jourdain - //I agree with NJ 21.32. I would add that I never saw anything really wrong with foxhunting. Foxes have to be culled. This is one method and probably the most natural - the chaser/hunter is chased and hunted. Oh dear, I will have lost friends. Just because some people (I am not one of them) wish to use the necessity as a sport troubles me not at all. The hounds will chase and kill whatever -and the hunt followers will get a good gallop following them. //
I would not say you will lose friends for your view, you are entitled to it, as are we all.
I would however, question some of the assertions you have made - I fail to see that hunting foxes from horseback with dogs is 'natural' in any sense of the term.
I would not dispute that foxes need to be controlled, but statistics show that hunting is absolutely not an effective way of doing so.
Which brings me to the main argument I have against hunting, and the defence of it -
People who hunt foxes don't do it to control the fox population, they do it because they like hunting foxes, and they are hypocrites not to admit their blood lust and take the hostility it causes.
If they want a good gallop, then have a good gallop why traipse a load of dogs around and hunt to death a fox? the two are not remotely connected.
// OK, I'm doomed on AB. But I'll tell you now that I much prefer this to the French method of sending dogs into one side of a copse and standing by at the other end with a rain of gunfire which targeted everything which emerged- including pet dogs and cats. //
Just because one form of hunting is marginally more barbaric than the other does not in itself excuse the barbarity of the first form. That is frankly no defence at all, but then, I believe that fox hunting is indefensible anyway.