From: "E.J. Totty", [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Richard:
[...]
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.
[...]
Well, do you not consider humans to be natural?
If certain predatory animals hunt in packs -- and if humans also
hunt in packs, and if crows & ravens often fly ahead of packs of wolves,
in the direction of the prey -- not unlike hunting dogs conducting the same
operation, then are humans unnatural in this regard, yet animals not?
To simply equate human activity as unnecessary merely because
there is no real need to assuage hunger, is the same thing as condemning
a domesticated dog's instinct that causes it to chase other animals in its
quest to sate the natural desire.
It is, in relevant terms, the same thing as ridiculing someone for
employing a slide rule when they might avail themselves to a modern computer.
That someone wants to pursue an older way of doing things is no
reason to condemn them. If they pursue the act in a wasteful way, then there
is room for ridicule.
[...]
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?
[...]
To give it a chance?
Why not put the question direct to the people conducting the hunt?
Does every fox get killed that is put to the hunt?
If the answer is not, then it seems that the hunters are being more
than a bit kind. They might well have ended its life when it was captured initially.
[...]
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.
[...]
I might remind you, Richard, that cliffs are some pretty rare real estate.
The only other option is to face the quarry direct. Not a pretty sight.
Wolves have the habit of eating their prey alive, i.e., while it is still alive
and breathing, the pack is munching down. Lions too, among others.
Humans are perhaps the only mammalian species that attempts to makes
sure the prey is dead before consuming it.
[...]
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".
[...]
Well, then, by that definition, none of us 'need' hunt at all, owing to
the fact that everything we 'need' to survive is provided in one way or another by
the mass market and distributed so efficiently and at such a 'reasonable price' as
to negate any thought of hunting at all.
Freedom of choice is at risk here.
But then, the ultimate destination that arrives of your thinking in this
matter would also deprive us of many other earthly pleasures, based simply as it
were on the same theme as you state above. It doesn't take much thought to see
where it would lead.
It devolves to a question of 'choice'. Will you be deprived of a choice in
the matter, simply because a group of people who form the majority are
disenchanted with the idea of hunting a certain way? Or, hunting at all?
Ultimately it falls to a matter of degree, determined by a group of people
who have never participated, who have no interest, and who could care less about
your own feelings: only that they get to lord it over everybody else who thinks
differently than you. It allows them to feel powerful, and that feeling of power is
intoxicating indeed! This year we take half; next year we take more -- or the rest.
[...]
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.
[...]
Interesting. When I was a wee lad, every dog I knew expressed the
hankering to go running after the foxes which inhabited almost every area
of land that I was resident to.
It is unfortunate that some breeders do put down the offspring of
the litters they raise. If find that extremely unkind. But I am not about to
affront them in the matter either.
[...]
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.
[...]
That isn't answering the question, Richard, it's bypassing it.
So, I'll paraphrase:
If an animal is killed by another animal, and the act as
witnessed by humans who, perceive of pain as expressed by the prey,
and if humans -- when conducting a hunt -- also perceive of pain by
the prey in the course of its killing, is the same as that expressed by the
prey when taken by another animal, is it proper to transfer that perceived
pain (to apply psychologically) to that which we would otherwise not do
to a domesticated animal?
In other words, we most certainly would not kill a domesticated
animal in the same fashion as a wild animal, owing to the fact of its captivity,
and domestication: we would not chase it about the countryside in an effort
to kill it, in that we had previously given it our attentions.
But is it proper to apply the same psychology to the hunted animal?
If you answer in the affirmative, then you cannot be a hunter, and
if you answer in the negative, then no there can be no validating argument
against hunting, since humans are no more or less 'guilty' of inflictive pain.
If a natural predator cannot be faulted for its hunt, then neither can
humans be faulted, since humans share every aspect of the hunter, save perhaps
sensory systems that are sorely lacking.
--
[...]
Whether or not the hunt is "cruel" is purely academic. Compared
to what will happen to that species otherwise it is small potatoes.
Steve.
[...]
And that is perhaps the more relevant statement.
Ducks Unlimited has done more to enhance natural
waterways and preserve natural habitat than any number of
animal activist who pretend to care, but never set foot in the muck
and water, or traipse about the back country to do the real work.
Quintessential couch potato activists who must find
someone to hate more than themselves.
--
In Liberty,
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"Whenever we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember
that virtue is not hereditary." --Thomas Paine
By way of the The Federalist http://www.Federalist.com/
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ET
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