Hunt campaigners in the West have reacted angrily to allegations that almost two-thirds of hunts are breaking the law by continuing to hunt foxes and deer.

The League Against Cruel Sports claimed 62 per cent of hunts nationally break the law, with a hardcore of "hunt criminals" being based in the West.

But furious hunters slammed the figure as "utterly unprovable" and "fantastical", and called upon the League to press charges against those hunts they claim are still breaking the law.

The League said almost one in five complaints to the police about hunting related incidents in the country happened in either the Avon and Somerset or Devon and Cornwall force areas, with similarly high numbers in Dorset, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire. However hunts in the region said the figure was high because the West is the last remaining place where most hunts are consistently monitored by anti-hunt campaigners, who submit "spurious" complaints themselves.

The row over the claim reignited the hunting debate last night, just as the new coalition Government prepares to put forward a motion on which MPs will decide whether or not to have a free parliamentary vote to repeal the ban.

The League's annual report last night claimed that 62 percent of hunts were "acting in a manner consistent with traditional hunting practices" commonplace before the ban.

Those "acts" ranged from people witnessing hunts and hounds chasing foxes or deer, to hounds trespassing in gardens, across roads and railway lines.

It argued that if hunts adhered to the ban by converting to drag hunting, far fewer incidents would occur.

"The hunters will tell you that the Hunting Act doesn't work because people break it," said LACS chairman John Cooper. "But they don't say the Theft Act doesn't work because people steal.

"At the end of the day, disagreement with the law isn't justification to break it," he added.

But hunters were left seething at the report.

"This makes a preposterous link between seeing a few stray hounds having a spot of bother or trespassing with a hunt setting out to break the ban," said Jill Grieve, from the Countryside Alliance.

"To say that 62 per cent of hunts are breaking the law is to whip a figure out of the air – it is utterly unprovable.

"The true picture is that three prosecutions have been successful and have resulted in the conviction of five people connected to registered hunts, undermining the statement that the Hunting Act is 'being enforced to great effect'."

The LACS said of the cases reportedly jointly to their own Hunt Crimewatch service and the police, 14 were in the Avon and Somerset area, eight in Devon & Cornwall, five in Dorset and three in Wiltshire.

Reports of illegal hunting are also common in Gloucestershire, where the Heythrop Hunt is constantly monitored by activists from a separate animal rights group.

Tonia Wood, the joint master of the Heythrop, said: "The League can't have it both ways – if 62 per cent of hunts are breaking the law and the hunt ban works, why are there no prosecutions and convictions? What are they saying – that the law is working but the police aren't?"

League chief executive Douglas Batchelor admitted the police face "a major challenge" in tackling illegal hunting.

"They have come a long way in the last five years, but there is a long way to go," he said. "Wildlife crime is being taken seriously by forces across the country, and we must remind them that terrorising wildlife for 'sport' is a crime and it must be tackled head-on."