Anti-hunting group calls for end to foxhound breeding

Protect the Wild, a campaign group that opposes hunting, is calling for an immediate end to the breeding of foxhounds. It refers to the animals as the “forgotten victims” of hunting. 

To reinforce its demands to end foxhound breeding and to ban the historic rural practice of hunting entirely, the organisation quoted a series of statistics on annual hound mortality that, with a little research, do not stack up. The numbers are based on a series of circumstantial assumptions, projections based on tiny data sets, and legacy figures that were released over 20 years ago. 

Ed Swales, chairman of Hunting Kind, which represents natural hunting as a whole, said: “Being asked to stop breeding our hunting hounds is to fail to understand the “hunting gene” of our shared human and canine cultural heritage. The oldest recorded cave painting of a hunt is 50,000 years old, depicting a pig hunt in Indonesia. 

“We have bloodline records going back 65 generations. The Old English and Welsh hound are breeds that need protection, not eradication at the hand of some clueless animal rights extremists. 

“Hounds are pack animals, capable of running 60 to 70 miles a day. Is it cruel to deny them their natural behaviour?”