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1. On Cruelty

When hunted with hounds, an animal is either killed outright or it gets away unharmed. It is not torn apart while still alive. If caught, a fox, hare or mink is killed, virtually instantaneously, by the lead hound, the first of a large pack. There is much documented evidence of this that can be substantiated by personal observation. A deer is shot cleanly at close range while standing at bay.

It is often asserted that foxes are disembowelled by foxhounds while still alive. This is untrue. It is wrong to generalise about how canines kill. For example, it is true that wild dogs hunting in packs in Africa may disembowel their prey because their prey is larger than them and the dogs snap at the belly and the haunches in trying to bring it down. However, an average full grown fox weighs about 18lb and a foxhound about 75lb. The fox stands 10-12 inches at the head with its body low above the ground. The hound is about 21-24 inches at the shoulder. When hunting the hound bears down on the fox from above and therefore does not disembowel it before killing it.

An animal in the wild dying by "natural" causes often suffers a slow and agonising death - from injury, disease, or starvation . The death suffered by a fox hunted by a pack of hounds is far less painful and quicker than death in this "natural" way.

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2. The Alternative Methods of Control

The four main alternatives to hunting are : -

1. Trapping(normally followed by a shot from close range or blows to the head)

Trapping and the subsequent confinement subject a wild animal to great stress and fear, usually for hours and sometimes days. A wild animal that is trapped is denied its freedom and its natural defence against an enemy - flight. Its reaction to confinement is demonstrated by gamekeepers' anecdotal instances of foxes caught in the now illegal gin-trap biting off its own leg to escape and evidence accepted by Scott Henderson of animals losing a leg in the urge to escape. The hunted quarry, by contrast, is escaping through its natural habitat from a threat which it is equipped by nature to avoid.

2. Snaring

Snaring with a legal snare - one equipped with a "stop" that prevents strangulation - professionally and properly positioned causes the same stress and fear as trapping. An animal correctly snared will struggle violently to free itself, and it may wait many hours in a distressed state before being despatched. However, snaring is a highly skilled method of control and unless the snare is correctly placed it can result in the animal being trapped by the leg and neck or around the body. As the animal struggles the snare tightens around the body which is bigger than the 'stop'. By the time the snare is visited the animal is either in great pain or has died from its self-induced injuries.

Illegal home-made snares are more horrifying and cause the animal even greater pain before death. They do not have a 'stop' and the unfortunate animal tightens the wire noose round its neck in its desperate struggle to get free and strangles itself to death.

Another major disadvantage of the snare as a method of control is that it catches a high proportion of animals other than the target species. A recent test carried out by the Ministry of Agriculture found that 46% of animals caught in legal snares were not of the target species.(Commissioned by Forestry Enterprises, TP 23, Foxes and Forestry).

A ban on hunting would encourage and result in greater use of both legal and illegal snares.

3. Shooting

A clean shot through the head is the most humane method of despatch and the RSPCA maintain that the correct way to control wild animals is for trained marksmen, using long-range rifles, to shoot them in the head. However, even with trained marksmen this is very difficult to achieve and a wounded animal crawls off to die a painful and slow death from its injuries, starvation or gangrene.

The core problem of shooting as a method of control is that there are just not a sufficient number of expert marksmen available around the country and it is unrealistic to think that small scale farmers would have the resources or large scale farmers the inclination to employ such people.

The practical likelihood is that a ban on hunting would see farmers and landowners using shotguns to control the quarry species. The maximum range that the BASC recommends for taking a fox with a shotgun, for instance, is 30 yards. Anything beyond that is likely to lead to a wounded fox.

A ban on hunting would inevitably lead to greater numbers of foxes, hares, mink and deer being shot and wounded by untrained rifle shots and shotgun users and crawling away to die a miserable death.

4. Poisoning

Poisoning, which except for rodents in certain conditions, is illegal, causes a longer, slower, more lingering and cruel death than any of the methods outlined above. Furthermore, poisoning is, like the snare, indiscriminate and other animals can take the bait or eat the dead target animal as carrion, including domestic cats and dogs.

A ban on hunting is likely to lead to greater legal or illegal use of poison as a method of control.

The CAWG believes that when the alternative methods of control are examined closely it becomes clear that a pack of hounds provides the surest and most natural method of despatch.

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3. Natural Selection and Preservation of the Species

Hunting, unlike all other forms of control, results in survival of the fittest among the species. Hunting weeds out the weak, elderly, sick, and wounded leaving the strongest and finest members of the species having the greatest chance of escaping and passing on superior genes.

Other forms of control result in arbitrary selection or human selection, which is, from nature's point of view, arbitrary.

Hunting plays a major part in dispersing the fox population and therefore increasing cross-breeding within the species. This is achieved by autumn hunting when hounds

chase the fleeing fox beyond the territory in which it has grown up. If it survives the chase it remains in and subsequently breeds in its new territory and widens the gene pool.

One of the misconceptions about hunting is that the intention is to kill ruthlessly as many foxes, hares, and deer as possible. It is not. The aim is to achieve sustainable populations at a level acceptable to livestock farmers and the eco-system.

By pursuing the individual animal and respecting and caring for the species the hunt community ensures the recurring presence of the quarry. By allowing it to breed in

its natural habitat and ensuring that the habitat is preserved, hunting establishes a sustainable equilibrium between the fox and man.

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4. The Rules of Hunting

Organised hunting with dogs conforms to a set of rules and procedures that are continually under review by hunting's governing bodies. These rules, which have been set down by experienced people who would not engage in cruelty, are widely accepted by country people and the farming community. The participants in hunting take pleasure not from suffering but from watching or being part of the work and control of the hounds and the inter-relationship between the fox, the hounds, the horses and the countryside and the variety of obstacles and conditions it provides.

Hunting cannot be compared, therefore, to sadistic and rightly banned spectator "sports" like dog-fighting and bear baiting where the infliction of pain, and injury, is the deliberate purpose of the "sport".

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5. Habitat Management

As mentioned earlier, hunting plays an important role in animal welfare by conserving habitats. During a long and continuing period when there has been a progressive destruction of natural habitats for almost all wild animals, country sports in general, and hunting in particular, have provided farmers and landowners with the incentive to preserve coppices, hedges, gorses, spinneys and other forms of natural habitat that are otherwise under threat from agricultural and other commercial development.

Research being carried out by the Game Conservancy Trust in 30 hunts is showing that on average each hunt cares for and manages 562 hectares of woodland. These figures of habitat protection for a broad spectrum of fauna and flora cannot be matched by any County Wildlife Trust.

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6. Animal Welfare Generally

Hunting plays an important animal welfare role beyond the quarry species.

Horses and hounds have their lives made possible and enhanced by the sport. Horses enjoy the excitement of hunting. For many it is their only activity in which they can experience and take pleasure from association with large numbers of other horses which satisfies their natural herd instinct to canter and gallop together. The sport also provides a "second life" for a great number of retired racehorses and eventers who would otherwise be put down or lead an inactive life. Many former racehorses and competition horses that are by character and disposition too strong and competitive to become riding hacks retire to the hunting field where, in the hands of experienced riders, they enjoy a long, active and well cared for life.

Foxhounds, minkhounds and deerhounds are bred for the purposes of hunting. They too enjoy a happy active life in the pack society that is natural to the species. If hunting were banned the breeds would be virtually exterminated because the hunting instinct is so strong that they are difficult to domesticate, even in pups not trained in hunting kennels.

Many animals other than the quarry species benefit from hunting as outlined above. The hunting community is made up of people who, for recreational reasons or for their livelihood care a great deal about animal welfare. Many farmers - the people who look after the greatest number of animals in the country - hunt. They are the people upon whose approach to land management and animal welfare the rest of society depends to ensure our fields and woods are well populated with a broad range of species. To interfere in this by criminalising their chosen form of pest control and or recreation would be against the best interests of animal welfare and in some areas would lead to extinction of the quarry species.

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7. The RSPCA

The Scott Henderson report stated that, although opposed in principle to hunting, the RSPCA did not support a ban because the most likely alternative method of control - shooting - was more cruel than hunting. The report stated :

"It is significant that the RSPCA consider that the cruelty involved in shooting foxes is such as to make it an unsatisfactory substitute for hunting, and that they would prefer hunting (to which they are naturally opposed on ethical grounds) to continue if its abolition were likely to lead to an increase in shooting"

The CAWG believes the animal welfare and cruelty issues have not changed since then and neither has the shooting issue. What has changed today is that hunting is more tightly regulated than it was at that time.

What has also changed is the RSPCA's attitude to shooting which we believe now to be part of the irrational sentimentality that caused Society members to form the CAWG in the interests of animal welfare. But even today the Society is confused and inconsistent in its attitude to shooting. In its policy document "RSPCA Policies on Animal Welfare" its section condemning and opposing shooting states:

"The RSPCA accepts that a 'clean kill' is the intention of those shooting for sport, but it is a fact that this does not always happen, and that therefore suffering does occur."

The inconsistency in the Society’s current policies is that in advocating shooting to replace hunting for control purposes, it believes that the suffering of a wounded animal caused by pest control shooting is acceptable, but in opposing shooting for sport, it believes the suffering of an animal wounded in shooting for sport is unacceptable.

We believe the RSPCA's assertions about the alleged cruelty of hunting do not take into account either the greater suffering caused by other methods of control or the benefit to species emanating from hunting and habitat management. Hunting must be measured against the cruelty of other forms of control in the context of the real world in the wild and not in sentimental and anthropomorphic terms. We believe that, by aligning itself with "animal rights" organisations and their extreme policies on hunting, the RSPCA is being counter-productive to the best interests of animal welfare.

Date uploaded to site 30 March 2000