Hare Coursing

Ah c'mon now, we've all chased a bit of Hare around at one stage or another

Chuck Stone wrote: »

This?

The management of Limerick Racecourse is being asked to view footage of hares hit and mauled at the venue and stop hosting the cruel blood sport.

ICABS are perfectly entitled to draw attention to something they (and many others) see as cruel - where is the criminality in this?

But the video they'e using to make this claim has none of these things in it. The Hare doesn't get mauled or hit, it is picked up by an official as soon as the dogs caught up to it and carried off the field.

It's one thing to say the event is cruel but it doesn't help their argument to embellish their story so much. If they argued against the sport on the basis of the current rules people might listen but going into hysterics and claiming things happened which we have video evidence to prove didn't is just silly.

Chuck Stone wrote: »

Are you qualified to state that they've breached any laws or are you just giving your opinion?

Section one of the Protection of Animals Act says:

1.-(1) If any person –
(a) shall cruelly beat, kick, ill-treat, over-ride, over-drive, over-load, torture, infuriate or terrify any animal, or shall cause or procure, or, being the owner, permit any animal to be so used, or shall, by wantonly or unreasonably doing or omitting to do any act, or causing or procuring the commission or omission of any act, cause any unnecessary suffering, or, being the owner, permit any unnecessary suffering to be so caused to any animal;
...
such person shall be guilty of an offence of cruelty within the meaning of this Act

Exactly how much qualification do you believe is necessary to start that the word cruelty means the world cruelty?

So they've accused them of being criminals now is it? This is a campaign by them to have Limerick RC stop allowing their facilities to be used for something they (and many others) see as cruel.

Which would be in breach of section one of the act as outlined above.

Welcome to democracy and freedom in the 21st Century.
Enjoy your stay.

And please read the rulebook, where it says that we believe in the rule of law and not the court of public opinion as being the preferred forum to solve criminal matters. We file complaints with the police and prosecute such cases in courts of law to obtain binding judgements.

When you go to the court of public opinion, you are bypassing things like the need for evidence and logic and rational argument. If you need to do that... then perhaps we should not be listening at all.

Artful_Badger wrote: »

This is the problem, you're confusing welfare of the species with welfare of the animal.

My entire point was based on not confusing the two and considering how one is traded off against the other. I suspect you misread my post, and reading the rest of your post just increases the strength of that suspicion.

Why don't the Irish hunting lobby become more vocal on the issue of conservation if they're so interested it in it? Its bewildering to me why they dont as they would garner a lot more public and academic support. Also conservationalists would get what they want out of it too .

Artful_Badger wrote: »

I'm not talking about Disney characters I'm talking about unnecessary cruelty to animals and in the case of Hare coursing it is unnecessary and cruel. And no matter how much you pat yourself on the back for protecting the species the fact remains its only protected to be exploited.

If that's the case there would really need to be an alternative conservation project in place before coursing is banned. It would be Ironic is coursing was banned to protect the individual animals only for the species to go extinct.

steddyeddy wrote: »

Why don't the Irish hunting lobby become more vocal on the issue of conservation if they're so interested it in it? Its bewildering to me why they dont as they would garner a lot more public and academic support. Also conservationalists would get what they want out of it too .

I'm sure they do but the press cherry picks the most extreme viewpoints and have no interest in a constructive public debate.

Chuck Stone wrote: »

It clearly does. Granted, the word mauled may be misconstrued as 'ripping to shreds' but if you look at the definition mauled also means to be treated roughly.



I'm guessing these guys are smart enough to know what they can and can't get away with saying.

Ok so technically according to the definition of the word they get mauled but like you say I had an image of the word "mauled" meaning gored to death. With that definition I don't think a slight mauling is that bad in the grand scheme of things.

ScumLord wrote: »

If that's the case there would really need to be an alternative conservation project in place before coursing is banned. It would be Ironic is coursing was banned to protect the individual animals only for the species to go extinct.

I'm sure they do but the press cherry picks the most extreme viewpoints and have no interest in a constructive public debate.

Ok so technically according to the definition of the word they get mauled but like you say I had an image of the word "mauled" meaning gored to death. With that definition I don't think a slight mauling is that bad in the grand scheme of things.

They dont deal with conservationalists. A few hunters who post here do but the hunting lobby in general dont and dont care, unlike the American hunting lobby for example. That's why im skeptical about Irish hunting groups to be honest.

Artful_Badger wrote: »

Your entire post was about trading one off against the other as if they can be be.

But they are, every day, in every species, ours included (what, you think that capitalism and communism aren't different tradeoffs between the welfare of the individual and the welfare of the herd?). So the idea that they cannot be traded off is one I would see as self-evidently false.

Artful_Badger wrote: »

I'm not aware of any trade off between the welfare of the herd at the expense of the protection of the rights of individuals not to be subjected to unnecessary cruelty

You've added that part in bold there to my actual point, which is why you're not aware of such a tradeoff (though there are those who would argue that a system which ensures that some will always have more than others to the point of creating poverty and hunger was a form of unnecessary cruelty, our legislators included - that's the reason for social welfare, after all).

Any trade off in societal terms would be a breach of an individuals basic human rights.
...
So how is it perfectly fine in relation to animals ?

Because animals don't have rights.

And that's the deep distinction between animal welfare (which is what all of our laws are based on) and animal rights (which no country uses as a basis for law because it's not possible to have a legal system like that).

steddyeddy wrote: »

They dont deal with conservationalists. A few hunters who post here do but the hunting lobby in general dont and dont care, unlike the American hunting lobby for example. That's why im skeptical about Irish hunting groups to be honest.

Conservation is an integral part of what hunters everywhere do.

They do not go about raping and plundering the countryside, as some would have us believe, because they know how Nature works.

Irish hunters work at parish level to protect wildlife and these type of people are do-ers, rather than talkers, so you will not hear about it a lot.

The people I am talking about might be fine clearing weeds from a pond or feeding wildlife in cold winters or planting cover for birds when tracts of the country were getting covered in concrete: but many are modest types, who don't seek publicity in local papers etc and don't ask them to go on Twitter!

Artful_Badger wrote: »

I didnt add it to your point at all, it is the point you were making. You mentioned Hare coursing and Pheasant shooting. Whatever about Hare coursing I'm sure even you cant try to claim that pheasant hunting which results in the shooting dead of pheasants after being scared out of their hiding place isnt cruel. The fact that its a sport means its unnecessary. You argue that hunting is a good trade off to keep the species alive so I've added nothing you havent said yourself.

...and you've just gone and accused every wildfowler out there of breaking the Protection of Animals Act, section one.

Animals the same as humans have whatever rights people are willing to extend to them, the law in itself is written by people dont forget and it varies from society to society.

And in no state today do animals have rights.
And the whole point of rights is that they come with duties; you obey the law, and the law provides and protects certain rights. That's the basic, fundamental principle. Animals aren't capable of entering into that social contract, so, no rights.

Put it another way. Let's say you give animals rights. The first right, the one on which all others are based, is the right to life. So we stop killing food animals overnight. Okay, now what about the carnivores?

Do we expect animals who have neither the teeth nor the digestive tract to eat plant proteins to just lie down and die? And when the carnivores start killing animals to survive, will we arrest them or just say that animal rights only apply when looking at how animals interact with humans, in which case they're not rights at all, but something else and we should stop calling them rights.

The whole concept is so fundamentally flawed from its inception that no state has ever used it as a basis for law, nor could they ever do so.

In recent years in the western world we have seen the welfare of animals protected under law.

Yes, welfare. Which is a completely different thing entirely. Look at the Protection of Animals Act. It's based on the concept of animal welfare - it says no unnecessary cruelty, but it has no prohibition whatsoever on food animals or animals being used to carry loads or to entertain or to be pets.

In the case of certain sports they have changed it to limit the cruelty on the animals because of the changes in law. They changed to suit, the law didnt change to suit the sports so there was no trade off, just a shifting from the barbaric to the more civilised to avoid criminality.

Two important points here, please note them:

1. The law changed first. Then people followed the new law. That's how it works. Our current law is obeyed until it changes; and it currently states that what ICABS is saying with this petition is defamation of Limerick Racecourse by accusing them of breaking the law without proof. If your argument is that the law must be obeyed, then you're not only arguing my point, you're arguing against this petition and its ilk. We have a different way to change our laws; this isn't it.
2. You say a shift from the barbaric to the civilised. I say I've seen what industrial food production in the "civilised" age looks like and frankly, I think the life lived by game animals before they are hunted is a far more humane one. And if shooting a fox is needed so we can have free range chicken instead of battery farmed chicken, then I say that's the more humane thing to do. This whole Barbarism-v-Civilisation idea is one that's rooted in ignorance of the facts (especially given what the word Barbarian actually means and what it meant in context when coined).