It is easy to rally support to ban anything which is a minority pastime. Many people who enjoyed pistol shooting had to give up their hobbies, basically as the result of a public knee-jerk reaction. Dunblaine and Hungerford (years earlier) were both regrettable incidents, but the number of deaths from legitamately licensed hanguns over the years has been tiny compared with those from other sports. Now if we were to look at the number of fatalities caused by football.... but we couldn't ban that because it's a big industry with a huge following.

Let's put hunting in perspective. It does kill foxes in a way that is probably not the most humane, but then shooting and poisoning them is not neccessarily that painless either. Ask any poultry keeper just how humane a fox is when it gets into a chicken run - it doesn't just kill the odd one or two. If anything, I'm more worried about the number of horses that get injured in the sport. (BTW the term "Sport" has referred to hunting in it's various forms for many centuries - it's only recently that it's been applied to "Games" like football).

Foxes, probably due to urbanisation, are now in much larger numbers than ever before - definitely not in decline. They are not even performing a useful job of keeping other animal populations down - we currently have too many rabbits as well.

The fox has only ever had one serious predator to keep it's numbers down - and that is MAN. These days we are still managing to cull the numbers of young foxes with a modern (and much more efficient) method than foxhunting - the motor car. I am willing to bet that the total number of foxes that will be run over by cars driven by the opponents of foxhunting will be tens of times greater than those killed by all the hunts combined.

The other year I saw a fox hit by a car driver who didn't stop. The fox was not dead, but writhing in pain with probably a broken spine. Ignoring two female pedestrians who were trying to phone a vet (at 11.30pm !) I drove over it's head to put it out of pain - cries of horror from pedestrians.

If a bill was suggested to impose a speed limit of say 20mph on all rural and suburban roads at certain times of the year to protect young foxes it would be vigorously opposed by many of the same people who are now opposing foxhunting.

I say that if people want to hunt foxes - let them, but try and make sure that any cruelty (exept to the odd hunt saboteur) is kept within bounds. I have ridden fast accross country (never to hounds) and it is a wonderful experience - I wonder how many anti-hunters are equestrians.

Oh BTW - Don't forget that Folk Song, Music, and Dancing are all minority pursuits that a large percetage of the general public are not particularly interested in.......