THE new hunting season started on November 1.

According to the Countryside Alliance there has been a 10 per cent increase in the number of people who go out riding every week.

This represents an increase of 5,000 on the number before the ban on hunting with dogs for sport.

The League Against Cruel Sports, and other animal welfare organisations, must welcome the new interest in trail-hunting instead of the needless cruelty involved in killing deer, foxes and hare for sport.

But I find it difficult to understand why the Countryside Alliance continues to campaign for repeal of the Hunting Act 2004 when the ban is proving to be so successful.

The League, in partnership with the RSPCA and the International Fund for Animal Welfare, has just constructed a website www.huntingact.org.

Readers of the Echo will find this site well worth a visit.

It includes a monitors' code of practice written by the IFAW for their wildlife crime investigators. The code says monitors should to be trained in self-defence and first aid.

I am able to say, from personal experience, that this is good advice.

My wife says I am too old, at the age of 79, to undertake a course in unarmed combat and to join St John's Ambulance, but I do hope there are younger readers of the Echo who may be interested in becoming hunt monitors. If so, please visit www.huntingact.org.

John Phelps

Argyll Road, Exeter

(by email)