Thank you, thank you, Gervase, for posting an unpopular and widely misunderstood viewpoint -- though I doubt it will do much good! But anyone in honest search of what's behind both the ban and the foxhunting tradition itself might look up a long article that appeared a few weeks ago in (of all places!} The New Yorker (I lent it to a friend, so can't cite chapter & verse, but my local library had no trouble finding it under "foxhunting"). There's also a mind-opening new book that the article brought to my attention: A Fox in the Cupboard by Jane Shilling.   Read it, and then tell me about those awful people "who take pleasure in inflicting cruelty on animals" -- words that don't convey at all the spirit in which this journalist and single mother (do I have to add that she isn't rich?) discovered in herself, lmost by accident, a passion for the hunt   And it isn't a passion for cruelty; on the contrary . . . but read the book for yourself. And talk to someone who hunts before YOU define THEIR motivation.