Just before we get all teary-eyed and emotional over the foxes, consider this.
I was talking to a guy at work the other day who is a whipper-in (looks after the hounds) for the Cheshire Hunt when it's out. Sometimes he rides with the hunt as well, but he hasn't got his own horse and has to borrow one. The packs aren't as big as they used to be (100+ dogs) because they cost so much to look after.
Anyway, he's a country lad and his father's and neighbours' farms are currently overrun by foxes because the foot and mouth epidemic has effectively put paid to hunting for the past year or so anyway. So they trap them. Not live traps, gin traps. Nasty things. But the farmers lose too much livestock to them to leave them be and they're busy people so live traps and their consequences are just a waste of their time.
The hunt may sound cruel (and the end isn't all that pleasant when the fox or hare gets caught, of course) but my informant tells me that the fox actually gets away in over 30% of hunts. It's much more a social pastime than a deadly serious pursuit of animals these days. At least in the Cheshire Hunt you don't get the upper class twats doing the riding and drinking while the lower class scum make sure it all happens. Most of the riders are local farmers and their families and they appear to take turns doing the work.
In most hunts at least one or two people get carted off to hospital from falling off horses, heart attacks and from general stupidity.
Still, a century ago it was probably true when Oscar Wilde suggested that fox-hunting was "the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible".
