Fox? Hunting

[RWStanding]

Fox? Hunting
There is more to this than is superficially seen.
It is question that can be answered in two ways by open hostility, or holistically.
It centres on foxes, but if that debate were settled, would migrate to other animals and forms of hunting. And ultimately to the whole of nature and Man. The purpose and pragmatics have to be considered, beyond any of my expertise.
For authoritarian society it would be consonant or appropriate for nature as a whole to be treated as in the service of mankind under its elite.
For anarchistic or individualistic society as a matter for individual conscience, within individual property.
The more altruistic attitude would indeed see nature as interdependent.
None of these are absolutes, with compromises between them smacking of compromised compromise.
As individual property and consience the failing is immediately obvious, for where nature does not respect boundaries cooperation at some level is unavoidable. Authoritarian society might, as once in England, reserve hunting for the elite, but muddled by also believing in private property - so that it resolved itself into the private fiefdoms of an elite.
From the altruist viewpoint it were better to leave nature to itself and simply to view it as a work of 'art' without interference. In reality as a zoo of small or large size. But we do not live on another planet and nature overlaps the human, so that our external zoo must be protected in some degree from the internal zoos of animals and plants.
Hunting for limitation of animal numbers is unavoidable, so that culling of animals that may used for meat can be justified pragmatically. Other artificial methods of population limitation may be invented, so as to ease any dilemma. Hunting, in the broad, includes all forms of stalking, shooting, and trapping. Trapping may often be fairly harmless, with the method of disposal the main question.
In the practical situation of today, shooting of foxes, deer, badgers, rabbits, and much more will continue. The fact of one method having people riding and enjoying the countryside is a virtue rather than a vice. The altruistic vice being whether the animal is exceedingly stressed and frightened, and also of the huntsmen taking pleasure at this. Indeed it may be possible to call off a hunt after a chase, but before the fox or other animal is caught.
Animals such as foxes that are not hunted, and die 'naturally' may do so in conditions that are far worse. And being eaten by predators is nature being unavoidably awful. A diseased rabbit that is shot may well be thankful, in rabbit understanding or lack of it.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Oscar Wilde said it best:
''The unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible.''