Even though the quality of the video is bad, you can make out exactly what is happening. And once you see it, you may wish you never had.
From across a ravine, a fellow hunter films his friend's pack of dogs. They have cornered a beautiful stag against a cliff and have begun tearing it to shreds. The deer struggles, you can see it on and off again as it disappears every other second under the pile of canines.
Then something just as shocking happens. One of the dogs loses its footing and falls off the cliff, only holding on with its front paws as it tries to climb back up. Tragically, gravity wins out and the pup plunges off the cliff out of frame of the camera.
The person filming on the other side screams to the dogs' owner "Run, your dogs are falling off the cliff!" But the hunter ignores his urgent calls and walks slowly up to the deer, grabs a knife and tries to slit its throat, ignoring the dogs that are clinging to the precipice.
The video lasts a little more than a minute but by the end of it, any compassionate person has seen enough. In total 12 dogs and the deer itself fall over the cliff, falling several meters — almost certainly to their deaths, however, from the video, you can't tell for sure.
If it weren't for this video, most people would never have seen what hunting with dogs actually looks like. And if it weren't for the fact that dogs had quite possibly fallen to their deaths, all to catch a deer, then this video may not have ever gone viral. But this is what animal hunting with dogs looks like. They pounce upon their prey and tear it to shreds until and if the hunter finally puts the poor animal out of its misery.
The natural circle of life, where wild animals hunt wild prey to survive, is one thing. The death and pain are necessary for the survival of both species. But in cases like this, the brutality is cruel, avoidable and wholly unnecessary.
Because it's so inhumane, hunting with dogs has been banned in much of Europe including Germany and the majority of the UK. But in Spain, it continues to be legal. That's bad news for prey animals like boar and deer but also for hunting dogs themselves. According to AnimaNaturalis, an animal rights organization, hunters are notorious for their poor treatment of their hounds. They are kept in terrible conditions and in the region of Cataluña alone, almost 60 percent of abandoned dogs are hunting dogs.
What more reason is there to ban this horrible practice. Death, abandonment, brutality and slaughter, it must end. Ask Spain to ban hound hunting. Sign the petition today.
