"Janet Baraclough.." wrote in message
...
The message
from Sacha contains these words:
Killing foxes - or
rabbits, or magpies, or crows, or whatever - is part of countryside
management. And that is what the *farmers* are doing. Only now they
are
being forced by the anti-hunt nuts to do it in such a way as to make it
probable that the foxes are dying in great pain and larger numbers.


In Scotland, AFAIR there was very little anti-hunt protest. The change
was a straightforward majority decision of the Scottish Parliament.
There were only 10 Scottish horse/hound hunts, in the flatter lowlands
with suitable terrain for galloping a horse. Fox control in the rest
(majority) of Scotland has always been done by other methods including
shooting.It's inaccurate to claim that farmers here have been "forced by
anti-hunt nuts" into shooting foxes badly. The raised killcounts are
figures provided by the same sport hunts comparing their OWN pre- and
post-ban tallies. They are still hunting foxes. IOW, your comments above
are criticising sport hunts.

The largest Scottish hunt, the Buccleugh, records that it killed twice
as many foxes pa after the ban as before. It's still legal here to use
hounds to "flush foxes to the guns", but inevitably they still chase and
kill some before the foxes get to the guns. Before the ban, foxes which
went to ground were let alone. Now the hunt sends in terriers to flush
it out to shoot. In 03 to 04, the Buccleugh's tally was 58 foxes shot by
guns,19 killed by hounds and 26 shot leaving boltholes.


If similar 'workarounds' prove feasible in England and Wales, the Act is
hardly likely to stop hunting with hounds.