IN response to recent letters calling for a ban on hunting wild mammals with dogs, with all due respect to your correspondents, I think they are ignorant of the facts.

Words like "cruel," "barbaric" and "archaic" are used, but all but one give no alternative for the control of foxes or any of the other pest species like mink, rabbits and rats.

Heather Fogarty (Letters, November 12) says to shoot them. Shooting can be effective, but a shotgun is only good at short range. Without the use of dogs, it is very doubtful you will ever get close enough to make a clean kill.

The bullet rifle will kill at longer distance, but recently the government outlawed soft-nosed ammunition, except for culling deer.

The use of solid ammunition would greatly increase the possibility of wounding, leading to a lingering agonising death.

Yes, shooting can be effective and humane if used alongside dogs to track and kill any such wounded animal.

Snares can be effective, but badly-set snares can lead to other species such as the badger being caught and accidentally killed. The dangers they pose to children, cats and dogs make them impossible to use in urban areas.

Poison would be totally out of the question as it would be indiscriminate. The ramifications don't bear thinking about. It would be impossible to use in urban areas. Gassing would be costly and futile. Foxes don't return to any given earth. They cover large distances and will lie up in tips, clay pipes, stone drains, rabbit warrens, quarries, etc.

Dogs are without question the most effective way of controlling pest mammals. When dogs catch them, they are killed instantly. There is no question of them getting away injured to die slowly and painfully.

As to the use of terriers below ground, they are used to bolt foxes out to a gun, whereupon they are shot at short range to ensure a clean, instant kill.

If, as does happen, the fox goes up a dead end, it is then dug to. The terrier is withdrawn and the fox is dispatched quickly and humanely using the gun.

If Mike Foster's Bill goes through, it won't save a single fox. Untold suffering could result as new methods of control would have to be found.

You only have to look at myxomatosis in rabbits as an example of alternative control.

Then ask yourself who is cruel, barbaric and inhumane.

LES WHEATCROFT, Oakdene Avenue, Huncoat, Accrington.

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