Letter: Supporters rally to defend a well-loved scavenger

THE GAFFES and inaccuracies in Ross Clark's profile of the fox are so numerous that it is difficult to know where to start.

As a hunt monitor who follows and films hunts two or three times a week throughout the season, I have never witnessed a fox running "right in front of the hounds several times while being hunted and surviving".

Terriers do not chase foxes, they maul them underground. Foxes do eat berries, but have not mastered nut-cracking.

The fox is not "steadily giving up hunting and becoming a scavenger". Foxes have always been largely scavengers of carrion.

The passage on animal lovers preventing a career move for the fox to being farmed for fur is too offensive to merit comment.

This article begins by saying hunts will be meeting "today" (Sunday) as Tony Blair has not acted to ban hunting. Foxhunts do not meet on Sundays. However, Ross Clark got one thing right. Tony Blair has failed to ban hunting. Shame on him, and shame on Ross Clark.

PENNY LITTLE

Great Haseley Oxfordshire