The Free Church of Country Sports says 400 to 700 people a day have signed up, bringing official membership to 6,058.

Founder Rod Brammer said the group had "rock solid" legal grounds to challenge a ban on race discrimination grounds.

The group believes those who take part in country sports should be considered a social group with an ethnic identity.

There were clashes between pro-hunting demonstrators and police in Parliament Square as MPs voted through a ban on 15 September.

Campaigners say the countryside is now a "no-go" area for the government - rural affairs minister Alun Michael has cancelled two trips because of planned protests.

Mr Brammer, a shooting coach from Devon, told BBC News Online he thought pro-hunters were signing up to show they were "decent people".

He said: "We are trying to be the mediators before this hunting thing gets entirely out of control.

"I'm sure the country people don't want to physically fight and there are a lot who would find such things abhorrent. "

He helped set up the group in 2001 to support farmers in the South West whose livelihoods were devastated by foot-and-mouth disease.

He said the church, which welcomes members of all faiths, took up the cause of hunting because it believed hunting farms were deliberately targeted during foot-and-mouth culls.

The 'church' argues that the government has ruled out a complete ban on the slaughter of animals for halal and kosher meat and should be even-handed towards hunting.

Mr Brammer thinks it now has more than 12,000 members, as many have yet to be officially included on the group's register.

Source:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3687340.stm
Compassionate members of the public that Hunt Scum have murdered:  http://www.arkangelweb.org/barry/violence.shtml
Violence in Animal Rights:  http://www.violenceinanimalrights.co.uk