Tag: trail hunting

Devon and Somerset Staghounds filmed cracking whip over a deer’s head

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Who is it that says on their website that, “There are now more than 2500 deer on the moor, which makes the south west herd of red deer much the largest in England and they are readily visible to deer watchers, tourists and local people who love their deer.”? And who has been filmed hitting a deer, cruelly prolonging a chase, and whose supporters were recorded pushing the same exhausted deer back towards the hunt? That would be the Devon and Somerset Staghounds…

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Forestry Commission Chair on hunt sabs and transparency (FOI request)

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Jack Riggall, an independent hunt monitor and anti-hunting campaigner, is writing a series of posts for us on fox hunts and Forestry England, and we were intrigued to be forwarded a letter this week obtained under a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to Defra which at the very least suggests that Sir William Worsley, the newly-appointed Chair of the Forestry Commission (Forestry England is an Executive Agency of the Forestry Commission), is not well inclined towards Hunt Saboteurs (who work in the field to protect wild animals from illegal hunting of course) or ‘animal rights and environmental activists’.

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Fox Hunting lobbyists seeking way round new Covid law

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New Covid-19 restrictions come into force in England, Scotland, and Wales this Monday as the number of infections rise sharply. These measures (commonly referred to as the ‘Rule of Six’) are posted on the gov.uk website. The so-called Countryside Alliance immediately announced they would be ‘reviewing the latest government guidance’ – we’re not lawyers but even we can understand that what the government announced is not ‘guidance’ but legal restrictions. The line that “this limit will be enforceable in law” should have given that away but perhaps they need it explaining again. This is NOT ‘guidance’ it is the law…

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Guest Post | Forestry England & Fox Hunting #1: The Portman Hunt

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Think fox hunting, which was banned by the Hunting Act 2004, is a ‘thing of the past’? Think again. Hunts have been breaking the law since the Act was passed – helped by sympathetic landowners who issue licences despite a wealth of material proving the terms of those licences are being routinely broken. Jack Riggall, an independent hunt monitor and anti-hunting campaigner, is writing a series of posts on fox hunts and Forestry England, the government department responsible for managing and promoting the nation’s forests. Jack has written other guest posts and recorded a number of podcasts with us.

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The Independent | Boris Johnson said he ‘loved’ fox hunting

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The Independent newspaper has just run a story that – on the face of it perhaps – seems curiously timed. The article reproduces a much-quoted opinion piece that current UK prime-minister Boris Johnson published in right-leaning The Spectator magazine back in 2005, not long after the Hunting Act came into force. So why now? Is this a rather clever pre-emptive strike on fox hunting and its allegedly ‘sexually inadequate’ supporters…

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Two charged after fox killed during New Year hunt in East Yorkshire

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It’s not that we’re deliberately looking for stories linking Yorkshire with wildlife crime, it’s more that they just keep turning up. When it’s not the region’s gamekeepers shooting or poisoning birds of prey, it seems that its so-called ‘trail hunting’ fox hunters can’t help breaking the law either. As a report in the Hull Daily Mail puts it rather prosaically, “Two men have been charged after allegedly allowing dogs to hunt a fox in East Yorkshire”.

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