Sunday Times: Hunts kill 91 foxes on first day of ban
On the first day of the hunting ban 250 hunts rode out into the wintry sun and killed no fewer than 91 foxes. It looked very much like business as usual, apart from some huntsmen dragging effigies of Tony Blair for their hounds to pursue.
I've been doing some maths:
- I don't know the size of a typical hunt, but as a conservative (in both senses of the word) estimate, let's say it's 30 horse-faced toffs and associated hangers-on, plus a pack of, say, 30 dogs. (I'll ignore the horses, hunt saboteurs, police, and Sunday Times journalists to keep it simple.)
- That's 7,500 people and 7,500 dogs working a whole day to kill 91 foxes.
- That's 0.0121 foxes per person/dog per day.
- That's 82½ person/dog days to kill a single fox.
Doesn't that strike you as spectacularly inefficient?
It makes a lie of their argument that fox hunting is was all about pest control.
Either that, or the hunting ban has been highly successful in reducing the number of foxes killed for fun.
