Whenever I have written in the past about the perplexing anachronism of fox hunting, I have received more responses than I ever get for anything else I write. And in the past it has tended to be vitriolic and abusive too. It is somewhat ironic that the supporters of hunting with hounds don’t like being harried and cornered themselves, albeit only verbally.

It is common knowledge that many hunts are flouting the law, secure in the knowledge that the police are massively undermanned and unable to commit the numbers needed to take effective action. But hunting a fox with hounds is just as illegal as organising a dog fight and doubtless those who are currently stealing people’s pets to provide victims for this abominable activity will protest that what they do is a long practised rural tradition too. At least they don’t dress up and try to pretend that there is something picturesque and charming about what they do. They skulk, while the hunts still strut their stuff.

If despite your sensible safeguarding efforts to protect your chickens, a fox predates on them, no one will object if you ‘take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end him’. But to invite dozens of your friends to bring a pack of dogs along to have a jolly good time harrying one animal to its miserable and savage death seems to me to be disproportionate in the extreme and lacks both style and decency.

And let’s have none of this anthropomorphic guff about the fox being ‘evil’ because it kills every chicken when it can only eat one. This is because the poor hens can’t escape when we’ve stuck them in sheds that must seem like Charlie’s Chocolate Factory to a peckish fox.

The fox is doing what evolution has led him to do – kill to eat. We should do what we have evolved to do – think! Our wildlife is rich, varied and beautiful. Culling may be necessary and even kind in many cases; and hunting for the pot is defensible. We are carnivores after all. But ritual slaughter that turns killing into fun cannot have any place in a society that has pretensions to being civilised. The majority of voters deemed fox hunting with hounds to be worthy of control and legislation. It’s a great pity that there appears to be a reluctance to enforce it on the part of the authorities.