h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've just entered this as a journal entry on my home page before searching for similar entries. I should have found this first. What follows is the entry.

Hunting with Dogs! (4 minutes ago)

I don't condone the hunt sabateurs's stupidity and I'm sure that the last remaining fox hunters will wipe themselves out with their own irrational justification and the odd bit of friendly fire. Every time they open there mouths to justify fox hunting with hounds, they put their own proverbial foot in it and contradict their own argument a few minutes later. Such as "Its only fox hunting that keeps the numbers down" followed by "We don't catch many, we can go for weeks and not have a kill!". The Countryman's Newpaper recently stated "If it wasn't for fox hunting the fox would have long since been extinct!" Yeh right! some logic missing there.

This touchy subject is in the UK national news quite often as the labour party want to ban it as The National Trust already have on their own land. Some recent research at one university found that where there were most fox hunts there was also the highest population of foxes! Why? Because there was a high proportion of tenant farmers who were encouraged not to shoot foxes but leave them for the hunt. As fox hunting with hounds is by the hunters own admission not very efficient there are more foxes where they hunt them than in other areas where the farmers just go out and shoot them if there's a problem. One man with one gun can kill more foxes in a few hours than dozens of horse riders with hounds even when their accomplices had already been out into the woods and earthed up the foxes escape routes.

At last years local show, my wife told me that one hunt had brought their pack of hounds on to do a lap of the ring and while the compere was announcing their arrival by claiming that these well behaved hounds would show those anti-hunt people who had said that the hounds were always out of control, how well behaved they could be. Right on cue they ignored the rope boundary at one corner and were out amongst the crowds, searching out the hot dog stands and peeing up against one unsuspecting lady whose smart dress and shoe got a
washing they weren't expecting.

This year, long after the various packs of fox hounds, bassett hounds and beagles had done their laps of honour, there were odd hounds wandering all over the place. I could have taken a lovely contraversial photo of a fox hound defecating on the grass with a young child playing only yards away or a man with lurcher whose unused lead was thoughtfully drapped over the owners shoulders while the dog peed against the rack of shooting sticks on the next stand. The entry programme clearly stated on the front cover that all dogs must be on leads yet owners of lurchers, terriers etc wandered around hoping their mutts would be obediently following their heels rather than making a nuisance of themselves. They weren't and they did.

Nuff said.