A happy Christmas for the stag

Dear sir - While it may be the season to be jolly, Christmas can be the worst time of year for the foxes and hares that still have to suffer for man's warped gratification. The traditional benign image of 'country pastimes' depicted on festive greeting cards and table mats is far removed from the grim and decidedly unsporting reality. Hares are injured and tossed about like rag dolls at coursing events and those that escape visibly unscathed at coursing events have to cope with stress myopathy. They are never the same after their abusive ordeal at the hands of man. Foxes that fail to evade the pack have the skin ripped off their bones and the blood from their mangled carcasses is smeared on the faces of hunt followers, including children present at the kill. But at least the noble stag was not hounded this Christmas. The Greens, whatever their shortcomings, deserve credit for that. Rudolph had no worries about flying at low altitude over certain parts of Meath and North County Dublin this year, as the red coated ladies and gentlemen (not to be confused with Santa's helpers) were not chasing deer across fields, over hills, onto farms, or into rivers or lakes. Nor wrestling them out of crates or poking them with sticks to get them running. For while the fox and the hare await deliverance, the stag in The Ward runs free. Yours, John Fitzgerald, Lower Coyne Street, Callan, Co Kilkenny.