From: "Richard Loweth", [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Q. The essence of the question is: if a wild predatory animal inflicts
a certain level of misery upon its prey -- in the process of subduing it,
what
would you deem to be onerous when a human is conducting the same act?
A. Because the chasing of a fox by hounds is not the act of a "wild
predatory" animal but the use of domestic animals selectively bred by human
beings (since the days of Hugo Meynell) for pleasure in seeing hounds "work"
u under the skilled control of their Huntsman. There is nothing "natural" in
the United Kingdom of a group of dogs chasing another for three, four, five
or even ten to twenty miles until it is exhausted and then killing it.
Q.The question arises, when we consider that modern natural
predators are finely adapted hunters, that have all of the traits necessary
to
seek, track, stalk, and capture its selected prey -- the better part of the
time.
Now, it these predatory animals are more adapted to their tasks
than humans (we are relegated to making tools for the same purpose which
aren't nearly as good as we'd care to confess), how can we lessors to the
art
of hunting be constrained to a degree of humaneness, when it is totally
beyond the pale to even consider such thinking when observing the natural
predator? Merely that we are human?
A. Because the "rules" of fox hunting by mounted packs are concerned with
prolonging the hunt and thus seeing hounds "work" and not with controlling
foxes. Otherwise why when a fox is dug out after "going to earth" is it
given a "field and a fence" and hounds not immediately allowed to fall upon
it and kill it?
Q.We humans who have partaken in the hunt, with primitive tools
that have no keen edges, no projectiles as arrows, bullets and the like, and
have pursued the prey in the most barbaric way, know of the savagery that
the human psyche is capable of.
A.Primitive humans that do today, or have in pre-history, killed animals in
a "barbaric way" do so to survive by eating that animal. It needs not
"justification" as it is "necessity". If one has neither gun, nor bow and
arrow that is powerful enough, nor the use of a horse to pursue and spear
the quarry then the last resort is to drive a bison over a cliff so that it
may be killed in that way.
Q.If it is our natural modus operandi to behave as
we do on a hunt, then I would ask: At what point do we constrain ourselves
A.When it becomes not a "necessity" to either kill vermin or an edible
quarry species but a "pleasure" falsely justified by calling it a
"necessity".
Q.And, by what measure, by what prescribed limit are we to presume
that the animals we have bred for a purpose are no longer suitable, when it
is within their natural capabilities -- and proclivities -- otherwise?
A.Foxhounds are not doing what is a "natural proclivity". The "sport" of fox
hunting as we know it today is not much more than two hundred years old. It
can be said that its "father" was Hugo Meynell in the Nineteenth Century!
The very purpose of "cubbing" is to allow the Huntsman to select out,
recognise and kill those hounds who in fact do follow their "natural
proclivity" in that they have no innate desire to chase or kill foxes. Only
those hounds that act, in reality, contrary to their natural instincts by
seeking to chase and kill the fox are those that are of use to the Huntsman.
Q.And, lastly, if one human perceives of certain misery inflicted
upon another creature, perhaps undeservedly so by the measure we
apply when humans are the comparison, do we err when we apply that
measure to the hunt, and apply it psychologically as though the animal
were domesticated?
A.Pain is pain. A wild mammal feels it not less than a domestic animal.
I welcome the chance to have this reasoned "argument". I hope that you find
my responses thought provoking.
--
My response to all arguments against hunting no matter how reasoned
is that most people don't reason, in fact most people don't care,
except the hunters. So if the hunting of that species is forbidden
the species that is hunted is infinitely worse off, because it will
be neglected and at the mercy of someone building a shopping centre
in the middle of its habitat, or a farmer deciding to use that land
for something else.
Hunters will conserve the species they hunt, whereas it will be in
the hands of an underfunded government agency staffed by civil
servants who largely don't care otherwise.
Whether or not the hunt is "cruel" is purely academic. Compared
to what will happen to that species otherwise it is small potatoes.
Steve.
Cybershooters website: http://www.cybershooters.org
List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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