WHEREVER cruelty is legalised in the UK, we are all responsible.

So let us hope that our MPs will have the resolve to quickly end the pastime of hunting with dogs our native red deer in Devon and Somerset.

We can manage wildlife without tormenting them in this cruel fashion that lasts hours. It brutalises all involved - particularly the youngsters encouraged to watch.

The Government is guided on this issue by the Lord Burns Hunting Inquiry that was tasked with informing Parliament about the facts of hunting.

They were specifically not asked to deliberate on whether hunting be banned - that was left to Parliament.

The Inquiry team was given a guided tour of stag hunting by stag hunters but never witnessed the worst cruelty.

They never saw a deer killed (some omission for an inquiry into deer killing) and missed the peculiar suffering inherent in autumn stag hunting.

The inquiry visits were limited to February to June - but autumn stag hunting runs from August to the end of October.

This timing imposes the cruelty of hunting stags throughout their rut - a "sport" worthy of the red card, surely?

Even with the little they did see, the Burns team confirmed the barely startling fact that stag hunting seriously compromises the welfare of the deer.

Having spent more than 30 years exposing stag hunting and similar pastimes, I know that if they had just witnessed how the deer are killed, they would have been far more forceful.

M J HUSKISSON,

Animal Welfare Information Service.