Brigstocke on fox hunting

Marcus Brigstocke is a very funny man, but unfortunately spends more time thinking up jokes than thinking through the logic of his arguments before he goes on national radio. Last week, on BBC Radio 4's The Now Show, Brigstocke laid out his argument for why, despite a yearning for the contrary, he was against a ban on hunting with hounds. I'm not going to comment on what I think of the ban, because, really, I couldn't care less either way, and because most of the arguments put forward by proponents of both sides are pretty weak. Brigstocke, despite a short rant about how bad the pro-hunting Countryside Alliance are at putting across their case, was just as bad at arguing for hunting, with a lecture of dubious claims and non-sequiturs.

Brigstocke's argument went something like this:

1. Fox populations must be controlled somehow, otherwise the population will get too large for the environment to support.
2. Without hunting there will be indiscriminate death of foxes by starvation.
3. Fox hunting singles out the weak individuals and kills those, rather than allowing indiscriminate starvation.
4. Hunting also disperses fox families, preventing inbreeding.

Without hunting there will be indiscriminate starvation? I deliberately chose the phrasing of part one along the lines of a simple five part introduction to the theory of evolution by natural selection: When there is replication (1) with variation (2) and where more are produced than the environment can support (3) some will be better adapted to the environment (4) and these will survive to produce the next generation (5). Part two of Brigstocke's argument—that without hunting death would be indiscriminate—is simply not true. Hunting artificially selects the fastest/strongest/youngest foxes, without it they'd be naturally selected. One could argue that hunting increases this selection pressure and speeds things up, but hunting is supposed to be controlling pests, not breeding a fox super-race, right?

Part four sounds dubious. Brigstocke's argument was part of a stand-up rant, so he obviously didn't provide data or references for his claim that inbreeding is a problem amongst fox families. The argument certainly isn't an obvious one, so it would be up to the person claiming it to back it up.

Brigstocke's claims though, don't really seem to be compatible with the stated purpose of population control. Hunting is killing the weakest and oldest individuals on average (a claim that is believable), but so would natural selection, so either the hunt must kill considerably more than just weak and old individuals, or it must not be a very effective population control method. Encouraging out-breeding doesn't seem a particularly good way to control population either.