I accept that those who partake in blood sports see the fun element as justification for their actions.  However we live in a democratic society which sets a level of moral standards and enacts those standards via legal statutes.  

Those moral standards change over time and so do the laws that reflect those changes.  At the moment pheasant and other bird shoots are still lawful but as the wider public become more aware of them I expect that in time they will follow the likes of hare coursing and become illegal - which in my opinion will be no bad thing.

Certainly hunting is, if you like, inbred in many ways in human nature but there is a world of difference, again in my opinion, between hunting for fun and hunting for food.  

Simply put, I believe that harming or killing any animal for “fun” is morally wrong. 

“Is there any end to it?” - Probably not - moral standards are constantly changing. 

In my relatively short life time I have seen massive changes in standards and opinions from making homosexuality legal to changes in animal welfare and attitudes towards racial, religious and sexual bigotry and the ending of the death penalty. 

What we have to be aware of though is that not all changes are necessarily for the common good despite being supported by a majority.  You only have to look at Germany in the thirties and how propaganda and political manipulation changed the general attitude towards the Jews and made statutory changes acceptable to the majority.

Personally I’d have no problem with the outlawing of horse and dog racing, show jumping and even snail racing but I accept that I am probably in a minority regarding those and have to accept societies moral judgement of them.  That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be able to speak up against them and encourage others to do so.  

If we try to repress the minority from expressing their moral stance then there is nothing to stop extreme views from becoming, or remaining, the majority opinion.

Looking at things a different way.... if some forms of animal "sport" were outlawed, many of those animals would have "no further use" so what would happen to them?

Taken to extreme, keeping horses as "pets" and riding them could also be construed as worthy of "outlawing" so where do you stop?

You’re right, keeping horses as pets, for that matter keeping any animal as a pet could be “construed as worthy of ‘outlawing’.

All the pets we have ever “owned” have come to us one way or the other because animals have been kept as pets.  We would certainly never abandon them but likewise we’d never breed them to produce more pets.

The moral argument for keeping a pet is in many ways similar to that of keeping animals for food.  For me, so long as those animals are treated well and killed in a humane way when necessary then I don’t have a problem - others have a different point of view -  if and when they become the viewpoint of the majority then I will abide by that.

Lambsy...if you are referring to our present political predicament, it would have been a lot less problematic if the viewpoint of the majority had been followed. 

We see this all the time on many fronts. A "decision" is made, when it's not what some want to hear, they'll move mountains in the pursuit of their own agenda in a bid to prove "it" was or "they" were wrong.

Doesn't tyranny force the hand of "the majority"?