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Britain Has a Disease

The Hunting of Mammals With Dogs: Illegal Since 2004

By Graeme PuxtyPublished 6 years ago 3 min read
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I am not VERMIN

Britain is infected with a horrible disease; a form of cancer which is having an effect on the entire nation. That cancer is HUNTING WITH DOGS.

The Sickness In Britain

Primarily, hunting with dogs focuses on foxes. Everyone envisages men and women wearing red jackets and black riding helmets, sitting atop magnificent horses and quaffing champagne before riding majestically through the countryside in pursuit of the fox. This couldn't be further from the truth.

The truth about fox hunting is thus: people who have an attitude that a species which has been around in Britain since before humans evolved are considered vermin because they hunt for food and because some of the species which they hunt—species which have been on their menu for hundreds of thousands of years—just happen to be species which also happen to be farmed...not farmed primarily for food, farmed for PROFIT.

Foxes don't take healthy sheep or lambs, they take the older sheep and the sickly lambs. They do take chickens, but then they also take rabbits, and neither of these species are indigenous to Britain. Rabbits were brought here by the Romans. I am unsure as to the origins of chickens, but I know that they are not a native species. Another fact about chickens is that they are tree-dwellers; they live in forests and woodland. They are not barn birds.

Let me tell you about a hunt and what goes on.

The hunt sets off across the countryside. It consists of around 10 to 15 riders on horseback as well as those who follow the hunt, a group of terriermen—they are responsible for the hounds—and then we come to the hounds themselves, normally around 30 to 40 animals, and for what? To pursue a terrified animal—namely the fox—across open countryside and woodland, meadows and farmland, until eventually, the fox either goes to ground or escapes to live another day.

Going to ground doesn't necessarily mean safety, it means that, in all likelihood, the terriermen will firstly try to retrieve the fox by sending a terrier dog down the earth to flush the fox out, and if that fails, they will dig the fox out and then throw it to the hounds which will tear it apart in a violent, frenzied attack. All of the time that the chase is going on, and whilst the digging out is taking place, the fox is enduring terror which is impossible to imagine. Try to imagine what it would be like to be eaten alive by a wild animal and you just might have an idea of how the fox might be feeling. It is going though stresses which, if a human being were to suffer, they would be hospitalised and drugged up to the eyeballs. No such respite for the fox.

Another thing about fox hunting is that it isn't always just the fox that suffers. Foxes will often go to ground in a badger sett, and for this reason, terriermen will fill in any setts which they find so as to deprive the fox of any refuge. This traps the badger underground, but if by chance a fox makes it into a badger sett, the terriermen will again dig the fox out so that they can throw it to the hounds, and in addition, they will kill the badger in the process.

The Hunting Of Mammals With Dogs Act 2004 makes fox hunting illegal, and badgers have been a protected species for even longer, and yet this barbaric past time continues because it is a TRADITION, but this tradition is a sickness, a cancer, and it needs to be removed, and the only way to remove this cancer is by public outcry.

It may be a surprise for you to learn that there are other hunting-related activities which go on behind the scenes of which the public hear little or nothing about, and that is the even more heinous and barbaric practice of training the hounds to tear apart foxes by using fox cubs gained from captive breeding operations by farmers. The cubs are taken one at a time to the kennels and tossed to the hounds, who then tear them to pieces. It is also suspected that other animals, domestic pets, stolen from gardens and public parks, small dogs, puppies, cats—all of these animals are suspected as having been used to train hounds.

Ask yourself: is this not a cancer for which there IS a cure? Write to your MP, get all of your friends and neighbours to do the same. Conduct a local petition. Do whatever it takes to force government to end this blood sport once and for all and to prosecute all of those who partake in it.

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