There is just over six weeks to fill out the government consultation on ‘trail hunting’, which closes on 18 June. Protect the Wild has published guidance for people submitting their answers. Make sure you have your say!
As the stag hunting ‘season’ draws to a close we are planning to wind down these regular hunting updates until ‘cubbing’ season begins in August (‘cubbing’ is where hunts train their hounds to chase and kill using inexperienced young fox cubs as practice, giving the dogs a taste for blood). In the meantime, we’ll be producing regular ‘Eye on the Wild’ digests – giving a handy rundown of the latest news about British wildlife and identifying areas where our supporters can campaign to make a difference.
In this last hunting update for the time being, we share some good news from North Dorset Hunt Saboteurs (NDHS) amidst the grim reports of animals killed. NDHS shared footage of a stag miraculously escaping from the Quantock Staghounds with the help of wildlife defenders.
Our other stories include:
– The British Hounds Sports Association has scored a spectacular PR own goal.
– A man has been found guilty of offences under the Wildlife and Countryside Act after dumping scores of dead hares and protected birds on the doorstep of a Hampshire shop; the motives remain unclear.
– Seven people have been charged with hare coursing offences after a police chase in Wiltshire.
Closing-Meet, but this stag won’t be chased down
At the Quantock Staghounds’ closing meet of the season, a stag ran the gauntlet and made it to safety with the help of sabs. Check out this video from the awesome North Dorset Hunt Saboteurs:
A lone deer, pushed to the edge of collapse after three hours of terror in the heat, with a hunter on foot approaching, weapon loaded and ready. This is what the disgusting Quantock Staghounds call ‘sport’.
After a brutal three-hour chase across the Quantock Hills in the blazing sun, the exhausted deer fled into New Ground, a League Against Cruel Sports sanctuary. A rider had dismounted and was closing in for the kill when the brave stag found one last reserve of energy and bolted, making a desperate dash for his life as riders moved to cut off his escape route.
The stag’s escape was facilitated by sabs and monitors from several different groups who managed to prevent the hounds from entering the sanctuary.
This is what bloodsport looks like
We’ve written extensively about this hunt, and the picture never improves. Supporters spread across the hills in 4x4s and on quad bikes, saturating the landscape to radio the deer’s position to hunt staff. Hounds, riders, and a network of followers working in concert — all to run a single animal to exhaustion before shooting him. The Bateson Report, a ground-breaking scientific study commissioned by the National Trust and published in 1997 by Cambridge University animal behaviour expert Professor Patrick Bateson, found that the physiological disturbance caused to Red Deer by this kind of pursuit is “severe and unambiguous”. However, more than two decades later, the grim spectacle continues.
Unfortunately, after the stag managed to reach sanctuary, the Quantock Staghounds didn’t simply pack up and leave. The hunt searched National Trust land at Willoughby Cleave and even Holford Village Green, to the considerable anger of local residents who are planning to report the trespass to the local council. Part of the chase also crossed Forestry England land, which is being reported separately. The National Trust and Forestry England have both banned hunting on their land. Sadly, both of them, as we have noted all too often, do little to enforce their policy.
Another stag’s escape facilitated by wildlife defenders
The sabs and monitors who covered this meet did so across a vast area, under pressure, and they ensured that this stag lived. That matters hugely and shows the continued importance of the work of wildlife defenders.
The Quantock Staghounds have been prosecuted twice for illegal hunting. They have cycled through legal exemption after exemption – trail hunting, flushing to guns – switching their story to suit the day. The Hunting Act’s loopholes were practically written for them.
Devon & Somerset Staghounds utilise another exemption to make a final kill
Over on Exmoor, the 18 April Devon & Somerset Staghounds (DSSH) closing meet ended with the death of a stag secured through what Mendip Hunt Saboteurs (MHS) rightly called out as the ‘exploitation’ of yet “another smokescreen”.
After spending hours pursuing healthy stags across the moor near Hawkridge, only to lose them within a large protective herd, the hunt changed tack. With time running short, they switched their attention to an injured, limping stag in Barton Wood, invoking the Hunting Act’s “rescue of a wild mammal” exemption to justify the pursuit.
This exemption was added to the law to allow the killing of animals to relieve suffering. However, once again the loophole has been used to justify cruel bloodsport instead. Rather than relieving suffering, wildlife defenders from MHS reported that the injured animal was chased for an hour through steep woodland, with the Hunt using whips to keep him moving, before finally shooting him.
DSSH were eager for a closing meet kill, and it was guaranteed by a legal sleight of hand.
Chasing a panicked and injured animal for hours before shooting him has nothing to do with ‘relieving suffering’ and everything to do with barbaric violent bloodlust.
As we have previously reported, stags have been killed on a weekly basis this year by the South West of England’s three remaining staghound packs. If we don’t want another bloody ‘season’ next year, we need the government to make good on its promises and enforce a real and workable ban. However, until they do, it’s up to all of us – not just the brave sabs and monitors – to stick up for our wildlife.
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Why not join your local hunt sab group?
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Find out more about deer hunting and the campaign to end it.
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Donate to North Dorset Hunt Saboteurs, to help them keep on looking out for UK wildlife and making life difficult for the likes of the Quantock Staghounds.
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Support Mendip Hunt Sabs to keep a close eye on Devon & Somerset Staghounds.
PR own goal for the British Hound Sports Association
In what can only be described as an act of spectacular self-sabotage, the British Hound Sports Association (BHSA) has appointed Tory peer Baron Benjamin Mancroft to lead its new Westminster Advisory Board. Yes, that Baron Mancroft — the man who, as chair of the Masters of Foxhounds Association (MFHA) in 2020, became the unwitting architect of one of hunting’s most catastrophic own goals.
For those who missed the original scandal: Mancroft presided over a series of internal webinars during his tenure at the MFHA. The webinars were frank, candid discussions aimed at Hunt Masters and hunting supporters that were subsequently leaked by the Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA). The HSA published the recordings, and the fallout was considerable. The webinars laid bare attitudes and discussions that the hunting world would very much have preferred to keep behind closed doors.
In their published coverage of the leak, the HSA described the recordings as evidence of “mass criminality within hunting” – a characterisation that sent shockwaves well into the mainstream press. It was, to put it mildly, not a good look.
Now, BHSA chair Viscount William Astor has decided that the ideal person to navigate hunting’s delicate political relationships at this key moment in Westminster is the very same Baron Mancroft.
The appointment is audacious in its disregard for optics. A Westminster advisory board is precisely the kind of operation that requires spotless credibility. Mancroft brings to the role a very different kind of fame.
There is a certain dark comedy to all of this. The hunting lobby has spent years arguing that it is misrepresented, that its critics rely on distortion and selective framing. And yet here they are, gifting those same critics a headline that writes itself. Mancroft’s appointment shows, again, the crazy levels of arrogant entitlement amongst hunting’s advocates. They really have no-one to blame but themselves.
Check out our explainer on the Hunting Office webinars.
Watch Protect the Wild’s original animation, narrated by Chris Packham, depicting the Hunting Office Webinars conspiracy:
Over 50 animal corpses dumped outside a shop
When a man dumped the bodies of 50 hares and two rare birds outside a community shop in Hampshire – described in court as a scene from a horror movie – the story briefly broke through into mainstream coverage. And yet the wider question, the one that never quite makes it into the headline, is why it takes a scene this extreme to make us pay attention at all.
The killing of hares and the industrial-scale shooting of birds is par for the course in the British countryside. In fact, fox hunting and bird shooting are routinely held up as noble traditions, promoted by supposed ‘pillars of society’ like King Charles.
But when one man – for reasons best known to himself – dumped animal corpses on a UK village street the story was briefly picked up in the mainstream media.
Why does the media react with shock and horror over some animal killings, while others are normalised and routine? On this occasion two birds’ corpses were mistreated and dumped on the street, but literally millions of birds are bred in factory farm conditions for the sole purpose of being killed for ‘sport’.
Corpses of protected birds dumped on the street
Southampton Magistrates Court heard that James Kempster’s DNA was found on the bodies of the hares as well as a Barn Owl and a Kestrel dumped outside Broughton Community Shop. Both Barn Owls and Kestrels are protected birds, and it is illegal to harm or unnecessarily disturb them.
Kempster maintained that he didn’t know why his DNA was found on the bodies. Magistrates found that there was not enough evidence to prove that he was one of the hooded men captured on CCTV outside the shop. However, the court found him guilty of two counts of ‘possessing a live or dead wild bird’ under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. The maximum penalty is six months in prison. He will return to court for sentencing in June.
Kempster’s conviction was reportedly a result of improvements in obtaining DNA from animal corpses, which have arisen from the investigation of crimes against raptors in Scotland.
Ruth Tingay of Wild Justice commented:
“Usually the perpetrators [of this sort of crime] are keen to hide the evidence and either burn or bury the corpses, or sometimes they are thrown into a river. It’s hard to get into the mind of somebody who would do something this depraved.”
‘Tweet, tweet, tweet’
Leaving court, Kempster appeared unrepentant. He quipped: “Tweet, tweet, tweet” to watching reporters.
Horrors like the one that unfolded outside the Broughton Community Shop are a result of the cruel, speciesist attitudes prevalent in our society. All too often, animal corpses are used in vendettas and acts of intimidation like the one that took place in Hampshire. To be frank, what happened in Broughton is a reflection of a society that sees animals as objects, instead of as sentient beings.
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Read Protect the Wild’s explainer on Birds of Prey and the Law.
Seven charged after Wiltshire hare coursing pursuit
In the early hours of Saturday 25 April, Wiltshire Police responded to reports of three vehicles involved in hare coursing across farmland near Ludgershall. One vehicle was stopped after a pursuit on the A303 in Hampshire; a second was found abandoned.
Inside the vehicles, police officers discovered dead hares, lurcher dogs, and equipment associated with hare coursing. Seven men have now been charged with going equipped for hare coursing and are bailed to appear before Salisbury Magistrates’ Court in August.
The charge of going equipped to course hares was introduced as part of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act in 2022.
Essex Police recently reported that hare coursing incidents in their county more than doubled in a single year. One farmer spoke of nearly 200 incidents.
Hare coursing is not a minor rural nuisance. It is an organised, violent and often live-streamed to international gambling networks. Coursing is driving hares towards extinction in some areas. The brown hare population has significantly decreased during the last century and hare coursing is certainly a factor in this decline.
Last year, police forces reported an alarming rise in instances of hare coursing as the Summer months drew in.
Hare persecution
Hare numbers in the UK are dwindling, and wild hares are now a relatively rare sight. There used to be an estimated four million hares in Britain, but these numbers have now dropped to approximately 700,000. That’s a more than 80% decline in numbers. On top of hare coursing, hares don’t currently have a protected breeding season, meaning they can legally be shot all year round. The government has said it will protect hares during breeding season as part of its Animal Welfare Policy, announced last year, but the plans are yet to be enacted into law.
As well as hare coursing and shooting, hares are often pursued by hunts using beagle and basset packs. Protect the Wild’s 2025 report, ‘The True Face of Hunting with Hounds’ reports that the rate of wildlife persecution by these packs surpasses even fox hunts. Hunt monitors and sab groups witnessed 26 incidents of hare hunting across 15 meets, which makes a massive 1.73 incidents per meet.
At Protect the Wild, we want to see an end to all persecution of hares. That means that action is needed against hare coursing and we also need a workable ban on the hunting of mammals with hounds.
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Check out Protect the Wild’s explainer on Hare Coursing and the Law.
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And don’t forget to submit your response to the government consultation on ‘trail hunting’, which will affect hares too. Take a look at our guidance here.
Thanks again to all the wildlife defenders who have allowed us to use their footage and pictures. Sabs and monitors often put themselves at significant personal risk to get these images. We appreciate and admire all of the groups and individuals working to end the cruelty of hunting.
Image of Baron Mancroft via Wikimedia Commons, image of dead animals dumped outside Broughton Community store via ITV News/Screenshot. Picture of hare coursing via Unsplash. Video of stag escaping the clutches of Quantock Staghounds courtesy of North Dorset Hunt Saboteurs. Barn Owl picture via Andy Chilton/Unsplash. Image of hare shoot in Banham thanks to Norwich Hunt Saboteurs.
