If it's Boxing Day, it must be Winslow

Eye witness: Hunting - The two sides are gearing up to play out an old English custom

Ah, the traditional sights and sounds of Boxing Day: the snorting of horses and baying of foxhounds; the warming tones of a Salvation Army band; the merry jingle of television camera cables; and the vigorous chanting of ruddy-faced animal rights protesters.

All these will be present in Market Square, Winslow, in Buckinghamshire, on Thursday as it hosts the seasonal face-off between horsey folk in pinks and those who regard them barbaric.

Similar scenes will take place in hunting country all over England, but this year's confrontations promise to be more bloody-minded than ever, because there is more at stake. The future of hunting should be settled in 2003, one way or another, so Boxing Day will provide both sides with a final opportunity to sway opinion.

The League Against Cruel Sports and other opponents of the chase promise to protest at 30 hunts. "Last year we went down to Winslow with a ghetto blaster and played 'This Could Be the Last Time' by the Stones," says Judy, a protester. "We thought hunting was going to be banned."

They were wrong. While the Government has decided to stop stag hunting and hare coursing, it now intends to let the Bicester with Whaddon Chase Hunt and others continue under licence. The Bill to make this happen should be passed next year but Judy and her friends will go down shouting.

"We'll be back and making a noise again this time," she says.

The Countryside Alliance, scenting victory of a kind, asks why it should care about a few hundred such people when 250,000 supporters will turn out to watch the hunts. The Real Countryside Alliance, a vociferous splinter group, promises that if saboteurs adopt more aggressive tactics its members will react in kind.

Meanwhile, a sign pinned up outside the local beat bobby's office in Winslow warns that Market Square will close on Thursday because the streets "will be thronged". The car park in the small, enclosed square will be cleared for the hunt to assemble.

"We're not in the least bit worried about any protesters," says Robert Vallance, the hunt secretary. "We expect to outnumber them by at least 100 to one. The band will drown them out."

Patrick Martin tries not to be overwhelmed by weight of numbers as he stands among 72 female foxhounds in his yard a few miles from Winslow. They jump up at him, a moving mound of snouts and thumping tails, as he rails against the image of hunt followers as "bloodthirsty murdering bastards".

"We are involved in animal welfare," says Mr Martin, a professional huntsman. "On the land we ride across, farmers lose animals all year – a cow dies, a horse needs shooting, a sheep is sick. We pick up the carcass for them and feed the flesh to the hounds. Must run into 400,000 across the country. Without hunting, who would do that?"

The relationship between the hunt and the community is well understood in The Bell pub, where staff will water a thousand spectators on Boxing Day. "Those who join the hunt are farming people, and most of my customers are farming people too," says Ian Richmond, the manager. On the wall is a menu from the Whaddon Chase lunch in 1884, at which the owners of The Bell served daube of turkey aux pistaches. These days it's roast beef from the carvery – although not the winner of the livestock competition at the cattle market next door. That won't be ready until after Christmas. "We buy the beast from the farmers, they come in here in the New Year and eat it."

Come Thursday, when steaming, restless horses stand among the crowds, the protesters will look and feel like outsiders. Ask anybody in the pub or street whether the hunt should survive and you get the same answer: a blank stare as if it were a daft question, and a word beginning with T.

I hear it again in the Jenny Wren tea rooms. "We don't mind the hunt," says Barbara Preston, preserving that old English custom of indifference. "They come for two hours, then they go away. What they go off and do on their horses is their business. You don't protest against the hunt, do you, Tom?"

"What's that?" says an elderly regular, looking up from a sponge cake. "Oh no."

Barbara smiles. "You see? We quite like it, really. Tradition, that's what it is."