HUNTING with hounds raises fierce passions, which blaze both on and off the field. In our ever more litigious society, it was practically inevitable that these passions would lead to litigation. So it was that the National Trust's decision to stop stag hunting on its estates in Somerset and Devon came to be challenged in court. In Scott v. National Trust [1998] 2 All E.R. 705, Robert Walker J. had to deal with various tactical applications arising in the challenge to the National Trust's decision: his Lordship's judgment was not intended to, and did not, come even close to an opinion on the vexed question of stag hunting itself.