Fox Hunting, Immoral ?

Fox Hunting was banned on Friday in the UK. I understand that illegalizing it is wrong and it is not up to the government to decide such things, but is the act of fox hunting itself immoral? The sport doesn't really yield anything positive for the participants except for a thrill, and since this is based on their value judgements then it can be changed to something more "positive". Killing animals for fun seems a little twisted. Hunting for a kill, for food, is obviously different, but killing for enjoyment, and in such an uneccesarily cruel way, isn't it immoral?

Yes, it is immoral to kill animals for "thrill" just like it is immoral to drink excessive ammounts of alcohol or get high on cocaine. It is a short term thrill that adds nothing to your life, and in fact can take away from it. It certainly isn't as bad as doing cocaine, but you get the point.

This being said I do not believe the mear act of hunting for fun is immoral (for example doing it with a friend who enjoys it), only when your doing it to get a thrill out of blowing somethings head off.

What Praxus said, basically. If you're torturing squirrels in your backyard on miniature medieval instuments, then that is immoral. Deer hunting would not be. It's a question of what the person involved is getting out of it and why.

Hunting, for example, is a survival skill and involves the use of the mind and body to solve complex problems. (stealth, tracking, concealment, etc) Nothing wrong with that per se.

Good point.

I think it depends on the intent, as others have said. Hunting for the sole purpose of killing I think is immoral but there are circumstances when hunting is necessary. (e.g. to get rid of pests, like rabbits in Australia, or for food.)

So you don't think hunting for the purpose of training your mind, is immoral?

I'm sorry but very little seems to be known here about Fox Hunting. Firstly I dunno where you got the idea that "fox hunting itself". The fox is hunted with hounds.

Also you seem to think it serves no perpose? I'm afraid it does, which is the only reason this form of hunting has survived so long in the UK, where the governemnt seems bent on banning everything. Farmers NEED fox hunting. Fox's are beyond a nuisance (we have a a VAST over abundance), they are seriously harmful for farms and need to be culled. This new ban is going to course our agriculture industry, especially in northern England, no end of trouble.

A before its mentioned let me hit on another apsect of the hunt. It is NOT in anyway more distressing for a fox to be hunted with hounds than to be shot. It has been argued that hounds are actualy a more humane way of killing a fox than by shooting it. Unless you get a good shot, theres a very good chance a fox will crawl off to some hole and bleed to death slowly and painfully. When a hounds rips it's throat out (just cos it sounds nasty doesnt make it so) its over in an instant and with the adreline rush in the chase its likely the fox will not register a feeling of pain atall.

Until this grossly unfair (and costly) law is reppealed our hunters are going to have to take trips to France, Ireland, US, Canada, Italy, Russia, Kenya, South Africa, India, Australia, New Zealand, Portugal, Belgium and the Netherlands to practise their sport...once upon time Britain was the bastion of liberty

AND unilateral free trade, which for some reason is considered so crazy now that very few would even suggest it. If I hear the term "tariff harminozation" again I'm going to vomit.

I could really care less what a mindless animal does or does not feel.

As I said before: it's a question of what the human involved is getting out of it and why. If they're a sicko that is practicing for someday doing it to humans then, yes, you have a problem. But I refuse to believe that any significant percentage of hunters, fox or otherwise, is made up of psychopaths.

In fact, it is immoral to ban fox hunting as it is an initiation of force against the hunters, who should be able to do what they want on their own property, provided that it doesn’t hurt anyone. And fox hunting hurts nobody.

exactly


Besides what if I argued homosexuality is immoral? Does that mean it should also be banned?

Precisely. Things that are immoral (i.e. that are no good for someone) aren't necessarily going to hurt other people. To make a law against something that was immoral but didn't initiate force against anyone else would be itself an initiation of force, and thus itself immoral!