Letter: Caring anglers? Ask the fish

Sir: Seventy years ago, two small children in North Yorkshire happened to be in at the kill when a hunted vixen was run to earth.

She was dug out by hunt servants, whose spades chopped up her cubs - for Lord G was hunting out of season. She was thrown to the hounds, and her one surviving cub was taken for rearing and future sport. Farmers benefited, since shooting foxes would have cost them their tenancies, all the landowners being sportsmen.

My sister and I were lucky not to be blooded by having the shredded vixen smeared over our heads, the traditional initiation of newcomers to the sport.

PETER HILL

Tanworth-in-Arden, Warwickshire