I am not against professional hun­ters per se, especially those who abide by the rules. It is not genuine hunters who break the law, but ama­teurs who probably have a hidden agenda. There are trigger-hap­py people who will shoot even at a flying kite. Consequently the sport has been given a very bad name.

Whenever I used to take my five hounds for a walk in the country during the hunting season, I used to meet hunters and very often used to stop for a brief talk. I observed that it was their meeting each other early in the morning that they enjoyed, where they would talk about things that had nothing to do with hunting over a cup of tea.

I would like to point out, however, that I have always thought it is very cruel to keep finches and other birds in a gabjetta (a tiny cage with hardly any space for the bird to spread open its wings). This is certainly not their natural environment as birds travel from one place to another, for various reasons.