Fox hunting is necessary because foxes have “no lovely nursing home to retire to”, a spokesman for the Hunting Association of Ireland has said. 

The hunting season begins in November and runs until April but the sport has long been controversial with animal rights campaigners who want it banned. 

“Fox hunting is without doubt the most brutal bloodsport whereby they take out a pack of hounds to hunt down really what is just a small wild dog through the countryside for sport,” Aideen Yourrel from Ban Blood Sports told Lunchtime Live. 

“If it does manage to go to ground and hide, they will dig it out; they will bring in guys with spades and little terriers to flush it out; I have seen video footage - the most horrendous video footage that is almost impossible to watch of a fox being dragged out of the earth and then thrown in front of the pack to be savaged in the most appalling way. 

“It’s like something demonic and the huntsman is whooping and hollering in a crazy sort of way. It’s bloodlust… It’s the grownup version of bullying in the schoolyard. It’s appalling.” 

E1TWH4 Red fox hunting through autumn grasses; (Vulpes vulpes); Minnesota

There are currently 41 fox hunts in Ireland and Dickie Power from the Hunting Association of Ireland said that anyone who eats meat but opposes fox hunting is a hypocrite. 

“People who aren’t vegan have very little moral authority to say that fox hunting is wrong; eating meat implies that you have no objection to young healthy animals being killed,” he said. 

“95% of our population here in Ireland are meat eaters - to a greater or lesser extent - with only 5% who are vegan. 

“Which goes a long way to tell you why the Government isn’t going to ban fox hunting.”

B34T79 Huntsmen and hounds - Boxing Day Hunt, Petworth, Surrey, England

In 2004, after a lengthy public debate, fox hunting with dogs was banned in Great Britain but Mr Power believes that a ban would be a disservice to the very quarry it seeks to protect. 

“95% of the foxes that are hunted get clean away,” he explained. 

“The ones that don’t get clean away are the ones that are sick or indigent or have some other issue [and] are going to be facing a very poor prospect anyway of dying from hypothermia or starvation in their lairs.

“This business of all this blood and foxes being dragged asunder - it just doesn’t happen… It’s never easy and we’re all getting older, no one wants to face that dreadful mortality but foxes have no VHI, they have no lovely nursing home to retire to.” 

Mr Power has retired from the saddle because of his age but says that his “enthusiasm is unbowed” and that many people in the country need something to do when the weather gets cold. 

“Rural Ireland is a very lonely place in the winter,” he said. 

“If it wasn’t for this social interaction between like minded people, most people would have very little else to do.” 

It is a claim that Ms Yourrel described as “absolutely ridiculous.” 

“There are walking groups, she said, “there’s all sorts of sports going on. There is no need to be going out and hounding an animal and killing an animal for sport.”

Main image: A fox hunt. Picture by: Alamy.com