“We urge you not to forget the real issue is that these webinars confirmed that you, as landowners, have been played, misled and lied to. THIS is the key point to come out of the webinar – that hunts break the law week in, week out – and you have been complicit in this.”

This is an excerpt from an excellent open letter sent by the campaign group Action Against Foxhunting (AAF) “to all landowners and managers who allow “trail hunting” to take place” on their land”. It is yet more fallout from the self-inflicted wounds caused by last month’s leaked Hunting Office webinars (with their talk of ‘smokescreens’ and the ‘soft underbelly’ of terriers being taken out on so-called ‘trail hunts’ – see Hunts on the Run) which includes a police investigation, a panning in the national media, and councils and major charities banning fox hunting on their land.

AAF suggest that this open letter should be shared far and wide. We’d have no hesitation in recommending that. It is well-written, sticks to the salient points, and lands some telling blows. Landowners have indeed been ‘played’ (that’s the perfect word to describe it), and after these webinars any landowner continuing to parrot the lie that fox hunts are behaving lawfully are at the very least facilitating lawbreaking – at worst they are complicit in it.

If you’d like to support the action please see

actionagainstfoxhunting.org

[email protected]