TERRI Donlan's letter (Dear Star, March 30) seems high on anecdote and exaggeration and short on facts.

What I actually wrote was that hare numbers had declined in the last century. I did not say that decline was continuing as hare numbers have remained stable for the past 10 years.

Terri tells us she attended this year's Waterloo Cup and writes emotively about the crowd shouting and cheering every time a hare was caught, "but no such merriment when the occasional animal managed to escape."

My researches reveal that at Altcar this year, 108 courses were run and 18 hares were killed. The fact is that five hares outran the dogs for every one that was caught. That is hardly occasional. The national average is one kill in seven courses.

The keepers and hare coursers I have spoken to acknowledge that hares are periodically netted and moved about the country from sporting estates. This is done for two reasons; firstly to replenish areas where stocks have been illegally poached out of existence and, secondly, to expand the gene pool in isolated areas, thereby cutting down on in-breeding.

They challenge Terri Donlan to provide independently corroborated chapter and verse concerning when, where and by whom hares have ever been caught, crated and released solely for the purpose of legal coursing. As a member of the British Association for Shooting and Conservation and also the Game Conservancy Trust, I can assure Terri that there is no conflict whatsoever between field sports and conservation. Do you think Dr David Bellamy would be patron of the National Gamekeepers Organisation if he wasn't totally happy about that?

Finally, it is estimated that there has been a four-fold increase in fox numbers since the 1960s and the breeding population is now 420,000. Recently published research shows 78 per cent of small free range poultry flocks experienced predation by foxes and 81 per cent of farmers had lambs killed by foxes each year. We simply cannot afford to ban hunting with dogs as that would result in a further increase in fox numbers to the serious detriment of farming, wildlife and game.

W.F. Williams, Windlebrook Crescent, Windle