Hunting aims to preserve this the most humane and practicable way of controlling foxes while maintaining the health of their population and acieving an acceptable compromise between the needs of farmers etc. to protect their possessions and the size of the fox population. This link explains the flaws in other methods. In the vast majority of cases a large number of hounds catch up with the fox simultaneously and death is virtually instantaneous.

Please note that the kill shown is a worst case.

However even in this rare instance, it takes less than 10 seconds from the moment a hound first seizes the fox to the moment he dies under a number of hounds. Surely even this worst case is preferable to the possibility of a slow death from wounds after an attempted shooting.

This still image taken from the video shows the moment when a white hound seized the back of the dark coloured fox.

The fox was dead within a few seconds under many hounds