The Hunting Bill will ping-pong its way between the two Houses of Parliament from Monday and on Thursday the Speaker of the House of Commons is expected to use the Parliament Act to force through the will of MPs, who are overwhelmingly opposed to the rural sport.
Countryside protesters will no doubt make their feelings known and the sorry sight of riot police on Parliament Square could once again fill television screens.
But how on earth did we get here? To this place with no compromise, just anger, division and so little prospect of a workable settlement for the future?
Unfortunately, it's a story from which no side comes out unblemished.
The driving force for the ban was always Labour backbenchers, who wanted the party's 1997 manifesto commitment for a free vote on a hunt ban to become more than just leadership lip-service.
A ban seemed an attractive proposition for many Labour MPs, wrapping up animal welfare and class warfare in one convenient package. Many have been happy to remark that they see it as their revenge for the miners' strike.
But the effects of the hunt on the welfare of foxes has never been conclusively determined. The argument has always been high on noise and passion, but low on scientific proof. Lord Burns's report in 2000 was inconclusive.
But the Government's handling of the issue over the last seven years hasn't helped either.
In Labour's first term, anti-hunting MPs were left seething on the backbenches, ensuring that by the time the issue was being seriously discussed in 2002 and 2003, the compromise that Ministers wanted would never survive.
Hunt supporters, however, have done themselves few favours also. After Labour's 2001 victory, Tory peers and countryside campaigners stonewalled attempts by the Government to try to open up a genuine dialogue over the licensing of hunting.
Perhaps there was a belief that it would just go away, or a calculation that Tony Blair wouldn't dare take on the countryside because he had plenty to lose by agitating Middle England but little to gain.
Maybe they feared that a part-ban would be the thin end of the wedge. Ultimately, of course, it proved to be the wrong strategy.
The backbenchers wanted their pound of flesh and Blair, confident that Michael Howard's party did not pose a devastating threat, realised that he could give it to them.
Perhaps, if Tory peers had reached out for a deal two years ago, the middle way would have satisfied the frustrated backbenchers so eager for some movement, any movement, on the issue.
From the second the Government announced its intention to re-introduce last year's failed Bill, however, enabling it to be rammed through with the Parliament Act, the Labour backbenchers had won.
No amount of amendments and debates in the last two months from peers, who had only recently discovered the language of compromise, could change that.
As many Labour MPs have said, Conservative peers took a gamble on their strategy and are now paying the price.
But the sad truth is that no-one will get what they wanted, because the war over the issue has become greater than the issue itself.
Labour MPs and the Government could end up with an unworkable, unenforceable Act which, in reality, does little for the creatures it is supposed to help, as well as prompting open warfare between the enforcers of the law and some of the most law-abiding people in the land.
Meanwhile, the countryside ends up with a full ban when a part-ban may have been possible. There could have been a much better way. What a shame that neither side wanted it at the same time.

A ban seemed an attractive proposition for many Labour MPs, wrapping up animal welfare and class warfare in one convenient package.