I AM grateful to D Fillingham (Letters June 29) for putting me right on approximate fox figures for rural and urban foxes.

I would also like to say that I am not a strong advocate for the return of fox hunting. I have never hunted, and indeed have only once attended the start of a hunt at the invitation of our then local vicar who was a keen huntsman.

The facts, however, are these. The majority of farmers would like hunting to return as it is the only humane way to properly control their numbers.

At present they are shooting them or using other nasty methods, and it often leaves foxes to die slowly in corners of woods. Stories of what happens to foxes at the end of hunts, I am reliably informed by a local farmer and huntsman only last Sunday, are grossly exaggerated.

Most foxes get away, and those who don’t are dispatched quickly by hunters.

I notice none of my many writer critics comment on the hundreds of poor ducks and chickens left headless by their darling foxes? I always thought animals killed for food.

Bryan R Lawson, Burton Fields Road, Stamford Bridge, York.