The threat was graphic and unequivocal: 'Crossing my fingers for a 'hunting' accident in 2014, hoping we'll find your tiny brain blown off by a shotgun, dripping down rocks covered by your slutty hair, ahh makes me smile just thinking about it!'

There were others labelling Rachel Carrie, one of Britain's top female game shooters, a psychopath who kills for kicks and suggesting she turn her gun on herself.

Perhaps most disturbing were the ones designed to make her abandon her lifelong commitment to hunting by directly threatening her family.

'Imagine how you might feel if I shot your mother in the head and then celebrated, rejoiced, gave thanks and respected her high quality flesh as I ate it,' wrote one troll on Facebook.

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Rachel Carrie, who has shot for Great Britain at international competitions, has been targeted by online trolls

Yet the shooter, who has represented Great Britain in international competition and was called up for last year's Commonwealth Games, has committed no crime other than to offend the vocal anti-bloodsports community. They stalk her online as surely as 30-year-old Rachel stalks a stag, their natural habitat the anonymity offered by the internet.

Bravely speaking about her ordeal at the hands of cyberbullies, Rachel says: 'They treat me as if I am a murderer or a terrorist, yet I do nothing illegal or unethical. They are so disconnected from the countryside they see animals as something out of a Disney film – they think every rabbit is Thumper and every deer Bambi.

'It's terrifying that they're so radical in their ideas and that they believe they have the right to impose them on me. But I won't stop hunting. I won't surrender to a bunch of keyboard warriors who believe in the power of the online mob.

'I am called vile, disgusting and cruel, and get messages asking me to remove images they find offensive. But why should their opinion carry more weight than mine?

'They accuse me of acting out of bloodlust and try to report me for posting graphic or violent pictures, yet I have never posted anything of blood and guts and gore. I am more likely to post a picture of an animal which is about to become my supper.

The top shooter, who was voted into the world's top ten hottest hunters by website ranker.com, is regularly bullied by trolls surprised she's not 'some middle-aged bloke in a dusty Barbour'

One of the shocking messages of abuse which Rachel has received on social media by those opposed to hunting

Rachel, pictured at the Commonwealth Games last year, launched her international career in France in 2010 and has several titles to her name, including British 'side by side' champion 2013, in which she not only claimed the ladies' crown but came in the men's top ten

'Why should that offend people who love a Sunday roast, wear leather shoes and munch sweets with gelatine in them from the comfort of their leather-upholstered car or their hide sofa? What makes them think they love animals and I don't?'

Rachel, with her waist-length blonde hair and immaculate make-up and manicure, makes an unlikely advocate for country sports. Glamorous shots of her modelling with her guns, or out walking her chihuahua Baby with a shotgun over her arm, have seen her ranked as one of the world's top ten hottest hunters by website ranker.com.

She is regularly bullied by trolls surprised she's not 'some middle-aged bloke in a dusty Barbour'. But she asks: 'Why shouldn't a glamorous woman also be a hunter? Like most women, I like my hair and nails and make-up done, but that doesn't make me an easy target. Some of my critics seem to think it means I am without expert knowledge or a firm opinion – they really need to re-evaluate because I am no bimbo.'

What she is, however, is one of a new breed of hunter whose determination not to see bloodsports pushed into the shadows is fuelling the bitter row between pro and anti factions, both in wild corners of the British countryside and in Westminster. In the past year, both the RSPCA and the RSPB have been criticised for allegedly politicising their core animal and bird welfare business and channelling money into bureaucracy and marketing.

Most recently, in this newspaper, cricketing legend Sir Ian Botham – a keen game shooter – launched a devastating attack on the RSPB, saying it had betrayed bird lovers and the species it was supposed to protect.

Rachel has never hidden her passion for hunting, following the lead of her father who is a world champion in shooting. She says: 'From being a little girl I shared my father's love of the country way of life. I had ferrets and a Harris hawk from the age of ten, and I'd trap rabbits by driving them out with the ferrets for my hawk to catch.

The glamorous game shooter, who was called up for the Commonwealth Games, said she received abuse and threats by those opposed to the bloodsport

Rachel said the cyberbullies treated her like a murderer or a terrorist for competing in the legal sport

'I had my own butcher's block and I'd skin and joint them, give the best bits to my mum to cook and feed the rest to my hawk. Once I chased my best friend around the garden with rabbit entrails – she ran away screaming. I guess that should have been my first hint that not everyone has hunting in them as I do.'

It was in 2009 that Rachel first picked up a gun to shoot clay pigeons at a British Association for Shooting and Conservation ladies' day. 'I haven't put one down since,' she reveals. She soon moved on to game shooting and says: 'Shooting pheasants is my first love. I adore a day spent in the heart of the natural environment at the end of which I go home with dinner in my hand.'

Today she uses a 12-gauge Perazzi trap gun, part of her investment in thousands of pounds' worth of equipment.

She launched her international career in France in 2010 and has several titles to her name, including British 'side by side' champion 2013, in which she not only claimed the ladies' crown but came in the men's top ten. She was called up for the Commonwealth Games last summer, but did not get a chance to shoot.

Her competitive success in the past five years has encouraged her to become a fierce advocate for field sports, using her social media profile and her role as a brand ambassador and model for cult young countrywear company Holland Cooper as a platform. She said: 'I was stunned when I was told by others in the country sports community not to post pictures on Facebook or Twitter. Why should it be a dirty little secret? Why hide it? Everyone puts pictures of their hobby on Facebook – why shouldn't we?'

It was a decision which has led to a series of online confrontations with the anti-hunting lobby and means she is coy about giving details of where she works as an environmental consultant or her home life in the Yorkshire Dales with her boyfriend, a pro-shooter and shooting coach.

With her long blonde hair and immaculate make-up and manicure, Rachel, pictured out walking her chihuahua Baby, makes an unlikely advocate for country sports

Rachel, pictured with one of her kills, said she had even had people threatening her family in a bid to get her to abandon her lifelong commitment to hunting

Rachel handles the abuse by deleting messages and blocking repeat offenders. She has also taken the Mary Beard approach to trolling – the academic famously confronts her online abusers and tries to educate them.

Rachel sends lengthy replies to some of her trolls. One such post received 6,000 likes, more than 1,000 comments and 2,500 shares on Facebook. But she is yet to report any of her attackers to police.

'I don't report them as I believe they are ignorant and fearful of what they don't understand,' she says. 'I would prefer to try to educate people on the hows and whys of hunting first – but if the day comes when I feel genuinely under threat I wouldn't hesitate.'

Not everyone will agree. For all those who accept the statistics from the BASC that the industry is worth £2 billion annually to the British economy, that shooting is involved in the management of two-thirds of the UK's rural land, and that almost five million acres are actively conserved by shooting, there will be someone who says killing animals for pleasure is cruel.

The fault lines lie not between town and country, or between vegetarian and meat-eater, but in heartfelt opinion. Both sides are united in their professed love for animals but polarised in how best that should be expressed. Rachel's argument is not that her belief is superior, just that she's entitled to hold it without being threatened or trolled. But her outspokenness and willingness to act as a figurehead for field sports do nothing to deflect attention.

She remains unrepentant. 'I truly believe hunting is in our blood, our DNA,' she says. 'Humans have hunted for millions of years, but our society is now so disconnected from nature that we forget that. Life is convenient, industrialised, urbanised, digitised and people seem to think meat comes from a supermarket aisle, where it could have been stuffed with growth hormones.

Rachel's competitive success in the past five years has encouraged her to become a fierce advocate for field sports

Despite the abuse she had one message for her online trolls- that she won't be giving up her passion for shooting any time soon

'That was the great irony of the horsemeat scandal. People were saying it was a disgrace they had no idea where their meat came from and what was in it. If you have shot it, trapped it and then butchered it yourself, you know exactly what's in it. And what could be more organic or free range than a wild animal which has had a good, healthy, happy, organic, free-range life itself? '

More controversially, Rachel has no qualms saying she'd like to hunt abroad for plains game in Africa. 'Hunting is a tool of man's coexistence with animals,' she says. 'It raises millions for conservation which is invested back into the land.

'Hunting is about population control and sharing our environment – it's poaching which poses a greater threat to animals because poachers are indiscriminate and care nothing for the animals or their habitat.'

Only once has Rachel been confronted by the anti-hunting lobby, when hunt saboteurs leapt out of two vehicles as she was shooting grouse in Yorkshire. 'They were terrifying – all wearing balaclavas, hoods up, they were paying no attention to safety in front of the guns and they were saying things like, 'Why don't you just shoot your dogs instead of birds',' she recalls.

'To be honest it felt like it was more about class warfare than animal welfare as they were also shouting stuff like, 'I bet your jacket cost £1,000,' which, of course, it didn't.'

Even that incident was not enough to put her off. Indeed, she has recently founded an all-women shooting group called Femmes Fatales and plans to pursue her international sporting career with a trip to the Gulf next month.