Cruel season (From Oxford Mail)

Cruel season

10:00am Monday 23rd August 2010 in Letters

THE lovely ‘season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ will soon be upon us, marred only by the knowledge that it also heralds the start of the new hunting season.

For those of us who are well versed in the sights and sounds of hunting, the beauty of the month of August is spiked with memories of the cub-hunting season and the knowledge that, regardless of the present law, a minority of the population will seek to defy the ban.

It is no secret that the Tory majority in government will seek to overturn the hunting ban and reinstate the barbaric ritual of hunting and killing fox cubs in order to train the new intake of foxhounds for the main season of mayhem in the countryside.

Covert hunting has carried on in recent years under the guise of ‘trail hunting’, which has fooled none but the very gullible.

Legalised hunting would result in all the chaos and danger that prevailed prior to the ban – hunted animals and pursuing hounds have no concept of danger on busy roads, no hesitation in accessing private property or panicking livestock; hunters, pre-hunt ban, intent only on their sport, arrogantly and joyfully followed their hounds.

Please, do not be deaf or blind to the actions of hunters cocksure of a swift repeal of the Hunting Act.

Report to the police, sights or sounds commensurate with hunting and remember – a duster dangled by a rider on horseback does not constitute trail hunting!

BEA BRADLEY, Cuxham Road, Watlington