Cruel foxhounds (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Cruel foxhounds

THE letter of August 12, Unfair to foxes, is contradictory, claiming that a lead hound of a pack killing a fox was quick and humane.

Dogs rarely kill with the so-called 'nip in the back of the neck,' they rip and maul their prey. Foxhunting has never been or ever will be an efficient humane way of controlling fox numbers, it was devised as a pastime and has continued to be so.

No mention of terrier men baiting foxes, cub hunting, hunting not only causing fox numbers to increase in the area hunted, but using artificial earths to have enough quarry for often six days a week hunting.

It is they who have given the fox its undeserved image, as a convenient scapegoat for human faults, arrogantly thinking they own the wildlife: thankfully they have been seen for what they are.

Culling, if and when necessary in the most humane way, is not the same as a demand for a quarry specie, yet foxes left alone control their own sustainable numbers.

Also those people have been obvious by their absence in campaigns to stop the cruelty inflicted by humans on sheep, cattle, chickens and other livestock and happy to let animals go for ritual slaughter.

Intelligent country people choose to outwit the fox, not persecute it because they enjoy it.

Not a politically correct letter but the truth.

D THOMAS

Hisomley, nr Westbury