You said this quite a few pages ago and your still here

Are these urban foxes Dawn? I always think that urban foxes rarely look as fit and healthy as their countryside cousins. If I were a fox, I think I would rather pit my wits against a gamekeeper or hunt, than live in an urban environment.

It is an interesting thought. I am far too soft for my own good and emotional where animals are concerned - that I am aware of I can't help it ... it is in my genetic makeup. I have always lived in the countryside, have never hunted but have watched hunts taking place, I also can't finish an animal off personally, even if it is suffering I can however let my dogs kill a myxy rabbit, although don't watch it going on. I am a shepherd's wife and I eat lamb (as well as beef and chicken) but I absolutely hate watching the lambs go on the wagon to the market or abbattoir. It really upsets me - yet I love my meat.

I don't know what the answer is.

I now live on a grouse moor, which is heavily keepered. I have to live with the fact that predators are being killed up here every day. I have seen it happen in front of me, and it upsets me, but I just have to get on with it.

I don't think I am in the catergory of people who "just don't get it", or "urbanites" who don't know what happens in the countryside. In fact, I imagine I am better placed than most to see what does happen.

I would quite happily allow the dogs to finish the animals off...but they won't!! I was quite happy with the cat keeping our rabbit population down.

I have always lived in rural areas (possibly not as rural as you ) and been aware of these things - we have people who shoot locally and also go out with lurchers...

I used to be a very vocal person on these things without really understanding them - I no longer see the world in Black and white.

Dont want to start an argument here...BUT can anyone who hunts or agrees with it, tell me what they actually get out of seeing a fox getting chased, ripped to shreds, shot etc?
Also where do you lot draw a line...badgers...deer...people paying money to go to africa to shoot big game????

I know most of us eat meat and thats fine...I see a clear reason for that animal being killed(for food) done humanly.
But to kill something for pleasure makes no sense to me...I cant understand it?

I am sorry, but I did not realize I needed your permission to rejoin the debate

Very interesting article, and it does raise some valid points. However, it is clearly written from the point of view of a pro-hunter, and therefore is not a balanced view IMO.

I discussed this debate with my hubby in bed last night and his last remark was that it is far easier (as a shepherd) to live with a family of foxes than it is with a family of badgers - who predate on lambs far more than foxes do.

Just an interesting aside.

Some societies are described as 'hunter/gatherers'.

What I'm saying is that maybe not every individual member of that society was a hunter and a gatherer. Maybe people specialised in one or the other because of a predisposition in their make-up.

I would be a hunter and you (presumably) would be a gatherer.

un-called for personal attack there, spot

please indicate where I have been rude

caring about something does not mean treating it in the same way. Did you mean to imply that those people who do not treat animals the same way as you do, do not care about them?

spot, just on this thread alone hunters have been called

much the same as those who watch dog fighting
people who dress up in silly costumes
the red coated tomfoolery brigade
outdated snob(bery)
bunch of hooligans
bunch of whooping monsters
dressed up like ruddy clowns

(I gave up after page 14, but you get the gist. I think we had some 'blood lust' thrown in for good measure. Dog-fighting was mentioned, but we haven't sunk to mentioning badger-baiting yet.)

If someone talked to you like that face to face, would you then sit down and have a conversation with them? Spot, I have had conversations in real life and on forums for years. It is always the same-old, same-old. When people come out with comments like the above (which they invariably do) I walk away, not because I don't have an answer, but because I wonder what it is for. Ultimately, what does it achieve?

You have your ideas and I have mine. If we cut out the insults maybe we can have a hope of understanding eachother.

the not-getting-it referred to some people who do not understand why others hunt.

I used to think that the 'not getting it' was willful misunderstanding, but I'm a bit more mellow now and think maybe a hunter and an anti have basically different drives. Neither better nor worse than eachother, just different in the same way that my running dog could never understand why my son's staffy wanted to play tug. The staffy never understood running games.

If dogs have different drives why not humans? 'Tis a theory at any rate.

Yes, we have different opinions. Where we differ is that I a prepared to accept that your version of 'right' is totally right for you, but not for me. On the other hand many antis seem to imply that their version of 'right' should be adopted universally.

I know what is right for me. I do not seek to force it on you.

I suppose these are the same types of people who would get pleasure out of watching badger baiting, stallion fights as recently seen on Sky News, along with (as told to my by a well known tv wildlife photographer only 2 weeks ago), the people who would pay hundreds of thousands of pounds to be able to shoot a white lion THESE are the types of people Hades, if you can get your head around them!!! Verging on the insane imo!!! Vermin or NOT, any animal is sacred to me (except rats and spiders!).

Considering anybody I know (including Alice & Dogs On here) that has hunted themselves (and that includes me many moons ago though!) not one of us has actually killed a fox. I know of only one case where I left early, and there was a bit of a chase on, but nothing caught, so I fail to see how the banning of hunting has had any effect whatsoever on the population of the fox. Far more ARE killed on the roads, I see them every single day on the main road alongside my village, even badgers sad as it is for me to drive past, they are always there on the roadside This is enough "control" and culling that I need to see.

As I said before, the only people who seem to have a problem with the poor old fox are the people who don't keep their chickens/rabbits etc. totally secure as they should, and probably some sheep farmers who like Moobli said do not have such good
husbandry contols over them. Not forgetting of course, the gamekeepers in charge of raising those game birds so that other people can have an enjoyable day blowing their brains out! For me, they are the WORST of the worst for laying those horrendous traps, even the illegal poison, I've seen it for myself on the farm where I kept the horse, and where my poor dog ate some poison bait they had left near my field, coz it just happened to be the next field along from the woodland they were raising their gamebirds!Grrrrr. These are the worst culprits of the lot!