IT is sad but not unexpected (You Say, December 4) to see that a number of vets have banded together in support of hunting.

One can only assume that these vets gain much employment from hunt kennels and hunters.

Even so, having trawled the veterinary world for about a year for support, they've still only managed to attract 300 supporters from the tens of thousands of vets in the UK.

What's more, alarming is their ignorance of foxes, in particular that "they are used to hunting and being hunted".

Foxes are only ever hunted by Man - and in a very artificial manner. Foxes and dogs belong to the family Canidea, and one would not naturally hunt the other.

Foxhounds have be trained during the cub-hunting season which animal to hunt, and are routinely punished for rioting (hunting the wrong species). Those hounds that persist are likely to be destroyed by being shot.

Their ignorance of hunting also appears complete when they say that "it tends to pull out the weak, the sick and the aged" and "it also allows respite for breeding".

They clearly don't know that roughly half of all foxes killed by hunting are killed during cub-hunting, which takes place between August and November. Nor can they know that the season extends to March, when many vixens will be pregnant or lactating. The majority of these will not be "sick, injured or old".

Hunting animals to their deaths with packs of dogs in order to provide entertainment is deeply wrong. Had Tony Blair honoured the commitment made in Labour's 1997 Manifesto, that wrong would have been righted by now.

M W BRETT, Bromsgrove.