IN reply to Mr and Mrs M Taylor, hunting is not "a barbaric pursuit with no reasonable justification" (Letters, November 23).

People seem to forget that a fox kills. No just to eat but for the sake of killing. One lambing season, we lost more than 30 lambs in less than one week. A fox picked off the ewes with two lambs, knowing that she could only protect one, and killed the second.

How many lambs does a fox need to eat? Certainly not five or six in one night.

Also, could Mr & Mrs Taylor explain to my children why the fox keeps killing their pet ducks? Especially when they have fed them all winter, got very excited when the ducks nested and laid eggs only to see them killed by the fox when sitting on their eggs.

My three children hunt with their mother, shoot with their father and fish with their grandfather. They spend time in the countryside appreciating the environment around them, being able to point our poison plants, knowing the difference between a rabbit and a hare, a pheasant and a partridge, a rainbow or a brown trout.

Would we prefer to see them sitting inside on a frosty morning glued to the television or the Playstation?

They understand the environment in which they live and know a killer when they see one. And the fox is a killer.

Fiona H Dunn,

Sproxton, York.

Updated: 10:04 Wednesday, December 01, 2004