FOXHUNTING has many hidden facets. One is the construction of artificial earths and logpiles as cosy convenient homes for foxes. Another is the feeding of foxes. Foxhunters encourage foxes by these methods, but they are no friends of the species.

They may well put more foxes into our countryside than they kill, but they do so for their own fun. When they kill foxes, occasionally, after extracting them from the homes they built for them, it involves gruesome brutality.

For years investigators working for the League Against Cruel Sports and like-minded groups have searched for proof that modern foxhunters encourage the very creatures that they damn as 'pests.'

Evidence gathered proves that many foxhunts up and down the country use artificial earths. Every East Anglian foxhunt has at least one and some have many more. One of the smallest foxhunts, the Thurlow operating near Newmarket, has no fewer than 31. This hunt also has 16 stick or log piles and six separate sites where hunt supporters have put out food for foxes!

Artificial earths may be superficially attractive but they are a short-cut to cruelty.

They stand as monuments to the callousness and ignorance of hunters for whom no price is too high in their quest for fun.

It is bad enough that foxhunters cause all manner of mayhem in our countryside, killing pets, trampling crops and harrassing livestock. It is that much worse when it is proven that the very foxes they claim to be controlling were often put there by themselves in the first place.

M J HUSKISSON, Animal Welfare Information Service, PO Box 8, Halesworth.

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