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https://www.dropbox.com/s/2j6w60hayle01qh/Listener4638.pdf?dl=0

Fed up with this one already!

Thanks tatters... : )

Doesn't sound promising...

(Thanks as always, tatters.)

Gosh, this one might take some doing.

...although the cluing is reasonably generous so far.

Thank you, tatters...... I think!

Thanks tattters.

Much less frightening than it first appeared, thank goodness. I find some of the clues very hard to parse, though the answers are clear enough. Stuck with 33 and 44 though. There seem to be two possibilities for the highlighting and I propose to use the symmetrical form (which might be more like the real thing - if "real" isn't a misnomer).

Well now. I've just about reached a conclusion, dependent on two assumptions about the preamble. The first is that the two head start clues don't have an answer to be replaced. They just don't have an answer. The second is that the substituted letters bit only makes sense if I use the letters of the successful hunter, because they account for the letters of the two items negotiated by the more modern hunter (with one letter adrift, I think).
What I can't resolve is which final letters to highlight: as others have mentioned, there doesn't seem to be anything unique about three of the (presumed) letters: I must be still missing something.