Re Alan Kirby’s emotive letter bemoaning the lack of legal action taken against hunt supporters.

I wonder why he and others like Messrs Beaven and Wright have not written to support legal action being taken against members of ‘animal rights’ and ‘league against cruel sports’, who wear ski masks to cowardly disguise themselves when illegally smashing open gates and fences to release legally held mink into the countryside, who then decimated and wiped out much of our freshwater fish, water voles and water hens.

These town and city dwellers who think they know better than country people how to run, work and conserve the countryside have also attacked hunt followers with baseball bats, smashing car headlights and windscreens.

A member of one of these organisations recently interviewed on television announced that she was proud that she had and would continue to break the law by committing trespass and wilful damage by using a chain saw to cut open chained gates and fences on private property.

It was obviously a cold evening because she had a scarf wrapped around her face and a hood pulled down.

And as for the people who state they have seen foxes torn apart whilst still alive, I admire their ability to outrun a pack of hounds to be present at a kill whilst being loaded down with video cameras.

Some time ago when I was doing some part time game keeping, I was asked by a group of people from the Bath and Bristol area if I could supply them with a dead fox.

When asked why they wanted it, they said they were making an amateur film about hunting and wanted to show a live fox being thrown to the hounds. So much for video evidence.

So when Alan Kirby and his friends sit down to a Christmas dinner of roast turkey or chicken after a year of hearty breakfasts of egg, bacon and sausages, all of which were produced from animals who have never seen sunlight and never had the pleasure of scratching and rooting around in a farm yard, having been shut inside in cages and pens not big enough to turn around, maybe he should rethink his attitude towards cruelty in the countryside, because at the moment the word hypocrisy springs to mind.

A Curtis Kingsley Avenue Wootton Bassett