THE holiday season is here, but not for foxes. This month sees hunts across England and Wales targeting defenceless fox cubs to train young hounds and give them a taste for the kill.

As full-time hunt monitors for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, it is our job to film the activities of fox and deer hunts across the UK. We are not saboteurs, we follow hunts wherever there is public access and we are opposed to violence.

Over the next three months we will be monitoring the killing of countless foxes as young as four months old.

Cub hunting teaches young and inexperienced hounds to hunt. Usually in the early hours, huntsmen surround a small wood where a family of foxes is known to live, and the hounds are sent in to find and kill the cubs, urged on by hunters' horns and cries.

Every effort is made to prevent the cubs escaping. Hounds are often starved before the hunt and fox holes are blocked up to prevent escape.

Most hounds that fail to show aptitude for killing are shot or put down. Up to 8,000 young foxes will die during this period.

We are powerless to prevent this savage killing. The only person who can do that is the Prime Minister. He has promised to resolve the hunting issue during this Parliament.

The government must deliver on its promises within the next few weeks, so that next year's foxes are not subjected to this violent and painful death.

KEVIN HILL and PETER WHITE, IFAW Hunt Monitors, Albert Embankment, London.