I don't disagree with shooting game, just some of the practices that run alongside.

to be fair to this shoot, again if it gets away its gets away, they have a couple of fox drives in the summer, when the birds have just gone down, but no digging out trapping etc, the fox that got shot last saturday, if they couldn't guarantee a clean shot or it was unsafe it would have been allowed to get away, its not a large commercial shoot, just a smallish 100 bird day shoot, but it is a shoot that as far as i have seen in the last 4 years respects its environment and the animals within it

I'm sure most of us could find something we disagree with about everything. But I know what you mean.

Some people are just such hypocrites about it though. The people who moan about how cruel it (game shooting) is and then go and eat an Asda battery farmed chicken for dinner.

its natures instinct for a hound to hunt...

if you read my post, worded carefully, you will see i acknowledged that

thats what i said to my mum the other day when she questioned me because i bought free range eggs, even though the battery eggs were cheaper

my point being that it doesnt matter whether the dog was a stray or not, a hounds instinct is always to hunt. it doesnt matter whether it be out with a person, or on its own.

I agree. Although there is also a world of difference between a person who will take a clean shot and want to kill an animal as quickly as possible, and the kind of person who would torture an animal to death

people that hunt and shoot have great respect for the animals they kill, i think thats the main difference.
one man i know even reared a litter of orphan fox cubs one year (mother had been hit by a car) yet he still hunts every season and will still kill a fox. doesnt mean he doesnt like them, he just does what he sees necessary, countryside management.

Over population creeping into town, now that is a blinkered view point, it is towns that are creeping outwards taking over ground that was once home to many of the wild creatures that are hunted, dug up - slaughtered and torn apart