IT'S not often you'll find hunting people have a kind word for Worcester's MP Michael Foster, so you want to take Dennis Downing's remark not only with a pinch of salt, but probably a whole lakeful.

"I suppose I could say I owe him something," said Dennis. "He contributed to the reason I came out here."

"Here" is the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, 50 miles west of Washington DC, and 4,000 miles west of where Dennis Downing was when Michael Foster launched his ultimately unsuccessful Private Member's Bill to ban hunting in 1997.

At that time, Dennis was huntsman of the Croome and West Warwickshire Foxhounds, based at Kinnersley, near Severn Stoke, in deepest Worcestershire.

But he was becoming increasingly unhappy.

"The country was closing in," he said. "Wherever you went you seemed to come across roads and there was traffic all over the place. It wasn't like it used to be. I know when we hunted the Spetchley area with the M5 nearby, the best part of the day was when I counted all the hounds safely back into the lorry at the end.

"Then when Foster tried his anti-hunting Bill that just about put the tin lid on it. I thought 'stuff this'.

"I'd always fancied a move to America. It seemed such a big open place."

So in May, 1998, the Downing family - Dennis, wife Sue, daughter Emma and foxhounds Glider, Gossip and Gorgeous - packed their cases and headed out to the appropriately named Huntsville, in Alabama, where Dennis had been appointed huntsman to the Mooreland pack.

It was a long, long way from where he began life 50 years ago.

"I was born in Wolverhampton," he explained, "and my father had a toy shop. I used to go to a local riding school for something to do and then one day I went out and followed the Albrighton foxhounds.

"I just got hooked. I loved it. I decided then I wanted a job in hunting.

"When I left school I joined the Cotswold as second horseman. This was a foot on the bottom rung of the ladder, because my job was to take out second horses for hunt staff when they changed in the middle of the day. You never did any hunting."

However, Dennis impressed enough with his attitude for the Cotswold to take him on as second whipper-in, the most junior of the hunt staff in the field.

In the early 70s he moved to the Croome and West Warwicks as whipper-in - the huntsman's main assistant - and then held positions at several other hunts before returning to the Croome in 1993 as huntsman, a post he held for five seasons before leaving for America.

"Suddenly we were somewhere where you could ride hard for 25 miles and not see a single car," he said. "And our standard of living shot up. For the first time in my life I lived in a centrally heated house. It was difficult being in the Deep South. At first no one could understand what I said and I couldn't understand them but the people were so warm and welcoming."

Dennis and family moved to the Blue Ridge Hunt in Virginia a couple of years later and now he rides through the spectacular Shenandoah Valley with the Blue Ridge mountains in the background.

His companions are airline pilots, lawyers and doctors rather than the predominance of countryfolk he rode with in England.

Foxhunting has a long and rich history in America. Foxhounds were first imported in 1650 by British colonists and the first organised hunt was held in 1747 by Lord Fairfax, an English landowner, who introduced George Washington to the joys of hunting.

Currently there are foxhound hunts in 35 states, hunting over vastly different terrains and for different quarries. In the pinewoods of Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee they hunt red and grey foxes and coyotes. In New England the deciduous growth is good cover for the red fox, as is the landscape in Virginia, Pennsylvania and Delaware. On the Great Plains of the Midwest and the Rocky Mountains in California, coyotes are the main quarry.

However, there is one very distinct difference between the American and English form of hunting. American hunts will chase a fox but it isn't killed when it goes to ground.

"There isn't the same problems with foxes in America as in Britain, so they are not vermin here," said Dennis.

"We chase them and if go to ground they live to fight another day."

The one thing he does miss is the atmosphere surrounding a British hunt.

"It used to be exceptional. I remember 1997, my last Boxing Day in England. When we met in the centre of Pershore we were surrounded by hundreds of people cheering us, lining the streets. You'd also get loads of people following the hunt in their cars. That's just not something that happens in the United States.

"Here, if you are hunting, you might go shopping in the morning, then perhaps go hunting for three or four hours and then go off for a game of golf or tennis afterwards.

"It's not the way of life it is in England. It is more a pastime for professional people."

The Blue Ridge Hunt goes out three days a week - Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday - and keeps thirty five and a half couple of hounds in kennel.

"We get about 50 mounted followers mid-week and around 70 on a Saturday," said Dennis, "but in the middle of winter many people prefer to go skiing. As I said, there isn't the intensity of interest there is in England."

But one factor most British huntsmen would give their eye-teeth for is the Blue Ridge country.

"It's all grass and every field you jump into you can jump out of," he added. "Most of the places are jumps put in by the hunt, slanted wooden things called chicken coops. They can be quite high, but you can really get about."

The Downing family has no real desire to return to England and there is talk of them applying for American citizenship.

"But I want to see if I can apply for a postal vote in the next UK election, so I can vote against Michael Foster," said Dennis.

As I said, take the first quote in this story with a very thick saline solution.