In 1914 the Humanitarian League published a volume of essays called Killing for Sport, edited by Henry Salt in which the various aspects of bloodsports were for the first time fully set forth and examined from the standpoint of ethics and economics. The following articles are from Killing for Sport (the entire book can be downloaded from the Articles page).

Sportsmen's Fallacies
Eton Bloodsports
Blooding of Children and Hounds
Hare Coursing
Drag Hunting Verses Stag Hunting
Spoiling Other Peoples Pleasure

Henry Salt's writings on fox hunting, stag hunting and hare coursing can be found in Animals' Rights and the Savour of Salt.

Of all practices connected with "sport" none are more loathsome than those known as "blooding" whether it be the "blooding" of children, which consists in a sort of gruesome parody of the rite of baptism, or the "blooding" of hounds - viz., the turning out of some decrepit animal to be pulled down by a pack, by way of stimulating their bloodlust. Here are a few examples:

On January 4, 1910, the Daily Mirror published an account of the "blooding" of the Marquis of Worcester, the ten-year-old son of the Duke of Beaufort. In a front-page illustration the child was shown with blood-bedaubed cheeks, holding up a dead hare for the hounds, while a number of ladies and gentlemen were smiling approval in the rear.

Here, again, is an extract from the Cheltenham Examiner of March 25, 1909, in reference to the "eviction" and butchery of a fox which had taken refuge in a drain.

"Captain Elwes's two children being present at the death of a fox on their father's preserves, the old hunting custom of 'blooding' was duly performed by Charlie Beacham, who, after dipping the brush of the fox in his own [sic] blood, sprinkled the foreheads of both children, hoping they would be aspirants to the 'sport of kings.'"

Presumably the blood in which the brush was dipped was that of the fox, not of Mr Charles Beacham. But what a ceremony in a civilised age! One would have thought that twentieth-century sportsmen, even if they would not spare the fox, might spare their own children! [from Killing for Sport]

Coursing, the practice of chasing a hare with two greyhounds, slipped simultaneously from the leash, is one the most ancient of bloodsports; but the spirit of those who take part in it does not seem to have improved with time. It may be doubted whether modern patrons of the sport are as chivalrous as those referred to by the old writer Arrian, whose work on Coursing dates from the second century:

"For coursers, such at least as are true sportsmen, so not take out their dogs for the sake of catching a hare, but for the contest and sport of coursing, and are glad if the hare escapes; if she fly to any thin brake for concealment, though they may see her trembling and in the utmost distress, they will call off their dogs."

What is the attraction of coursing? The author of "The Encyclopaedia of Rural Sports" (1852) is forced to admit that coursing has been dull:

"We may be asked," he says, "what pleasure there can be for people marshalled in line, at certain distances from each other, monotonously to walk or ride at a foot pace over a ploughed field or across a wide health on a bleak November day, the eye anxiously directed hither and thither to catch the clod or the sidelong furrow that half conceals poor puss, or to espy the tuft she has parted to make her form in."

But even so stupid a pastime as this has its charms for many people, when to the zest of seeing a timid animal's life at stake there is added the more modern excitement of betting on the prowess of the dogs. Of the cruelty of coursing, as practised in the chief contents, from the Waterloo Cup down, there can be no question. "What more aggravated form of torture is to be found," says Lady Florence Dixie, "than coursing with greyhounds - the awful terror of the hare depicting itself in the laid-back ears, convulsive doubles, and wild starting eyes which seem almost to burst from their sockets in the agony of tension which that piteous struggle for life entails?" [from Killing for Sport]

It is necessary for one making a desperate protest of this kind against an inhuman sport to dissociate himself at the outset from sentimentalism and the sentimentalist. Death is inevitable. We must look facts in the face. The law of life is Death, and Nature has ordained that the strong should prey on the weak throughout her serried ranks of organic life. The sentimentalist will shriek in vain against the destruction of animal life, simply because he is shrieking against an ultimate law of Nature. Nature destroys ruthlessly, and so does man, who is part of Nature. But what civilisation may or must demand, is that this inevitable accomplishment of death should happen with the least possible pain.

Death, in short, is necessary, but torture is not. And fox-hunting is framed to produce the maximum torture to the quarry. A fox is "vermin," they say; then in Heaven's name let it be classed as vermin, and destroyed as such. But what happens is precisely the reverse of this. Foxes are carefully preserved in order that they may be hounded to a hapless, miserable death, the conception of which transcends any ordinary imagination. Gamekeepers and farmers, to whom foxes are a grave nuisance, are paid not to destroy them painlessly by gun or otherwise. Gamekeepers, indeed, receive so much for each fox found on their preserves.
The object, then, of the hunt is to keep foxes from being destroyed in the natural course of that warfare between item of human and feral life, and to preserve them for a more cruel fate. [from Killing for Sport]

But if the inexorable laws of reason and of ethics compel us to cast our vote against "the noble science" of fox-hunting, what shall we say of such sport as the hunting of the red deer in the West of England? Its votaries would fain cast over it the glamour of poetry. They dilate on the glorious country - the woods of Porlock, the bright heaths of Exmoor, the exhilaration and excitement of a wild gallop over a wild country in pursuit of this magnificent wild creature - "the antlered monarch of the waste." But we have only to turn to the acknowledged textbooks on the subject (such as Collyns's "Chase of the Wild Red Deer," for example) to learn of the horrible cruelties which are the inevitable concomitants of this much extolled sport - to learn how the hunted animal, in its terror and despair, will dash over cliffs into the sea, or vainly seek refuge in the waves from its merciless pursuers upon the land. I will not waste time and words over it. I regard it as a cruel form of pleasure which every humane man should shun and shrink from. A relative of mine, who for many years acted as secretary to a fox-hunt in the West of England, and who had a great reputation as a rider to hounds, told me that he had once gone to see the sport on Exmoor, and that nothing would induce him to repeat that experience, so terrible and so disgusting were some of the things which he witnessed there. Alas! that woman should be a participator in such cruel deeds - ay, and pride herself on her rivalry with brutal man!. But we know the type. Their eyes are blinded lest they should see, and their ears closed lest they should hear. They know no better. They have never learned to think!

Here again we are told there is only one alternative: either these deer must be preserved to be hunted or they must be exterminated. But again, also, there can be no doubt as to what our choice should be. We should lament the loss of these wild denizens of the forest and the moor; but better, far better, would it be that their lives should be ended, as painlessly as may be, by the rifle, than they should be preserved for a sport which is an outrage upon humanity. [from Killing for Sport]