Hunting, shooting and fishing poll

[Alan Roe]

Can we bring this back on topic as I would rather not have to mod it

[Guest tigger]

Tigger - you can't claim, especially in the same post that you stand by most of what you said, then claim you're on a wind-up.

 

You know you've been sussed - just hold your hands up instead of digging yourself deeper. Everyone knows the score anyway.

 

Seriously, they do.

 

 

 

Hold my hands up to what WB ? I'm not in court and I really don't give a toss what anyone think's about me on here or anywhere else for that matter. How have I dug myself into anything ?

 

 

By the way what's your dog barging it's way into next doors garden diggin the lawn which sounds very much like a one off got to do with someones moggy killing wildlife or going into someones garden and attacking their birds or creatures on a daily basis ? Your at it again WB, living up to your name..............bending things

[Elton]

Ditto what Alan Roe just said....

[oddity]

I used to do a lot more shooting, mainly air rifle. The only thing that put me off it was the members of the club I was in. Had a good few rabbits for the table, and it was an enjoyable form of pest control for local farmers.

I've only ever done catch and release fishing, as I'm not keen on fish! I still have a sometimes unpopular view that chasing around in a pack on horses with a hundred dogs is rightly illegal. To shoot an animal as a pest or for food, a quick and relatively painless death. To chase it for hours kind of seems pointless to me. We invented guns etc so that we don't have to do it anymore!

But each to their own, slavery had a lot of support when it was banned!

[kai dog]

Hi, I fish and shoot, but only targets and sometimes the occasional rat if i see any around my home! Dirty buggars!!!

[Vagabond]

When foxhunting was about to be outlawed, I put forward the view that fox control in the future would be done by the hideous method of farmers' shotguns - with consequence of much suffering by Charlie Fox.

 

Wordbender and others were quick to point out that lamping, with or without lurchers, would be far more efficient and clean-killing than any pack of hounds, or any bunch of farmers with shotguns.

 

True enough, but my point was, and still is - are there enough crack rifle shots and lurcher owners out there nationally to do the job of several packs of hounds? ...and are ALL these lampers the crack shots they claim to be?

 

Terry - you move in rifle shooting circles, and no doubt in your view and in your region, there are enough lampers to do the job.

 

Here, the only guy I know with a firearms certificate culls deer, not foxes (it's where we get our venison from)

Many farmers are too tight fisted to use Rentokil staff or hire lampers, prefering to bladder away with their old double-barrelled twelve.

 

When out fishing and walking the rivers, I see as many foxes as ever I did - can I ask if the number of foxes shot by you and your mates has increased or decreased over the last couple of years? (ie since hunting foxes "officially" ceased?)

[Wordbender]

... can I ask if the number of foxes shot by you and your mates has increased or decreased over the last couple of years? (ie since hunting foxes "officially" ceased?)

 

My personal experience shows a huge increase in foxes shot, at least on land where foxhunting no longer takes place. That was always going to be the case, though.

 

I rarely shoot foxes these days, unless a single animal is causing a specific problem. The fact is, if there's a food source and the opportunity for foxes to exploit it, they'll be there and any that are shot will soon be replaced. Nature abhors a vacuum and all that.

 

All the best, Vagabond.

[Jim Roper]

I understand that the RSPCA now admits that there is more suffering amongst the fox poulation than there was before the hunting ban. Has anybody else heard this? You only have to see the mange-infested creatures that the are around soon after the white van from the Bristol area has dumped them in the country(usually on a shooting estate), to understand.

All this is bit like the handgun ban. A senior Police officer was asked why armed crime had not gone down since the ban. "We didn't expect it to" was his reply.

Hunting with hounds is not the most efficient way of controlling foxes, snaring is much less labour intensive.

Cattle probably suffer a lot of anxiety prior to being slaughtered, unlike a deer that is shot in it's own envirinment.

Hunting with hounds is the best way to maintain a fit, healthy and crafty fox population. It means that anything that is injured on the road, is no longer fit enough to feed and clean itself, or is stupid, is killed before it suffers a slow death. In nature, nothing dies of old age, it get's eaten by something else. Apart from a few areas in this country where wild boar are roaming again, that means that maggots and gangrene bacteria will be the most likely thing to be eating foxes not to far from where you live right now.

I haven't read all the 44 pages in this thread so I might be going over something that has been posted before.

 

My dad's greatest joy was to follow the local hunt on a bicycle. He was a member of a trade union all his life, so not true blue tory. The hunt ban was brought in on his birthday!

[lwd1017]

i frequently fish nd shoot but i only ever shoot if animal if it is doing damage to the land e.g keep the rabbits down as they make the ground sour or grey squirrels as we are over run with them and they destroy the woodland i wouldnt ever shoot somthing for the sake of it. I cant stand people who go out and kill say 5 or 6 pheasants when they;re only going to eat one and the rest are thrown away wat is the point in this?

[Richard72]

You can end up opening a real can of worms when it comes to issues of hunting. It's totally different because importantly, we don't fill the fish with bullet holes and when you put them back, they're generally alive.