EACH time I see a Countryside Alliance placard or sticker, or hear their representatives attempting to defend hunting, I can't help wondering if they themselves actually believe their drivel.

"Fight Prejudice", the theme depicted on the posters in your illustration (Evening News, Saturday, October 2) is typical.

Let's face it. Hunting a living creature to its death using a pack of dogs and gaining pleasure from the spectacle is aberrant behaviour.

It may have been acceptable in the colisseums of Rome 2,000 years ago, but the rest of society has moved on.

It is certainly not prejudice that has brought us this close to a hunting ban, but disgust by normal people at the cruelty involved.

Very early in the campaign to ban hunting, hunters realised they couldn't defend it as a legitimate activity, and so they had to come up with other tactics - and they did.

Knowing they couldn't keep if off the political agenda any longer, they dreamt up the nonsense we have since endured.

This includes claims such as "banning hunting will destroy tens of thousands of jobs (125,000 was a figure being bandied about at one time), "hunts will have to destroy all their hounds" (they do anyway over a period of five to seven years) and "we'll be overrun with foxes, deer and hares/ foxes, deer and hares will become extinct". You choose.

This and other nonsense has typified their campaign including the classic "more than a million horses will be destroyed". There aren't a million in the country so they'd have to import some to make up the numbers!

But what's fascinating now are the bullying tactics and threats currently being employed. These are exactly the same threats and intimidation suffered for years by anti-hunt campaigners.

MAURICE BRETT,

Bromsgrove.