Majority oppose hunting (From Oxford Mail)

Majority oppose hunting

10:00am Thursday 5th January 2012 in Letters

NO amount of warm words or photographs of cute children with beautiful hounds (Oxford Mail, December 27) can dilute the strong feeling of revulsion felt by the majority of the population towards those who participate and revel in the cruel reality of foxhunting.

No nonsense about there needing to be some sort of fox control, as claimed by Richard Sumner of the Heythrop Hunt, can mask the truth – hunting is an appallingly cruel medieval sport, favoured by a cruel minority.

Please stop romanticising a disgraceful activity, enjoyed by the few with mindsets stuck in the past.

Hunting has nothing to do with control or conservation but has everything to do with making sport out of the pursuit of a beautiful animal for as far and as long as possible and then glorying in its gory evisceration when it can run no further.

What an ignominious end to the life of a native animal that would, if permitted, control its own numbers, while humans, in contrast, seem currently hell-bent on consigning our beautiful but fragile world to extinction by their disinclination to limit their numbers to any meaningful degree.

Banning hunting was a moral victory for the majority of the electorate. Those who seek to overturn the ban should be treated to the contempt which they deserve.

BEA BRADLEY, Cuxham Road, Watlington