These first few paragraphs were extracted from an article in "The West Australian", dating Monday December 2nd 1996.There was more to the article but I felt it was only necessary to show the quantity with the issue of hunting involved.

Prince William is turning out to have a mind of his own.Scarcely a month passes without this 14-year-old making a fresh independent stand.It was his decision to go during his school holiday to Queen Elizabeth's estate at Balmoral, Scotland, where he successfully stalked his first stag.

It was not a move designed to appeal to his mother. Famously bored when forced to stand about in the cold, Princess Diana escaped traditional royal holidays by flying back to London as soon as she could. She must find it galling that William is turning into a countryman like his father, Prince Charles.

William's interest in shooting and stalking is long-standing, and stopped Diana from becoming president of the Royal Society for the Prevention Of Cruelty to Animals.

At Eton, he has also shown inclinations towards two of his father's own interests: literature and art. His mother's emotions must have been mixed when, this summer, William presented her with a silver brooch he had made- in the shape of a stag. A tribute, but also a sign of independence.

This short article was extracted from "The West Australian", dating Monday December 2nd 1996.

Princess Diana is fighting with her son William over his lust for blood sports, the Sunday mirror has reported."Diana: My fear for gun-crazed Wills", the paper said in a front-page story detailing a new rift inside the royal family.

It said Diana feared her eldest son would turn into "a remorseless hunter with a blood-lust" after his first kill.

"The animal-loving princess is deeply concerned about the psychological effects that hunting -so favoured by the royals- will have on princes William and Harry," it said.

William is believed to have stalked and shot his first stag last month on Queen Elizabeth's Balmoral estate in the Scottish Highlands. The 14-year-old prince reportedly made the kill in the company of his 12-year-old brother Harry and Prince Charles.

After the kill, the stag would have been "gralloched" or disembowelled, to prevent the carcass from bloating and to make it easier to drag down the hill.

Charles is a keen hunter, as is Tiggy Legge-Bourke, the aide who looks after the boys when they are with their father.

Legge-Bourke has even helped the princes practise their markmanship by shooting rabbits and crows but Diana, who was divorced from Charles in August, abhors blood sports.