Lets not forget that while vermin they do have a very large benefit for nature in that they are like sharks and clean up by eating dead carcasses and the weaker wildlife that should not procreate, but they need to be controlled and I agree that the rapid application of lead is the best way.
Being an Officer of her majesty's armed forces I may be stereotyped into the fox-hunting crowd and in fact I know of few of that 'set'. If I recall correctly the dogs rarely manage to catch a fox as he is much quicker and can fit in small burrows and often a fox will be chased until it goes to ground. Penned in by terrier, it is then dug out by a specially trained keeper who will shoot it point blank. Not as humane as the rapid application of lead but not as dispicable as some suggest it is.
I hold my German hunting license which if anyone knows what you have to do to get it fosters a responsibility on the hunter to make sure that the correct animal is culled, humanely and quickly. Any game injured is tracked often for tens of kilometers and put out of its misery, but we try and avoid that as best we can. The seasons for different animals and even ages and sex are closely monitored, the punishments for not following them are swift and harsh (often very expensive)
We have a deer population in the UK that is twice as large as it should be and we know have pockets of wild boar which grow on a scale of 9 every season. Considering that they can cover upto 80km in one night, very soon they will be prevalent throughout our countryside.
In Berlin they dont have foxes in urban areas they have boar!
