"It's like talking to a priest," I told them by the end. We needed honesty, and the Pennine Foxhounds were honest men. I sat in front rooms with real stuffed foxes taking pride of place, and stood in workshops high in the hills above Huddersfield as lifelong hunting men recounted admiration for the fox but horror at his frenzied killing ways. Months of phone-bashing had yielded great stories so far but producer John Leonard wanted more passion. WHY did farmers love foxes yet want them dead?

I'd been out on the opening day of the new hunting season, persuaded members of the oldest hunt in England to talk about why they hunted, been across Cheshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire, down to Wales ... no-one quite sure what to make of my surname. "Is it a good thing he's called Hunt?" Post-ban, everyone was paranoid, and it showed.

I fell lucky with the Hunt Sabs. They were gathering in Manchester for the first hunts since the ban when I made my calls. They were keen to talk so I invited them round to my house, and brave people with honourable convictions told of their beatings in pursuit of their aim. They were ecstatic that hunting had been banned.

On the river Mersey they showed me how they disrupted hunts using the same horns the hunters did, and they sat in my back garden waiting as I interviewed them - first names only - about their loathing for unnecessary death.

But for the men of the Pennine Foxhounds, hunting was in the blood. It was as natural as going to the football. It was what they did on a Saturday, and they talked of fleeing foxes crossing rivers, bloodstained coops, forty headless ducks, the sudden frenzy of the kill. The way they talked was like poetry.

So thank you for trusting me, everyone who talked. This is what we were aiming for - to get to the heart of the matter - and I hope people on all sides of the hunting debate can enjoy this Ballad.