The UK's Finest Independent Forum for Shooters and Gun Owners. Est 2010.

Countryman wrote:I afraid as a Smallholder keeping sheep and chickens I feel similar to Dromia about rats and foxes.

I'd not see them all dead as their must be balance but perhaps not during lambing.

Personally if I had to keep shooting foxes (or any other animal) to maintain a smallholding, then I wouldn't do it, but that's me...though I fully understand why you and Dromia would want to protect your livestock, and I would argue for your right to do so.

Countryman wrote:You have pooh poohed my suggestions that foxes are just wired differently in the way they deal with external threats. In doing so you insist on empathising with the fox in a human rationale. This just isn't applicable.

Well it's 'applicable' for me...and I think it's you and me that are 'wired differently'.

Countryman wrote:There are a few threads like this cropping up on forums I frequent and I'm pretty sure it's a concerted effort to stir division and decent amongst field sports people. Divide and conquer has always been the tactic employed by the anti shooting mob.

This is just nonsense.

<dons tin hat>

Lifted from LACS inspired thread on another forum.

Scientific studies have only been undertaken on hunted deer (Bateson 1997, Bateson and Bradshaw 1997, Harris and others 1999). And the findings for some twelve physiological and pathological parameters based on blood and tissue samples taken at the time of death were remarkably similar. For example glycogen levels in muscle were depleted and levels of non-esterified fatty acids in serum, the hormone cortisol and body temperature were all raised. Mild, and in a few cases moderate, muscle damage and some destruction of blood cells (haemolysis) were also observed, although most of the haemolysis was subsequently accepted as artefact due to poor sampling technique (Bateson and Harris 2000). From comparison with human athletes and studies in other athletic animals, Harris and others (1999), Wise (1999) and Bateson and Harris (2000) concluded that all of the changes observed are the normal physiological expression of arousal and exercise. All are reversible and none are of clinical significance to the hunted deer. It is probable that similar reversible responses would be found in hunted foxes, hares and mink. The opinion expressed therefore in the review (Bateson and Harris 2000) that "Taken together with the physiological effects of hunting, it is clear that hunting with hounds would not be tolerated in other areas of animal husbandry" would appear to go substantially beyond that justified by the findings from the two experimental studies and also indicate an imperfect knowledge of animal husbandry, particularly of markets, transportation and slaughter houses.
Wise (1999) has discussed the difficulty of interpreting these physiological parameters as measurements of stress or suffering in hunted deer and he pointed out that it is only when these otherwise normal responses occur in conditions of constraint or captivity that severe suffering occurs. That is when the animal is prevented from taking constructive action, as defined by Webster (1994). Paterson (1996) reported that the effects of evoking a flight and fight response in the absence of exercise produced, in man, a high risk of cardiac arrest. And Wise (1999) interpreted this observation for animals by observing that trapping, physical restraint and transport of wild animals in constrained conditions puts them at risk of succumbing to shock, while pursuit per se does not do so.
Apart from the impossibility of obtaining meaningful sequential data in wild animals, we believe that it is futile to attempt to correlate physiological parameters with stress and suffering. Welfare is not an objective science. It is common sense based on clinical observation, combined with humanity, which the veterinary profession has been practising for centuries past.

Well the laws being tightened to see if it works in England's testing grund.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-s ... s-38813905