PROTESTERS planning to join this weekend's mass rural march through London were today told to remember that hunting was its "top priority".

The call from senior hunting figures came as build-up to Sunday's Liberty & Livelihood march, which could attract more than 300,000 people, gathered momentum.

Nick Proctor, joint master of York and Ainsty South Hunt, said people planning to march should be clear in their minds that it was first and foremost about hunting.

"My point is that hunting people have organised this march, it's been organised because there is a threat to hunting," he explained.

Mr Proctor, who is also chairman of the Countryside Alliance's East Yorkshire branch, said the march was planned for the end of the six-month inquiry into hunting's future.

"Some of our supporters are farmers, with their own concerns about the price of grain and so on, but everyone has been drawn together with their concerns about hunting.

"Rural people see the attack on hunting as indicative of the Government's lack of understanding of the countryside.

"People are even saying that hunting people have hijacked the march, but there's no mistake about it, we are the people who have organised it."

Jeremy Timm, also from the York and Ainsty South Hunt, said: "I think another way of putting it might have been to say that hunting is the top priority.

"If there was not talk of a hunting ban there would not have been a march.

"I suspect the bulk of people travelling down are going on hunt-organised transport."

But Derek Watson, NFU county vice-chairman, said support went "deeper and wider" than hunting.

He had no qualms about the fact that the proposed hunt ban was the "primary concern" behind the march. Many people would be marching not just because they feared for a ban on hunting, but because they feared the Government had launched an assault on rural communities already in crisis.

Master of the Middleton Hunt Frank Houghton-Brown said: "Many people who don't hunt will still go because they appreciate that we are right to continue doing what we do."

He was preparing for the march along with other staff - including Otis Ferry, son of rock legend Bryan Ferry - at the hunt's kennels at Birdsall, near Malton.

Updated: 11:44 Friday, September 20, 2002