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Many Conservatives in marginal constituencies are relieved that the issue is being dropped. "It would be a distraction," says one. Another, even though he supports repealing the "illiberal" act that he feels has hurt his rural constituency, says: "The last thing we need when Labour is waging daily class war on the Etonians is to start talking about foxhunting."

Mind you, this unwillingness to address the issue enrages other pro-hunting MPs. One snipes that "a lot of these people, like Amber Rudd, who are expressing concern about the impact on the election, expressed no such concern when they were happily soliciting support from the hunting lobby in 2010. They will not lose a single vote on this issue, and besides, we regularly vote for unpopular policies on defence and pensions that really do affect our constituents. But when we try to do something with a tiny statutory instrument, they panic at the thought of some bloke in a fox suit."

Pro-hunting MPs also think ministers have been putting off doing anything about relaxing the Hunting Act. While it's difficult to find a Conservative who will criticise Mr Cameron's own commitment to rural issues (and that is truly impressive when there are so many Tory MPs who normally find fault with everything about the Prime Minister, down to his choice of socks), the one thing that does irritate backbenchers is that there wasn't more movement on this from the Environment department earlier.

The Countryside Alliance has emailed members saying "there has been no official response to the proposal, to our knowledge no statutory instrument (the means by which the law could be amended) has been drafted, and certainly the process of taking an amendment through Parliament had not even seen the starting grid".

At least with contentious issues that upset some voters, such as gay marriage, ministers had the wisdom to pursue reforms with enough time before the election for some of the heat to fade away. On hunting, however, the heat remains – and increasingly, this issue is becoming something that even rural ministers recognise is safer not to discuss at all.