I may be a bit thick, but what is the point of putting a dog down a set or earth, so that the ensuing scrap & pinning of animal causing wounding to both animals, & then the laborious digging out of said animals, involving removal of rocks & tree roots & tonnage of soil, & the precarious dispatch of an animal that is fighting for its life, when you can just wait till it comes out of the hole & shoot it. It does seem a bit unnecessary.
Terrier work is an essential tool in fox control, now i'm not saying wot the lad has done is legitimate fox control.
its the same with hunting, most folk consider ur red coats galloping round flat fields sipping from hip flasks. Tally ho old chum type thing
In certain areas of scotland gun packs are probably the best tool for keeping fox numbers down, ( esp so in many areas with rising badger numbers so legal snareing becomes more difficult) The same would be true in parts of wales/cumbria before the ban in englandshire
I know of some that go out with scramblers and esp around lambing time, just 1 or 2 folk on scramblers and 2-3 pair of hounds just going out almost on call if a farmer losing stock, not much else would do the job they're doing
And terrier work in the spring/cubbing time is probably the most effiecient of them all, if u know where the dens are.
Plus the ideal time in upland areas as just about/before lambing time.
Must admit personally never been in to terriers my self for all the above reasons ( to much bloody hard work) but have been around plenty that are /were big time.
Nowadays u can't really get away with ur real strong game 'hard' terriers that get splattered.
I mind once out with a gun pack on my ground fox went to earth below a big beech tree, put this cracking wee border terrier in ( if u seen it in the street u'd think it was a hand bag dog ) bayed it up not far from hole entrance but big roots in the way, the dog was so calm u could call it back, cut roots with chainsaw, back in call back again. Just does enough to hold the fox until shot not a mark on it.
Thats the type of earth dog u need nowadays or else ur going to fal foul to animal cruelty laws
I can also mind as a boy beating 1 of the old timers from cumbria used to dig badger legally, they would hitch to the lorry cafes on the M6 ( or wot ever it was back then) get a lift down to chesire type area dig the badgers and actually catch them and bring them up to cumbria ( old schjool ifor wiliams style)
He reckoned quite a large % of badger in cumbria had been reintroduced for digging.
When they dug them they would just release them again relatively un harmed ( baiting is a very different thing altogether)
As for the boy getting sent to jail. I don't know enough FACTS about it to say much, the paper reports paint a pretty dim view but a lot of the charges when u read them are not
To be honest i'm not entirely sure exactly how much evidence they really had he's not from wot i can understand been charged with any badger related offences.
At 1 point it states he 'sent 50 photos' of injured dogs and people standing over dead animals. He's obivously not the sharpest knife in the drawer, sending photos away to be devolped. He even does that now?? Must admit surprised it wasn't on his mobile esp at his age.
It really all depends on wot species the dead animals are? If they're only foxes it may be a bit harsh
I'm guessing thats where the inciting dogs to fight charge comes in ( althou guessing wild animals rather than other dogs) a lot might depend on the photos
But if having photo standing beside a dead animal is enough to get ur door kicked in we all could be in trouble in the future
More evidence was badger DNA on a collar, i'm guesing the bleeper collar but even that could be circumstancial, badgrs and foxes can share the same hole or rubbed up against some badger hair somewhere? I don't know.
To be fair 1 look at the dogs would tell u pretty clear wot hes ben up to, no disguising that. Foxes and badgers tend to bite in different ways so where the scar tissue is tells its own story.
To me the photos do look like they have seen a billy but mibbe just the way dogs are 'smiling' in the photo
He was charged with firearms offences, but basically just some lose ammo, 2 lose 22lr rounds down the side of ur drivers seat could see u guilty of that.
Same with the off prescription medicines, in the past all terrier men and keepers would do that and i bet many farmers too
I think the law on terrier work has a lot of grey area's now and best practice ecourages the use of 'softer' terriers instead of the old hard patterdale types.
But how u define a soft and hard terrier by law? And even the soft 1's will get injured from time to time.
For me it all depend wot was in the photos,
How badly are dogs hurt?
And wot animals are lying dead?
I try not to make a judgement on it as its something that doesn't interest me at all, but remember most of us will be doing field sports that appall a lot of the general public.
Althou 1 look at the dogs and i think i would make a judgement 1 way or other.
as you so rightly pointed out.
