Passionate Cheshire hunt follower Steve Creer brands MPs behind the ban on the sport as 'bigots with no understanding of rural life'.

Steve has followed the Wynnstay Hunt, in Cheshire and North Wales for 40 years.

The advertising manager for the Chronicle in South and Mid Cheshire, started following the hunt, which has more than 1,000 members in its supporters' club, at the age of five on his bicycle, and still attends meetings today on his motorbike.

Steve, like many other people in his home village of Tilston, near Malpas, is passionate about field sports, such as hunting, fishing, shooting and ferreting, and says they are part of the fabric of rural life.

He says: 'The countryside is extremely angry at the way they have been treated by the Government and the backlash could have very, very severe consequences.

'I, and many other people of a rural background, am astounded by the lack of knowledge the backbench MPs, who pushed this ban through Parliament, have about the way of life in the countryside and we resent being told what to do by these people.

'I wouldn't attempt to vote on an inner-city urban issue of which I know nothing.

'This vote that backbenchers have fudged through is bigoted because they have no understanding of rural life.'

Steve is fascinated by the science of hunting with hounds and says very few foxes are chased to exhaustion and ripped to pieces.

'Hunting revolves around scent, which varies with the weather and it's great to watch the hounds pick up the scent and work out the line of where the fox has gone in a natural habitat,' he says.

The 50-year-old has a clear conscience that hunting puts more back into the ecology of the countryside than it takes out.

'Those with a vested interest in any field sport also have the long-term welfare of the hunted species at heart,' he says.

'Field sports enthusiasts regularly plant thickets and fence pit holes to create areas of habitat for their chosen quarry species.

'This, in turn, gives rise to many other forms of wildlife which are under everincreasing threat from modern-day farming. This type of countryside management is at their own expense.'

'Hunting keeps a balanced population of foxes and if hunting is banned, where does the interest lie for people of the rural community to help maintain the countryside?

'The ban has been forced through Parliament under the guise of cruelty, but without doubt, the alternative methods of fox control, such as gassing, trapping, shooting and snaring, are far more cruel.

'The fox can suffer for days and shooting can only be done at night, when the fox is on the move, which risks accidental shooting of domestic animals or even people.

'All field sports are completely open to scrutiny. Lord Burns was commissioned by the Government to make a full inquiry into field sports, at a hefty cost to the taxpayer.

'The MPs pushing for the ban didn't have the decency to turn up to listen to the findings of the inquiry, or the full debate, but made sure they were there at 10pm to vote, and that's why rural people feel let down.

'Ordinary respected members of rural society, from the butcher, the baker to the candlestick maker, will now all of a sudden become criminals through a completely un-just law, but how can hunting be policed when it takes people in rural areas hours to get a policeman if someone is robbed?

'When interviewed on TV the pro-ban MPs say if people don't like it they can overturn it through the ballot box. But how can a couple of million people outvote millions of mostly urban dwellers?'