It's time to end the scandal of live hare coursing

[musashi]

I agree with the OP, hare coursing is cruel.

It's a cultural thing though, in Spain they fight bulls, in England they hunt foxes, here we course hares. Why some of us choose to witness such a spectacle, is the rub.

Foxhunting:
http://www.politicalworld.org/showth...ght=foxhunting

[Priz]

Hare coursing should be done away with. Amazing that this still happens.

[fluffybiscuits]

Just replying to a few points: I accept what Holly says about there being more pressing issues than hare coursing in the world. I think that goes without saying and I can see Holly is sincere in making this point.

However, I have noticed at other times that when I tried to discuss the cruelty of coursing with fans of the "sport" they invariably start talking about something else if they fear they might be at the slightest risk of losing the argument, as in "how can you be worried about coursing when the country is in recession, the Taliban are still fighting NATO in Afghanistan, the Syrians are suffering under the dictatorship" etc etc. All extremely important issues and yes, more important any day of the week than hare coursing.

But your regular coursing apologist does not, I have found, introduce these issues into a conversation or debate out of concern for hard-pressed householders, sufferers from negative equity, victims of oppression or earthquakes or anything else, They do so to distract from the one issue they they don't want to talk about, namely the proven and glaringly obvious cruelty of hare coursing. They bring in these issues to effectively close down the conversation.

Also, one can be concerned about the plight of people in the Middle East or anywhere else and also have a view on hare coursing and be concerned about such cruelty to animals.

Re Shutaplura's comments, I don't accept that an animal in a slaughterhouse is cruellty abused given that the creature is stunned before being killed, unless there is a breach of this requirement in which case the animal cruelty laws are being broken and the breach can be investigated. There is a world of difference between killing animal for meat (whatever one thinks of that) and putting an animal through a long drawn out ordeal of utterly unnecessary suffering for the casual amusement of human beings

I've heard before about all the supposed great conservation work done by coursing clubs. In fact they collect hares solely for the purpose of using them as bait in coursing.

Re numbers of hares coursed or killed, the objection to coursing generally is more to do with the cruelty of the "sport" than arising from how many hares are killed or injured.

I didn't suggest that hares were "torn apart". With muzzles they cannot be torn apart but what happens is that the dogs can and do mauled them, strike them at ferocious speeds, severely injure them, and then there is that matter of Capture Myopathy, a condition that in the past was not even considered in the debate over hare coursing.

From the off coursing is cruel, the netting itself is cruel and many hares are injured at this stage and have to be disposed of, the captivity is against the hare's nature and being trained by coursing officials to "run in a straight line". Transporation from one coursing field or compound in small boxes to another is deeply stressful for them.

I suggest again that drag coursing could fill the vacum if the live version were abolished. As a politican said a few years ago on a totally different and unrelated subject, I think we should let the hare sit!

Here are two interesting links, one to a brief clip showing drag coursing and the second to a very informative site dealing with everything to dwith the Irish Hare:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oaYr...layer_embedded

http://www.irishhare.org/

Every St Stephens Day the toffs take over Longwood village near where my parents live and make a mess of the place with horse sh*t all over the place. If they happen to read this, please ***** off as none of you toffee nosed gits are welcome.

On another point. I have said this before and I will say it again. Hunting and the such is the realm of psychopaths, people whom are one step away from raping women and torturing other human beings to derive their own pleasure. Have a read of the graduation theory which details the sudden decline of empathy in such people. http://jarn.articlealley.com/the-lin...ty-524963.html