Well, the foxes been here since before the town was built, and they haven't had a population explosion yet. And of course, that's without the help of foxhunters.

The suggestion that it'd be too costly to train the hounds to follow soem other scent just doesn't make much sense to me. There's all these hunt employees who are said to be destined to lose their jobs if the hunting stops (more hostages) - what's to stop them putting their heads round the job of retraining the hounds?