Baying packs of hounds and a cavalcade of riders set out across the English and Welsh countryside today to test the limits of a ban on the time-honoured British sport of hunting foxes.
The controversial law, which has pitched animal rights campaigners against hunters who trace their pursuit back centuries, came into force yesterday after the Labour government forced the legislation through parliament late last year.
But with much scope for confusion in the legal text, a bitterly fought argument about the rights and wrongs of using dogs to chase and kill foxes, deer, hares and mink is likely to drag on.
"Thousands of people are sending a message and that's that this ban cannot work," Labour MP Kate Hoey told a crowd of several hundred riders and supporters from the Beaufort Hunt in the west of England.
"This law is unenforceable, this law is unjust and I have every confidence in my country and the people of my country that an unjust law cannot last," she said to applause and cheers.
Though several countries hunt foxes with dogs, the classic British image of scarlet-clad horsemen blowing horns and shouting "Tally Ho!" is the one of popular imagination.