JAMES Stephenson in his pro-bloodsports column of December 6, said that hunting should soon resume in North Yorkshire if DEFRA sticks to its promises? What Mr Stephenson forgot to mention was that if anyone from this Government stick to their promises, fox-hunting would by now have joined badger digging, dog fighting and other hunting as an illegal countryside tradition.

Another illegal country tradition, mentioned by Peter Walker in his, usually, pro-bloodsports column is the Boxing Day Wren Hunt (December 27).

A gang of people who should have known better, hunting down and killing a creature for no better reasons than tradition, curious beliefs and legend as Mr Walker described it. It sounds like a modern Boxing Day meet in Malton Market Place to me!

The media likes to portray those who turn out to look at the picture postcard scene of the Boxing Day meet as 'hunt supporters'. The vast majority of these 'supporters' are completely ignorant of what happens during a day's hunting, because as soon as the hunt moves off the so-called supporters head off home.

If football supporters behaved this way then 60,000 people would leave Old Trafford as soon as the game kicked off and a good sized crowd would only turn out on Boxing Day and New Year's Day. As for the wet mid-week fixture Manchester United, like the Derwent Hunt, would be lucky to attract two old men and a sheepdog!

Eight years ago the bloodsports fraternity claimed that one million turned out on Boxing Day, this year they claimed 200,000. At that rate of decline hunting will die out before Tony Blair ever keeps his promise.

May I congratulate another pro-bloodsports columnist for promising to buy a British car next time. I see a well-known local farmer is driving a brand new British built Range Rover, quite how you manage that when farm incomes are around £5,000 per year I don't know, but let us hope more of those farmers who tell everyone else to buy British are following their own advice.

Three recent arguments I have had with hunt supporters have ended with an old farmer telling me women should never have been given the vote, a local horse owner telling me to get to Afghanistan and a butcher telling me foxes kill chickens!

Finally I read that 10pc of Yorkshire's re-introduced Red Kite population has been found poisoned (Gazette & Herald, January 10). The shooting fraternity will never, it seems, accept birds of prey as wonderful creatures to cherish. Killers are not conservationists.

Updated: 12:51 Thursday, January 24, 2002