In ASSOCIATION WITH Seeland

The winner of letter of the Week will receive a new William II waistcoat from Seeland. Worth £64.99, it is available in navy, moose brown and pine green and sizes S to 5Xl. For more information visit www.seeland.com. calibre, and be expected to use them competently (12 September). This is irresponsible and patently cruel on any quarry.

The Editor does express doubt on it being a good idea, but he should have gone further and given the fellow making the suggestion some chastisement.

It is quite possible that a correctly fitted .410 in the hands of a skilled Shot could produce consistent clean kills at a reasonable range, the pattern placed solely in the head and neck, but how many of us can do that?

If you want an ever more damning reason for antis to heap wrath upon our beleaguered sport, then this is it. Bury the anecdote where it belongs and return to your more typical themes, which make us nod in assent and leave us happy with our lot.

E. Miller, Cumbria I was delighted to read in the national press last week that water voles have been reintroduced into the river aller on the National Trust’s Holnicote estate in Somerset, from which they have been extinct for three decades.

The water vole — immortalised as Ratty in Wind in the Willows — was wiped out by the North american mink, misguidedly released from fur farms by animal rights activists in the 1970s and 1980s. mink, voracious predators that wreaked havoc on our waterways, were hunted by otterhounds until the absurd Hunting act 2004.

masters and huntsmen of otterhounds realised in the early 1970s that otter numbers were in serious decline and ceased hunting them. It was something of an irony that the animal rights