SIR — In reply to Tony Dunn (Your Letters November 27), for the record I was born and bred in the country and have a lifetime's experience of hounds of many different varieties, so am fully conversant with their pattern of behaviour.
As I have never heard of the "cockerel syndrome" I can make no comment, but I am fully aware of an ostrich tendency to bury their heads when it suits them to turn a blind eye.
Ask the fox whether he would rather be shot, poisoned, snared or hunted and he would no doubt say he would prefer to live and be left alone to do so.
Ask the deer if he wants to be chased by 20, 30 or more hounds for hours on end, often for four or five hours, only to meet the most cruelest of death, and I'm sure he would say no thank you.
Why is it that the hunting fraternity think that their type of cruelty is different from any other method of killing?
If I allowed by dog to run without a collar and means of identification through the streets, off a lead, fouling the pavements, I would be heavily fined.
If I allowed my dog to enter private property, reak havoc amongst domestic animals, often killing and causing great distress, I would not only be fined but probably banned from keeping dogs.
So why do the hunting fraternity think they can do all of these things with impunity, purely because they have always been able to?
I expect that when dog fighting, bear baiting and cock fighting were made illegal there were many who were of the opinion it was their right to do so, and that they had to be dragged into ta new way of thinking when all of these so-called sports were made illegal.
It is of no consequence that the class war is cited mostly by hunting people.
The truth is that killing for the "fun" of it cuts across all class barriers and remains a moral issue, not a class issue.
The hunting of animals with packs of dogs is illegal. The law stands - and should be held upheld.
And far from any repeal, the law should be strengthened and those who at present are sticking up two fingers should be brought to book to answer for their criminal behaviour.
Eventually these barbaric practices will be consigned to the history books where they rightly belong.
R M Morris
Address supplied.