboteurs who are all that stand between pain, fear and death for British wildlife. The Countryside Alliance, that mouthpiece for all that is wrong in the British countryside, has the ear of many Tory MPs so that justice is rarely seen to be done.

Hunting brutality and hunters hiding behind face masks is nothing new to the saboteurs however. The savagery of the blood sports fraternity and the beatings have been going on for decades. As long ago as 1995 well before the hunting Act, balaclava-clad thugs at the Crawley and Horsham Foxhunt in Sussex smashed a saboteur van's windscreen. Meanwhile at the Cattistock Foxhunt in Somerset, Alistair Jackson, the southeast region press spokesman of the British Field Sports Society (BFSS), was arrested after punching a saboteur to the ground. The list is endless stretching back over countless times.

Lee Moon spokesperson for the Hunt Saboteurs Association said, ‘Hunters head out with the intention of illegally chasing and killing wildlife and when their efforts are thwarted they take their frustrations out on those who have stopped them. Violence against sabs has been going on for decades but as the hunts know it doesn't deter us, rather it makes us more determined to get out there and stop them killing.’

Reluctant heroes who do not ask for fame. We must support our saboteurs because it seems the establishment will do nothing to protect our precious wild life.

You have until March 18, 2016 to sign this petition - Time to strengthen the Hunting Act

Check out
Video of Atherstone steward simulating sex with a dead goose http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/local-news/warning-disturbing-video-shows-atherstone-10111039

Cotswold hunter on a horse attacking a sab https://www.facebook.com/3CHuntSabs/?fref=ts&ref=br_tf

15 year old assaulting saboteurs https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=video+atherstone+hunt+attacking+monitor&qpvt=video+atherstone+hunt+attacking+monitor&view=detail&mid=B1D580A012116A6D48BCB1D580A012116A6D48BC&FORM=VRDGAR

Hunt Saboteurs Association (warning graphic images of mutilated animals) http://www.huntsabs.org.uk/index.php?catid=0&id=208
5 Comments

A rattle of claymores and an English capitulation

7/7/2015

4 Comments

 
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Op-Ed: Who would have thought that after such a build-up, David Cameron would back down over his Statutory Instrument (SI) which, although it was a small change in the legislation, would have led to gargantuan changes in the English law on hunting with dogs? A backdoor repeal in fact.

The Countryside Alliance, formerly the British Field Sports (blood sports) Association, is understandably disappointed because they saw the SI as a way of bringing back old style hunting with a full pack of dogs. It would not have been a full repeal, but it would have been so significant a change in the English law that those who like killing UK wildlife for the fun of it could have resumed that activity with little fear of prosecution.

As the law stands at the moment, the mounted hunts in England have nothing whatsoever to do with fox ‘control’. They are allowed to trail hunt or drag hunt, and nothing else. The law is constructed that way to prevent animals being chased and pulled apart by dogs, although a loophole of two dogs to flush to guns was included at the Act’s inception to placate the farmers and gamekeepers who said they needed to be able to kill foxes to protect their livestock.

​(This is in spite of the studies which have shown that foxes are not a huge threat to farm animals, including lambs and free range poultry)

There is a different arrangement in the Scottish Act, where a full pack of dogs with mounted huntsmen can flush a troublesome fox from cover to waiting guns. The fox is not to be chased under Scottish law and the animal can only be flushed if the farmer or land owner gives specific permission for an animal to be killed who is perceived to be a danger to his livestock.

Mr Cameron was intending to bring English law into line with Scottish law and the idea was enthusiastically embraced by the Countryside Alliance, in spite of previous supplications that there should be full repeal because shooting foxes was hideously cruel in their view, they saw immediately how aligning themselves with Scottish hunters would be a great advantage, and they threw their cruelty argument about shooting those animals straight out of the window.

Like the fox in the bag, Cameron thought he had his quarry well and truly secured. Unfortunately for the hunting set he was arrogant enough to discount the strength of public opinion against hunting, and he set aside the 15th of July for the 90 minutes allowed for discussion in the firm belief that chasing foxes once more was on the cards. His SI would have been a stroke of pure genius, and it didn’t give those of us against hunt cruelty much time to mobilise. It was also snuck in on the day of the budget too. Nevertheless, people all over Britain, town and country alike, began to contact MPs on social media and by telephone and email. A concerted effort was made to beg the SNP to use their compassionate vote, and it paid off.

Angus Roberson, who has always been against the cruelty of hunting, and Nicola Sturgeon announced that the SNP would break with tradition and vote NO along with Labour and the forty or so compassionate Conservative MPs who see hunting as a moral issue not a political bun fight.

Ms Sturgeon told the BBC that she had received an unprecedented amount of communication from people in Scotland, and also English and Welsh anti-hunting supporters too, urging her to speak up for wildlife on both sides of the border

Once the SNP had declared their intentions, David Cameron knew that his free vote would not go the way he wanted, so he cancelled the debate. The Scottish branch of the Countryside Alliance immediately turned the issue into one of Scotland versus England and the long knives were out for the SNP. Mr James Barrington (Welfare Officer for the Countryside Alliance) said, Quote: It is important to understand that there had been discussions between the government and the SNP prior to the introduction of the amendments, and that they would not have been brought forward had the SNP signalled that it was going to enter the debate. End of Quote.

I think the public understands very well that David Cameron intends only to allow a vote when he knows he can win. He doesn’t seem to mind that this is undemocratic and unconstitutional and hardly constitutes a free vote in the true meaning of the word.

The Countryside Alliance has changed tack again and its propaganda machine is now trying to convince the rest of us that failure to embrace the Scottish law will signal the death knell for many UK species, and foxes will suffer in ways unimaginable. In fact it is quite possible the sky may fall down. Perhaps they have forgotten that hunting traditional style has been banned or the last ten years and nothing untoward has happened as a consequence of that.

What of the SNP in all of this? They have given Mr Cameron the bloody nose he deserves and they have promised a review of their own hunting laws after the League against Cruel Sports showed video evidence of Scottish hunts killing foxes against the rules.

We all know it’s always been business as usual here in England and most hunts flout the ban, but at least with the hunting Act intact, if evidence can be provided there is some hope of a successful prosecution following on. The hunters know this, as do the saboteurs and monitors who risk their lives to gather evidence of illegal hunting and, with the cubbing season about to start in the next couple of weeks that evidence gathering would have been practically impossible if Cameron had altered the Act to allow a full pack of dogs to operate. There is also the law of aggravated trespass which was specifically brought in by this government to curtail the activities of the saboteurs. It is a criminal offense, which carries a huge fine and a possible spell in prison, if a saboteur enters private land even to obtain evidence of illegal hunting.

What now? Cameron’s climb down has given those against hunt cruelty breathing space, but it’s not over. A free vote was promised in the Tory manifesto, and this is one promise Cameron intends to keep. He and his bloodthirsty parliamentary big guns are determined to give his friends what they want. He is willing and eager it seems, to ignore three quarters of the population and he is even prepared to damage the reputation of the Conservative party as a whole.

The war against animal cruelty goes on, and those of us who give a damn must keep fighting until we have enough MPs onside to remove once and for all this horrible threat that hangs over out precious wild animals.

Who would have thought that after such a build-up, David Cameron would back down over his Statutory Instrument (SI) which, although it was a small change in the legislation, would have led to gargantuan changes in the English law on hunting with dogs? A backdoor repeal in fact.

The Countryside Alliance, formerly the British Field Sports (blood sports) Association, is understandably disappointed because they saw the SI a way of bringing back old style hunting with a full pack of dogs. It would not have been a full repeal, but it would have been so significant a change in the English law that those who like killing UK wildlife for the fun of it could have resumed that activity with little fear of prosecution.

As the law stands at the moment, the mounted hunts in England have nothing whatsoever to do with fox ‘control’. They are allowed to trail hunt or drag hunt, and nothing else. The law is constructed that way to prevent animals being chased and pulled apart by dogs, although a loophole of two dogs to flush to guns was included at the Act’s inception to placate the farmers and gamekeepers who said they needed to be able to kill foxes to protect their livestock. (This is in spite of the studies which have shown that foxes are not a huge threat to farm animals, including lambs and free range poultry)

There is a different arrangement in the Scottish Act, where a full pack of dogs with mounted huntsmen can flush a troublesome fox from cover to waiting guns. The fox is not to be chased under Scottish law and the animal can only be flushed if the farmer or land owner gives specific permission for an animal to be killed who is perceived to be a danger to his livestock.

Mr Cameron was intending to bring English law into line with Scottish law and the idea was enthusiastically embraced by the Countryside Alliance, in spite of previous supplications that there should be full repeal because shooting foxes was hideously cruel in their view, they saw immediately how aligning themselves with Scottish hunters would be a great advantage, and they threw their cruelty argument about shooting those animals straight out of the window.

Like the fox in the bag, Cameron thought he had his quarry well and truly secured. Unfortunately for the hunting set he was arrogant enough to discount the strength of public opinion against hunting, and he set aside the 15th of July for the 90 minutes allowed for discussion in the firm belief that chasing foxes once more was on the cards. His SI would have been a stroke of pure genius, and it didn’t give those of us against hunt cruelty much time to mobilise. It was also snuck in on the day of the budget too. Nevertheless, people all over Britain, town and country alike, began to contact MPs on social media and by telephone and email. A concerted effort was made to beg the SNP to use their compassionate vote, and it paid off.

Angus Roberson, who has always been against the cruelty of hunting, and Nicola Sturgeon announced that the SNP would break with tradition and vote NO along with Labour and the forty or so compassionate Conservative MPs who see hunting as a moral issue not a political bun fight.

Ms Sturgeon told the BBC that she had received an unprecedented amount of communication from people in Scotland, and also English and Welsh anti-hunting supporters too, urging her to speak up for wildlife on both sides of the border

Once the SNP had declared their intentions, David Cameron knew that his free vote would not go the way he wanted, so he cancelled the debate. The Scottish branch of the Countryside Alliance immediately turned the issue into one of Scotland versus England and the long knives were out for the SNP. Mr James Barrington (Welfare Officer for the Countryside Alliance) said, Quote: It is important to understand that there had been discussions between the government and the SNP prior to the introduction of the amendments, and that they would not have been brought forward had the SNP signalled that it was going to enter the debate. End of Quote.

I think the public understands very well that David Cameron intends only to allow a vote when he knows he can win. He doesn’t seem to mind that this is undemocratic and unconstitutional and hardly constitutes a free vote in the true meaning of the word.

The Countryside Alliance has changed tack again and its propaganda machine is now trying to convince the rest of us that failure to embrace the Scottish law will signal the death knell for many UK species, and foxes will suffer in ways unimaginable. In fact it is quite possible the sky may fall down. Perhaps they have forgotten that hunting traditional style has been banned or the last ten years and nothing untoward has happened as a consequence of that.

What of the SNP in all of this? They have given Mr Cameron the bloody nose he deserves and they have promised a review of their own hunting laws after the League against Cruel Sports showed video evidence of Scottish hunts killing foxes against the rules.

We all know it’s always been business as usual here in England and most hunts flout the ban, but at least with the hunting Act intact, if evidence can be provided there is some hope of a successful prosecution following on. The hunters know this, as do the saboteurs and monitors who risk their lives to gather evidence of illegal hunting and, with the cubbing season about to start in the next couple of weeks that evidence gathering would have been practically impossible if Cameron had altered the Act to allow a full pack of dogs to operate. There is also the law of aggravated trespass which was specifically brought in by this government to curtail the activities of the saboteurs. It is a criminal offense, which carries a huge fine and a possible spell in prison, if a saboteur enters private land even to obtain evidence of illegal hunting.

What now? Cameron’s climb down has given those against hunt cruelty breathing space, but it’s not over. A free vote was promised in the Tory manifesto, and this is one promise Cameron intends to keep. He and his bloodthirsty parliamentary big guns are determined to give his friends what they want. He is willing and eager it seems, to ignore three quarters of the population and he is even prepared to damage the reputation of the Conservative party as a whole.

The war against animal cruelty goes on, and those of us who give a damn must keep fighting until we have enough MPs onside to remove once and for all this horrible threat that hangs over our precious wild animals.
4 Comments

Traditions and tribulations of a fox hunter

4/7/2015

2 Comments

 
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I saw two snippets of news online yesterday; both were cameos, which could have easily been missed in today’s troubled world. One was an interview on BBC This Week with Michael Portillo and Dr Brian May, and the other was a story in the Telegraph and on the BBC about a Rambo style fox who held eight adults to ransom in a country sports centre.

The first report from the BBC goes like this,

‘A "vicious" fox trapped eight people inside a sports club for three hours as it stalked them from the car park. The animal appeared as people were preparing to leave Alconbury Sports and Social Club, Cambridgeshire. Panic reigned, with a woman being bitten, a man falling off his bicycle as he was chased and a pest controller being pursued back to his car. Club chairman Bruce Staines, who was chased around the car park, said he had "never seen anything like it". Mr Staines admitted he "tweaked his groin" trying to get away from the marauding animal and back to the safety of the club. "None of us could get out. When we tried to use a side door, the fox heard and came haring round there."

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The Telegraph story was pretty similar adding that the man who fell off his bicycle lost his glasses and the club members had to barricade themselves in the building as the fox stalked them outside. The woman who was bitten tried to distract the fox with food so the others could escape apparently.

A pest controller was called but when he tried to approach the animal it "went for him" and chased him back to his car. The animal was eventually caught and destroyed but there is no comment on how or when that happened. The only pictures supplied were a generic picture of a fox totally unrelated to the story, and another picture allegedly of the offending fox taken through the window of the sports centre. Apparently the terrified crew inside the building watched the animal casing the joint on the CCTV but no footage has been supplied as yet.

The May / Portillo interview was equally bizarre, with Dr May explaining carefully why hunting should stay banned and Mr Portillo replying that hunting and bull fighting were both great traditions and as such should be allowed to continue as before. He even went on to claim that his practising Catholicism impelled him to hold that view. Animal souls, Mr Portillo said, were not as important as human souls.

Of course we know that those in favour of blood sports twist what has gone before to suit their arguments too, but I have never heard the Catholic Church cited as a reason for enjoying eviscerating those small red cousins of our dogs. The excuses the hunting fraternity come up with for continuing fox hunting are quite similar to the excuses put forward by the slave owners when the Abolitionist movement first came into being, and indeed tradition, when deployed in this manner could be a cover for almost any disgusting and oppressive fetish held by those in power.

Defenders of slavery argued that slavery had existed throughout history and was the natural state of mankind. The Greeks had slaves, the Romans had slaves so why can’t we have slaves etc.. Hunters frequently assail us with similar reasoning, stating that because Richard Martin (a founding member of the RSPCA) was a fox hunter, it makes it okay for us to be fox hunters too.

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Traditionally apparently two wrongs always make a right.

I wonder how Mr Portillo feels about defenders of slavery righteously quoting that in the Old Testament, Abraham had slaves. They even cited the 10 commandments saying, ‘Thou shalt not covert thy neighbour’s manservant, nor his maidservant.” So of course that must mean having servants, i.e. slaves was okay. The New Testament was also hauled up to bear witness that Paul returned a runaway slave and Jesus never uttered a word about slavery.

Just like animals today, slave owners said black people, (not just slaves) had no legal rights. They were property, and being property meant rights were not bestowed upon them. They could be used and abused as their masters saw fit. The slavers fought the Abolitionists in the courts and the Judges ruled in their favour. The slave owners were adamant that they had God on their side.

 I’m getting a strange feeling of Déjà vu here. 

Welfare is another claim made by the Countryside Alliance to persuade the rest of us that they are killing animals not just for fun, but mainly for their own good.  Hunters are apparently saving the hunted from growing old and dying from natural causes.

 Defenders of slavery argued that slavery was a good thing for the enslaved. John C. Calhoun said, “Never before has the black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually.” That is almost something James Barrington could have included in his pro hunting blogs as he often infers that hunters are doing foxes a massive favour by killing them.

The slave owners also said that they would protect and assist the slaves when they were sick and aged, unlike those who, once fired from their work, were left to fend helplessly for themselves. Now here I think the slave owners had one up on hunters morally, because hunters never claim to protect the old sick animals. In fact chasing and killing old sick animals is doing the species as a whole a great service according to the Countryside Alliance. (I’m minded here that Dr Shipman had the same idea about the elderly under his care in the NHS) It’s not mentioned of course that there won’t be many old foxes because although they can live as long as our dogs in captivity, a wild fox is lucky to see his second birthday.

 Next we come to the labels. James Thornwell, a minister, wrote in 1860, “One party to this conflict are not merely Abolitionists they are Atheists, Socialists, Communists, Red Republicans, Jacobins. The slave owners are the friends of order, religion and regulated freedom.”

Similar insults ring in my head about those of us against hunting cruelties today.

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We are supposedly not just against blood sports, we are also jobless, scroungers who don’t wash and who spend our time thinking up terrorist plots to thwart the innocent hunters who after all are only abusing animals for their own good. We are called ignorant townies, which is meant to convey great insult. Only those who live in the countryside should have any say in what is allowed to live and what must die. 

Throughout history, when a society forms around any institution, as the South did around slavery, it will formulate a set of arguments to support it. That those arguments don’t hold water didn’t seem to matter to the slave owners at all, and similarly the hunters don’t care that their reasons for the continuation of their barbaric and outdated tradition don’t hold water among the more empathic of their contemporaries.

Hunters talk about horrific cruelty to animals not associated with hunting, and in those cases proudly carry the RSPCA banner, then in the same breath they want that organisation cast down for prosecuting hunting abuse. A bizarre situation where it’s impossible to know if the hunters have managed to brain wash themselves, or if they are hoping that by repeated repetition of a lie, the rest of us will come to believe it to be the truth. 

If hunting is a tradition that must be upheld, then it’s only fair that that great old RSPCA tradition of prosecuting those who kill for fun must be upheld too.

2 Comments

Fox hunting dirty underbelly

23/5/2015

2 Comments

 
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A far cry from the chocolate box pictures the hunters like to provide in support of their nefarious pastime is ‘terrier work’, or digging out as it is known in hunting circles. Digging out is a barbaric and savage activity, which is as much a part of the hunt as the bucolic images of rosy-cheeked children seen playing with the fox-hounds at the beginning of the meet.

Terrier work is carried out by the bully boys of the hunt, who ride around on quad bikes with their little terriers in large boxes on the back. Terrier men are not averse to a bit of people bashing either, and they are often summoned by the gentlemen in pink to hinder and intimidate anti-hunt monitors and hunt saboteurs.

According to the website Digging Out which runs a campaign to abolish all terrier work,

“Terrier work is all too often a euphemism for fox baiting and in the past was for badger baiting. Terriers are put into situations where they encounter and then fight foxes below ground. The terrier work literature is full of references to the prowess of their dogs in finding and locking onto animals below ground.”

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And it’s not just the wild animals that get hurt, terriers are often severely injured in the subterranean fights. The men have little regard for the pain of their dogs. That is borne out by the way they are transported and handled and the injuries the terriers receive which are often repaired using homemade sewing kits and no anaesthetic.

Imagine what is must be like for a small fox hiding in complete darkness.  He has been chased to earth by a pack of baying hounds where he lies exhausted and trembling waiting for the danger above ground to pass. The men have either blocked or netted his other escape routes and introduced a dog into the hole. The fox is trapped and can only fight for his life whilst the men dig him out from above.


Sometimes if the fox is facing away from the terrier he may be savaged from behind. His hind quarters will be torn and slashed by the dog which will bite anything within reach of its jaws. Don’t forget dog and fox are fighting in a small space devoid of any light. Terrible injuries can result to both animals from these underground fights which are protracted and always bloody.

Fighting terriers, or hard-mouthed dogs, are forbidden under the hunting Act of 2004, but under pressure from the blood sports lobby, some terrier work is allowed to continue under exemptions for gamekeepers and others. What is not allowed is using a terrier other than to flush a fox from cover, but if you think these men give a fig about the law then think again. They are brutal, callous individuals who often try to claim they are providing a service by exterminating vermin. 

This is a lie on two counts. First, foxes are not vermin and second, they mostly don’t need to be killed. The only thing these vile men provide is a grisly satisfaction for themselves and their ‘sport’. Where ever you find a sadistic act of cruelty you will also find an abuser who will defend his actions by claiming the animal he likes to torture is vermin. In 2011 a gamekeeper was convicted of extreme cruelty when he caught a fox in a snare and set his dogs on the animal, who was forced to fight for his life whilst snared and backed into a corner by this horrible thug. This man watched with a friend, and even videoed the fox’s torment on his phone. Eventually, when the fox was too weak to fight any more, it was shot. His defense in court was to claim he was dispatching vermin. He said it was only a fox and he had done nothing wrong by his way of thinking. The RSPCA Inspector said he had never seen anything so cruel in his ten years of working with the RSPCA.

These are the kind of people who often follow the hunt, although they can also be found acting independently, travelling up and down the country in pursuit of their vile entertainment. They are not immoral they are amoral, and they operate in a subterranean culture totally without empathy and without conscience. Setting a dog on a fox is indistinguishable from dog-fighting and baiting. Indeed in 2007 a BBC Panorama program revealed that many dog-fighting rings attend terrier and lurcher shows which are held throughout the UK. Terrier work and cruelty go hand in hand. To find the truth of this we need look no further than Facebook where people openly boast and post their nasty pictures of the wild animals they have persecuted, tortured and destroyed. 

The League Against Cruel Sports has reported two recent incidents of cruelty to foxes in Wales. Members of the campaign group Wales Against Animal Cruelty reported that even though it is against the law two men admitted to sending a terrier underground to find a fox. The men had netted the escape holes and were caught on camera shooting the fox as it tried to escape.

The second incident has caused widespread outrage and has even prompted a petition insisting that the people responsible are arrested and prosecuted. The petition wording makes horrific reading,

“They came upon a young vixen who had just given birth to two young fox cubs. She was too weak to defend the cubs, and against the thugs of this hunt group and the dogs, she did not stand a chance.

The vixen whilst battling to defend herself as she was being torn to pieces would have had to watch as her two newly born cubs were also dragged from the den she had made safe and secure to give birth and feed these two sweet little cubs, the dogs then tore the vixen to pieces and killed her, not satisfied with this cruelty the "huntsmen" if you can call them that, teased the terrier dogs with the newly born defenseless cubs and allowed the dogs to take chunks from them.”  

The petition calls on the Chief Constable of Dyfed Powys Police Constabulary to investigate the hunt and people on Twitter also sent messages asking what the police intend to do, if anything.  

The League has stated on their website,

 “The League has flagged these reports with South Wales Police, in a hope that they will look into the incidents further to determine if any illegal activity has taken place. The information will also be used by the League’s own Investigations Team, which is tasked to investigate cruel sports, illegal hunting and wildlife crime.”

It takes a particularly nasty type of human being to set dogs on a defenseless animal in order to enjoy the outcome. More often than not the animals these vile people torture display a measure of courage that their gutless assailants could never match. This is one of many stories from the archives of the Hunt Saboteurs Magazine Howl 1989

“4th March: Essex Foxhounds hunt a vixen and mark her to ground. Before hunt saboteurs from the mid-Essex group can reach the scene the hunt’s terrier men dig the vixen out and kill her. They left the scene apparently unaware that the vixen was lactating and had obviously given birth. The vixen had been killed just inside the earth where she had stood up to and fought the hunt terriers to protect her young. Hunt saboteurs, on reaching the earth, heard faint mewing sounds from amongst the wreckage of the earth. They started digging and were rewarded with the sight of nine newly born and still blind cubs no more than five days old. Their vixen had sacrificed her life for them – but not in vain. These cubs were taken away to an animal sanctuary and with a great deal of care reared successfully for later release back into the wild, in a safe area.”

Hopefully in 2015, and with a change of Government, the law will be strengthened to outlaw terrier work completely and those found breaking the law will be treated to a spell in prison and banned from keeping animals and owning guns for life.

Resources and related reading
Keep the hunting ban, only civilised way forward
Political skulduggery and the Countryside Alliance

Time to strengthen the Hunting Act

British democracy, don't make me laugh 

http://www.diggingout.org/

2 Comments

Keep the hunting ban, only civilised way forward

22/5/2015

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PictureDig out
An article in the METRO by James Barrington of the Countryside Alliance (a pro-blood sports hunting/shooting organisation) caught my eye this week. I was surprised to see that Mr Barrington started his article by quoting some well-known people who are against hunting, and who are vociferous in exposing the cruelty that pastime inflicts on defenceless wild animals.   

“Hunting is a barbarous activity carried out by people who couldn’t care less about the welfare of wild animals – if you believe the likes of Ricky Gervais and Brian May.” (quote: James Barrington)

Mr Barrington then goes on to invite ‘genuine scrutiny’ of that viewpoint, which he claims proves to be false. So let us take him at his word and scrutinise the sport of mounted fox hunting with hounds.

The savaging of a hunted fox by the hounds, or the ‘business end’ of the activity as Mr Barrington describes it, happens after a long chase.


Hounds are specially bred for stamina rather that speed, and sometimes the chase can last for hours until the exhausted fox can run no more and is forced to attempt to fight thirty or forty dogs. The fox is quickly rolled onto his back by the much bigger heavier hounds, exposing his soft under belly, and he is disembowelled as he tries to fight for his life.  Dogs kill by biting and tearing, there is no swift nip on the neck, as hunters used to claim, before video and post mortem evidence proved that to be a lie. Hunted foxes caught above ground are quite literally bitten to death. Huge chunks of flesh are torn from the fox’s body, leaving gaping wounds and exposing organs and other structures underneath. To claim that hunting is non-wounding, or the fox escapes unscathed, is just another attempt to gloss over and sanitise a cruel and savage sport. The time from capture to death is irrelevant; it is obscene on every level to inflict this kind of mental and physical suffering on any sentient creature for any length of time however short or long that time may be.

In 2002, post-mortems carried out as evidence for the Home Office report into the animal welfare aspects of hunting hares and foxes, showed that 5 of the 12 hares killed were pregnant, and all had their necks broken by humans after bites by greyhounds had failed to kill them. The corpses of four foxes killed by hunting were also examined by vets at the University of Bristol. Two of the foxes had been shot, having gone to ground, but the post mortem on the first fox (hunted in Cotswold Park) showed it had been savaged before death. The second fox (hunted on Salisbury Plain) was dug out, having gone to ground after being chased, and had to be shot twice. This poor animal was forced to fight with a terrier underground, and after half an hour of digging, was hauled out and shot first through the shoulder, which failed to kill him so a second shot was required.

The post-mortems on the other two foxes who were killed above ground, showed that one had suffered multiple bite wounds on the face and the top of the head. There was serious damage to the right eye, and bite wounds around the throat. The animal’s rib cage had been torn open and its lungs and stomach bitten. Professor David Morton, Head of Biomedical Ethics at Birmingham University, said the evidence pointed to the fox having been attacked whilst it was upside down or on its side. The other fox was also savaged, but it was thought he had died from suffocation which would not have been instant.  None of the animals died instantly which clearly shows they would have suffered greatly.

A different cruel fate awaits those foxes who manage to go to ground. This is taken from the Campaign for the Abolition of Terrier Work website,

“Apart from the pain from the injuries from fighting underground, sometimes a dog entered may encounter a wild animal with its back to it, and therefore that dog will rip at the backside of the wild creature. This cruelty can last for several hours, and there are accounts of foxes having parts of their back passage and abdomen ripped out while in this position. There are also numerous references to foxes having their faces ripped off by the dog underground.”

Sometimes the fox is killed underground after protracted fighting with a terrier man’s dog, and there are often severe injuries to the terrier too. The men are meanwhile digging down from above. If the fox has taken refuge in a badger sett, digging him out may take many hours. Often a shot is fired into the hole to make sure the cowering, terrified animal inside is too afraid to try to bolt. Any escape holes are netted or blocked.

Once the fox is located, he is dragged out, and if he is lucky, he is shot dead.

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Re-coated huntsman watches dig out
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Terrier men on quad
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All that's left, scrap of skin
Sometimes he will be thrown to the dogs alive, and the men may take videos which are later posted up on social media sites like Face Book or Instagram. The terrier men are also the hunt bully boys who are not above committing GBH on others who attempt to disrupt hunting by diverting the hounds away from their fleeing quarry.   

(Today it is illegal to use a hard mouthed, or fighting terrier, underground, and rather than risk taking an injured animal to a vet, the terrier men often stitch their dogs’ wounds themselves without anaesthetic or analgesia.)

The story of Copper the fox, named because he was saved by a policeman’s helmet, illustrates perfectly the misleading statement that foxes may escape unscathed. Copper had been chased down a hole, over which was placed a policeman’s helmet to prevent him being dragged out and killed.

The standoff lasted sometime, but eventually when the hunt gave up and moved off, Copper was rescued, and taken to a wildlife centre to recover. Such was his mental trauma from being chased that he suffered multi organ failure, including bleeding from both kidneys.

The other claim that fox hounds generally catch the old, weak, and diseased or injured fox is pure nonsense.


There is no fun chasing an old or sick animal who is quickly caught. Hounds will chase and kill anything, including pregnant vixens and even our pets, when their blood is up.  It is also quite despicable to even think about setting a pack of dogs after a creature who is too old or too sick to run away. And why would it be necessary in the first place? Foxes only live for a couple of years in the wild and an animal that is sick can be easily caught and either treated or humanely euthanised by a vet.   

Hunters also like to compare their dog-packs to packs of wolves. They pretend that the whole grisly business is nothing more than hounds emulating nature. Nature does not select specifically for a long chase, neither are wolves followed by people on horses, nor do they line the trail with supporters who cheer them on and keep an eye on the quarry for them, whilst preventing it from going to ground or escaping by hiding. Wolves most certainly do not keep terriers in little boxes on the back of quad bikes, nor do they go out equipped with nets, radio collars and spades. Nature determines the health and size of the fox population in the UK.

There are approximately a quarter of a million foxes in Britain, including urban foxes, and that number has remained static since records began. Like all predators, foxes control their own numbers according to food supply and habitat, they are not over populating and they never were. It’s worth asking why, if the hunting set is so concerned with the rest of us being overrun by foxes, that they go to so much trouble to build artificial earths to encourage foxes in areas where they are scarce, or where they can be safely killed out of sight of prying eyes. Pre ban foxes were imported from abroad when their numbers were so low that there were not enough to provide a day’s sport.  

Hunting can NEVER be acceptable morally or practically. Hunters don’t kill enough to be termed controllers and foxes don’t need to be controlled. Attempting to justify hunting by claiming that other methods of killing foxes cause worse suffering is simply ignoring the fact that foxes don’t need to be killed in the first place.

It is not entirely certain that the Tories will have the numbers to repeal the hunting Act and the Donoughue proposal is being touted as an alternative. This is nothing more than a Trojan horse which will reinstate hunting exactly as it was pre ban with no possible hope of prosecutions for cruelty.

It’s all smoke and mirrors, all designed to make us believe that hunting is necessary and humane animal welfare. Dr May had it right when he said  the only truth the hunters tell about hunting is that they enjoy it.

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