Hunting is a really bad word back home now. I'm not a supporter of fox hunting the way it is practiced today - a society ritual and ego-trip for certain mind-sets - but if a full ban goes through, there are a number of things to consider.
It's just plain silly to think that people who like to hunt foxes will be happy with artificially scented lures. That's like banning Formula 1 racing and telling the Schuhmacher brothers to buy a playstation!
So there WILL be unemployed trainers and a surplus of horses and dogs. Some people and animals are going to lose their livelihood
Also, what will the UK do with the huge fox population that will appear the following year? The campaigners say that foxes self-regulate their population but that is a process that only comes into play after they have expanded geographcally as much as possible. Well, the campaigners reckon that over 70.000 foxes are being killed per year so the first year after a total ban there will be that many extra foxes needing food and looking for it in the countryside, in farms, in villages, towns and cities.
I don't want to seem alarmist but I think that the results of a total ban could be long-term and far-reaching.
I'm reminded of the ban in the UK on pistol-shooting as a sport. The pretext was to reduce gun crime but everyone who actually knew about the matter warned that a ban would result in panic dumping and cheap black market sales. The ban went ahead and a lot of guns were handed in and sports clubs closed. As predicted, after a year the police discovered that the number of handguns in circulation amongst criminals had rocketed and the UK has since then found itself caught in a spiral of an increasing number of crimes using fire-arms.
We should always think about and accept responsability for all the consequences of our actions.
Anti-hunt campaigners should all be prepared to:
- provide homes for all the "unwanted" horses and hounds
- fund training schemes for unemployed professional huntsmen
(Do escaped convicts classify as "wild mammals"? If so, it may be illegal for the police to use dogs to track them...)
It's just plain silly to think that people who like to hunt foxes will be happy with artificially scented lures. That's like banning Formula 1 racing and telling the Schuhmacher brothers to buy a playstation!
So there WILL be unemployed trainers and a surplus of horses and dogs. Some people and animals are going to lose their livelihood
Also, what will the UK do with the huge fox population that will appear the following year? The campaigners say that foxes self-regulate their population but that is a process that only comes into play after they have expanded geographcally as much as possible. Well, the campaigners reckon that over 70.000 foxes are being killed per year so the first year after a total ban there will be that many extra foxes needing food and looking for it in the countryside, in farms, in villages, towns and cities.
I don't want to seem alarmist but I think that the results of a total ban could be long-term and far-reaching.
I'm reminded of the ban in the UK on pistol-shooting as a sport. The pretext was to reduce gun crime but everyone who actually knew about the matter warned that a ban would result in panic dumping and cheap black market sales. The ban went ahead and a lot of guns were handed in and sports clubs closed. As predicted, after a year the police discovered that the number of handguns in circulation amongst criminals had rocketed and the UK has since then found itself caught in a spiral of an increasing number of crimes using fire-arms.
We should always think about and accept responsability for all the consequences of our actions.
Anti-hunt campaigners should all be prepared to:
- provide homes for all the "unwanted" horses and hounds
- fund training schemes for unemployed professional huntsmen
(Do escaped convicts classify as "wild mammals"? If so, it may be illegal for the police to use dogs to track them...)
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