Fox hunting in Ireland: culture, wellbeing, and why it is time to move forward
Fox hunting in Ireland is often defended as tradition, recreation, or even as something essential for mental health and rural livelihoods. These claims deserve to be taken seriously. But they also deserve to be examined carefully, in light of what we now know about animal welfare, human psychology, public wellbeing, and ethical responsibility.
This is not an argument against rural life, horses, hounds, or being outdoors. It is an argument that a practice built around deliberately terrorising and killing a wild animal for recreation no longer stands up to scrutiny, and that continuing it comes at real costs that are too often ignored.
Culture explains behaviour, but it does not justify harm
Culture tells us where a practice comes from. It does not tell us whether it should continue.
Ireland has a long history of cultural practices that were once defended passionately and later abandoned when society recognised the harm involved. Dog fighting and bear baiting were all once accepted and defended as normal parts of life. They ended not because people rejected culture, but because our understanding of suffering and responsibility evolved.
Fox hunting sits firmly in this category. It is not challenged because it is rural, traditional, or unpopular with urban audiences. It is challenged because it involves avoidable, intentional suffering inflicted for sport, at a time when we have alternatives that do not require an animal to be chased to exhaustion and death.
Culture is not static. The strongest cultures are those that adapt.
What the fox experiences is not neutral or brief
A fox is not simply “removed” during a hunt. It is actively pursued.
The scientific understanding of stress responses in mammals is well established. Being chased triggers an intense fear response characterised by the release of adrenaline, elevated heart rate, increased cortisol levels, and sustained physiological strain. For a prey animal, prolonged pursuit represents one of the most severe stressors it can experience.
During a hunt, a fox may be subjected to:
Prolonged fear while fleeing
Extreme physical exertion over uneven and hazardous terrain
A heightened risk of injury from fences, falls, or collisions
Progressive exhaustion that impairs the ability to escape
If caught, a violent death involving multiple dogs
Even in cases where a fox escapes, the welfare cost has already occurred. Fear, stress, and exhaustion are not undone by survival.
This point is important because fox hunting is sometimes defended on the basis that “the fox might get away.” From an ethical perspective, this is insufficient. A practice does not become humane simply because some individuals survive it. The harm is inherent in the method itself.
The consequences of prolonged pursuit can be severe. Beyond the acute stress response, animals subjected to extreme exertion may suffer exertional or capture myopathy, a condition involving muscle breakdown caused by stress and overexertion, which can lead to collapse or death. Wildlife and veterinary sources document that prey animals fleeing predators often exhibit rapid breathing, dangerously elevated heart rate, collapse, and in some cases sudden death due to physiological shock.
It is therefore a misconception to describe fox hunting as humane on the basis that escape is possible. The physiological stress, risk of injury, and potential for fatal exhaustion mean that significant suffering is intrinsic to the pursuit itself.
Horses are not immune to the cost
Horses used in hunts are often well cared for and valued by those who ride them. However, this does not mean the activity itself is low risk or low stress.
Equestrian research consistently shows that fast-paced riding over unpredictable terrain significantly increases the risk of serious injury to both horses and riders. Falls, collisions, and jumping at speed are among the most dangerous scenarios in equestrian sport. A large database study covering the years 2018 to 2022 reported thousands of equestrian injuries, with almost 30 percent occurring during competitive activities such as cross-country, hunting, and jumping. Of these injuries, 23 percent involved head trauma and 15 percent involved internal organ injuries. These figures highlight the inherent danger of high-speed equestrian activities.
Veterinary research supports this risk profile. In eventing, the cross-country phase, which involves speed and jumping over solid obstacles, is widely recognised as the highest-risk component for both horse and rider. A veterinary review of eventing fatalities between 1998 and 2023 documented over 100 horse deaths, the majority resulting from musculoskeletal injury or sudden death, including cardiac events. Notably, many of these fatalities occurred without an obvious fall, demonstrating that horses can suffer catastrophic injury or collapse purely from the physical demands of the activity.
From a welfare perspective, horses are highly sensitive animals whose stress responses can be objectively measured through heart rate, cortisol levels, and behavioural changes. Research shows that loud or chaotic environments, including crowds, sudden noises, and unfamiliar stimuli, significantly elevate stress responses. Fox hunting combines multiple known stressors. These include high physical exertion, unpredictable terrain, loud vocalisations from hounds and people, crowding, and heightened arousal among both horses and riders. The layering of these factors means that even well-trained and experienced horses are likely to experience acute stress during hunts.
The ethical issue is not whether every horse is harmed on every occasion. It is whether we knowingly expose animals to elevated risk of injury, physiological stress, and potentially fatal outcomes for the sake of recreation rather than necessity. Given that the physical, social, and outdoor benefits of hunting can be achieved through lower-risk equestrian activities, this risk deserves serious ethical consideration.
Hounds and quality of life beyond the hunt
Discussions about foxhounds often focus narrowly on whether they “love hunting.” That question misses the bigger welfare picture.
The more important issue is quality of life across the entire lifespan, particularly outside the hunt itself.
Research on kennelled dogs shows that kennel environments can carry significant welfare risks if not managed to exceptionally high standards. These include chronic stress, reduced behavioural choice, limited enrichment, and restricted social contact. While good management can mitigate some of these risks, the system itself demands constant scrutiny.
The argument that hounds would be euthanised if hunting ended is also misleading. When societies phase out harmful practices, animals are not automatically destroyed. Transition plans, rehoming, breeding reduction, and repurposing have been used repeatedly in other contexts. Presenting euthanasia as inevitable is not an ethical argument. It is a failure of imagination and planning.
No ethical practice should rely on the threat of killing animals if it is questioned.
Human mental wellbeing: enjoyment is not the same as benefit
Human wellbeing and psychological considerations
One of the most emotionally compelling defences of fox hunting is the claim that it supports mental wellbeing, particularly for those who grew up with it or rely on it for structure, community, physical activity, and time outdoors. Connection, purpose, and engagement with nature are indeed well established contributors to positive mental health. However, it is important to distinguish these benefits from the act of killing an animal, which is not what provides them.
Psychological research from adjacent fields offers relevant insight. Studies involving slaughterhouse workers, animal control officers, laboratory animal technicians, and shelter staff who regularly kill or euthanise animals consistently show elevated rates of stress, anxiety, depression, emotional numbing, and burnout. Slaughterhouse workers, for example, have been found to experience depression at rates up to four times higher than the general population, along with increased anxiety, anger, hostility, and somatic complaints. Exposure to routine animal killing in these settings has also been associated with higher rates of substance misuse, family conflict, and interpersonal violence. Similarly, research on animal shelter staff indicates that performing euthanasia is a significant predictor of secondary traumatic stress and emotional exhaustion.
Of course, fox hunting is not directly comparable to slaughterhouse or shelter work, and many people who hunt report positive experiences and do not display clinical mental health difficulties. This does not imply that hunters are bad people or inevitably harmed. Rather, the evidence undermines the claim that killing animals is inherently beneficial to mental health. Across multiple contexts, repeated participation in intentional killing is shown not to be psychologically neutral and may carry cumulative cognitive and emotional costs over time.
Crucially, the elements most often cited as beneficial, including social connection, physical exercise, skill development, and time spent outdoors, do not depend on the pursuit or killing of a live animal. Activities such as drag hunting or trail hunting, wildlife observation, conservation work, equestrian sport, and riding clubs preserve these benefits without exposing animals to fear, injury, or death. In this context, it is misleading to present fox hunting as uniquely or inherently supportive of mental wellbeing when the same positive outcomes can be achieved through humane alternatives.
The overlooked group: the general public
Fox hunting does not exist in a vacuum. It takes place within a wider society where the majority of people are not participants and where public attitudes toward animal welfare have shifted significantly. Recent Irish surveys indicate overwhelming opposition to fox hunting for sport. A 2025 poll found that 72 percent of respondents supported a ban on fox hunting, while only 17 percent were opposed, with this majority spanning both urban and rural communities.
For many members of the public, exposure to images or reports of foxes being chased and killed for recreation evokes distress, anger, or sadness. While such responses are difficult to quantify precisely, they reflect a widespread moral discomfort with the normalisation of violence toward animals. Public mental wellbeing matters, and societies have a responsibility to consider not only the enjoyment of a minority, but also the psychological and emotional impact of an activity on the wider population.
When a practice causes persistent moral distress to the majority, particularly where it involves avoidable harm, that impact must be weighed honestly. Normalising recreational killing does not strengthen social cohesion or shared values. Instead, it risks fracturing community trust and empathy. In this context, restricting or banning fox hunting would align public policy with prevailing social values around compassion and animal welfare, while reducing the psychological harm associated with witnessing or legitimising avoidable animal suffering.
Employment and livelihoods deserve solutions, not moral exemptions
Concerns about jobs and livelihoods are real and should never be dismissed. But employment has never been accepted as a justification for maintaining harmful practices indefinitely.
Industries change. When whaling, bear baiting, or animal circuses declined, society did not conclude that harm must continue to preserve jobs. Instead, transitions were demanded.
The same principle applies here. If livelihoods depend on a practice that causes avoidable suffering, the ethical response is support, retraining, and transition, not moral immunity.
What happens when countries ban hunting, and what humane alternatives exist
Countries that have restricted or banned hunting with dogs have not abandoned wildlife management. Instead, they have separated pest control from sport and required that any lethal control meet higher welfare standards. In the UK, for example, the Hunting Act 2004 prohibited hunting wild mammals with dogs while still allowing fox population control through regulated, non-recreational methods. Independent reviews following the ban found that fox populations did not collapse into crisis and that land managers continued control where genuinely necessary using alternatives such as targeted shooting by trained professionals, habitat management, fencing, and livestock protection measures.
Hunting without a fox: preserving tradition without causing harm
In countries and regions where hunting live quarry has been restricted or banned, many hunting communities have successfully transitioned to non-lethal alternatives that preserve the core elements people value. Drag hunting and trail hunting, where hounds follow an artificial scent rather than a live animal, allow riders to maintain horsemanship, fitness, hound work, and social tradition without subjecting a wild animal to fear, pursuit, or death. These forms of hunting are widely practiced in parts of the UK, Europe, and North America and are recognised as legitimate, skilled equestrian and hound activities rather than watered-down substitutes. Importantly, they remove the ethical problem at the heart of fox hunting while keeping the aspects often cited as beneficial: time outdoors, community connection, physical challenge, and rural identity. By separating the cultural and sporting elements from the act of killing, humane hunting alternatives demonstrate that tradition can continue without relying on suffering, and that moving away from live quarry is not an attack on hunting culture but an evolution of it.
Moving forward does not mean erasing rural culture
Ending fox hunting does not mean ending rural identity, horsemanship, or community. It means letting go of one violent element that no longer aligns with our knowledge or values.
Cultures survive because they evolve.
Ireland has an opportunity to lead with compassion, evidence, and integrity, and to show that respecting animals, protecting public wellbeing, and supporting rural communities are not opposing goals.
The question is no longer whether fox hunting is traditional.
The question is whether, knowing what we know now, we are willing to keep calling fear and death a sport.