BoxRec

FlawedGenius wrote:No offence, mate, but you're being a bit naive.

Before us humans "turned up" the amount of available prey (as you say) is what regulated the fox population. This is still the case now.

What you seemingly fail to realise is that "available prey" does not just constitute living things. Like rats, foxes will eat almost anything available - although their preferance is meat.

These days, mainly because of household and commercial food waste - aswell as farmed fur and feather - there are an infinate number of the easy meals you mention available to foxes.

Saying that the fox population should not be controlled is exactly the same as saying the rat population should not be controlled.

No offence taken.

As I did say, foxes are scavengers. I merely used chickens as an example, but of course it's an example that could be applied to almost everything in the fox’s diet. If people didn't give them an easy meal, then there would be no problems. Often it's the very people complaining loudest that are inadvertently feeding their local fox.

Comparing the need to control the fox population with the need to control the rat population is madness. What, in effect, you're saying is that, without regulation, the fox population will grow to epic proportions, and we'll be overrun by the things. There can be no reasonable comparison between the two, what we’re taking about is the fox population rising by, at the very most, a few thousand over an extended period of time. It’s hardly the same thing as the rat population rising by millions in a year.

And no amount of argument is going to change the fact that hunting with dogs is fundamentally wrong. It’s only a marginal step down from bear-baiting. Maybe you’re right and foxes do need to be controlled (i for one think you're wrong), but if that is the case then there are much more humane ways of doing it than setting dogs on the animal. I don’t see how anyone with a conscience could condone an animal that in its own eyes has done no wrong, being torn apart for sport.

FlawedGenius wrote:

glittermonkey wrote:There is no genuine need to keep the Fox population under control. Sorry mate but that's rubbish. Who do you think regulated the animal populations before us humans turned up?

Population levels of top predators are always governed by the amount of available prey. The amount of foxes will certainly rise in the short term if everybody suddenly gave hunting up. But eventually there would be a balance, and numbers of foxes would level out.

Foxes have only attained this menace status because people have made it easy for them. With chickens as an example, if they're looked after properly, then a fox has no chance of taking one of them. You don't look after them, foxes will keep coming back, and will become a problem. They're scavengers, like all canines, if you're going to give them an easy meal they'll take it.

No offence, mate, but you're being a bit naive.

Before us humans "turned up" the amount of available prey (as you say) is what regulated the fox population. This is still the case now.

What you seemingly fail to realise is that "available prey" does not just constitute living things. Like rats, foxes will eat almost anything available - although their preferance is meat.

These days, mainly because of household and commercial food waste - aswell as farmed fur and feather - there are an infinate number of the easy meals you mention available to foxes.

Saying that the fox population should not be controlled is exactly the same as saying the rat population should not be controlled.

No offense mate but you're talking out of your toupe!.
I've never seen rat exterminators chasing a rat with a pack of rabid dogs.
What about when your lot actually introduce foxes into a habitat so that there is something to hunt!.
As for your boasting about how many animals your mutts have killed you really gave the game away as to the mentality behind the 'hunting lobby'... you're all just a bunch of blood hungry sadists!.