if you want to stop cruelty to animals, then probably yes.
Binky, I have come up with something that may solve that problem, as some of you (my close friends) will know, apart from electrics my only other work has been as a dog handler and this is where it gets interesting, excuse me if I drift a little, but I'm not too well at the minute, mentally, but please bare with me, you'll get the gist in a moment.
Now, the big excuse these foxhunters use is this, "we were out running the hounds when one caught the scent of a fox and wouldn't come back, we had no option but to follow it". Now for the interesting bit, the dangerous dogs act, under the terms of the act if you own a dog which is known to be dangerous, i.e likely to bite or attack livestock for example, you must have it on a lead and muzzled when in a public place. In my case I own what is known as a 'general purpose dog', it is a German Shepherd one of the best breeds for the job, now as far as the DDA is concerned, because my dog is trained to protect the handler (me) and to deal with threats, if I were to let it loose unmuzzled in a public place I would, and quite rightly so, find myself in court should she injure anyone.
Now whilst she is trained to obey the handler, she can, and will if the need arises, go into 'automatic mode' an example of this occurred one day when a friend visited my house, we'd had a good chat, the dog had been fine with him it was a nice visit, then it went horribly wrong, just as he was leaving he stopped, put his hand in his coat pocket and pulled out a small flourescent tube about a foot long, "oh, that's what I came for, have you got one of these?" he asked, turning towards me a little too quickly.
The dog leapt up and grabbed the arm holding the tube, it was a perceived threat! Fortunately no harm was done but it showed that even though she knew the guy and he'd visited many times he in her mind had presented a threat, she for her part had neutralised that threat, it was what she was trained to do.
Now technically I should have had her muzzled, even though she was in her own house, I had a visitor and I knew that she was capable, should the need arise of potentially causing severe injury, it was my fault and I hold my hands up to it, so by the same token given that the hunt people know their dogs are trained to attack foxes, shouldn't they have to have them muzzled? After all, isn't a dog that is trained to perform a function such as killing something a potential danger in any situation, after all a dog sees a fox, it doesn't know it isn't allowed to chase it, not after years spent being encouraged to chase them.