Hunt ban will bring misery (From Gazette Series)

Hunt ban will bring misery

SIR - The countryside which the general public so loves was, and is, shaped by the great landlords, the farmers, and their helpers to feed the nation and to enjoy all country sports, thus providing habitats for all forms of wildlife.

I, as a tenant farmer, have tried to the best of my ability to keep the land in good heart and conserve all wildlife, with little thanks and barely a profit to continue into the future.

Hunting is part of the fabric of the countryside. If it is banned, it will not save the life of a single fox but is liable to inflict cruelty on them. Shooting will be more widely used with no control as to time of year (hunting has a closed season). A vixen shot in the late spring of the year, wounded possibly, and left to crawl underground to her litter of cubs will die in agony and her cubs starve to death.

Hunting guarantees a quick death, or escape, unharmed alive, possibly tired, not so all other methods.

The last country I know to ban hunting was Germany under the Nazis of Hitler. You should consign the politics of envy to history, not hunting.

M T Smith, Oldlands Farm, Berkeley