IT would be refreshing if, just for once, hunters such as Alison Latham (Bucks Free Press letters, August 12) were honest enough to admit that what they love about hunting is not only the exciting chase, but the feeling of empowerment over life that the cruel sport provides.

Forget attempts to evoke an image of caring, compassionate country men and women, who enjoy horse riding over beautiful countryside.

Those who say they admire and care about the welfare of the fox and who merely claim that, well, someone has to control foxes that would otherwise breed to an unimaginably ghastly mass of disease ridden, in-bred, ravenous, callous killers, invading countryside and killing pets and unsupervised babies.

Selectively focusing on some words in that last sentence and one has an identikit of the type of hunter who avowedly promises to carry on hunting, making the time honoured gesture to the law when it stops their enjoyment as effectively as their minions stop all exits for a terrified and fleeing fox.

Our experience, gleaned over far too many heartbreaking seasons of witnessing and recording the sport of fox hunting, will be put to good use and all efforts to minimalise and ridicule the achievements of "the antis" will come to nought.

A ban is a ban, and remains so. We can recognise the difference between legal and illegal hunting.

The puerile guff of Jim Danbury's letter beggars belief. Doubtless the badger baiters, cock-fighters and all the other degenerates who relish torturing any living thing rendered incapable of fighting back, will be rubbing their hands in glee at the very idea of repealing all the long fought for legislation that curtails their freedom to play.

The final scream of a hunted animal carries the reality of the deed and rebukes the callous, selfish humans.

Bea Bradley, Watlington