SIR - I have lived all of my 48 years in London but I am a regular visitor to your neck of the woods and a regular reader of your excellent newspaper. I've never been on a hunt (not even to watch) and I have no desire to start now.

I have great deal of respect for people like Maggie Hughes and others like her who deplore hunting. However, their logic is flawed. Listening to their arguments you'd be forgiven for thinking that a ban on hunting was some kind of good news day for foxes. It's nothing of the kind. More like, it's a death knell.

Our perception of nature has been blurred by decades of Walt Disney type sentimentality. Watch any real wild life programme on television and the immediate take home message is that nature is inherently cruel. There's a reason for that, it's called balance.

Foxes have been hunted by hounds in this country for 300 hundred years. Are they now extinct? No. Do we have a healthy population of foxes in our countryside? Yes. Why? Because the system works, that's why. Replace it with indiscriminate poisoning, gassing, trapping and shooting and you'll be lucky to see a fox in the countryside in little more than a couple of decades. Of course, Maggie Hughes and her friends don't want foxes to be killed at all but, and here's the reality check, they will be and in far greater numbers than could ever be achieved by hunting with hounds. Their deaths will also be slower and more agonising.

I don't understand why people who call themselves animal lovers think that this is preferable. They need to examine their consciences on this matter. It you want to continue to enjoy the sight of foxes frolicking in our countryside then you had better start supporting you local hunt. The alternative is too dire to contemplate.

R Westland, Alderney Road, Stepney, London