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If you’ve turned on the TV to see a hunting-related story over the past few years, it’s almost certainly been about one of the many illegal acts or animal cruelty offences carried out by hunts and the fanatics that follow them.
A piece like this can never do justice to the week-in, week-out efforts of sabs who venture out in all weathers to face down the hunters. We can’t cover, for example, the 58 hunt meets that Nottingham sabs have attended this season, nor the 55 times Salisbury Plain sabs went out to protect the wildlife of their beloved Plain. What we can do is focus on just a few highlights from the last full hunting season before a much-anticipated General Election.
With the 2023/24 fox and hare hunting season coming to an end, it’s clear that despite being banned from using huge swathes of land across the country, hunts are still doing just that.
When the fox hunting old guard were scrambling to explain what they’d be doing after the Hunting Act came into force into 2005, they were keen to make sure everyone knew just how pointless “trail hunting” was, and how urgently they wanted to get back to the good old days of killing foxes legally.
I don’t really have ambitions , I don’t like generating expectations, but there are two things that I would like to see happen before I pop my clogs. One, the end of the fur trade . . . and two, an end to fox hunting. From my perspective they are both vile. Small word vile, but powerful, and it completely encapsulates my contempt and loathing for those who deliberately perpetuate animal cruelty.
Over the weekend hunt sabs got the latest glimpse into the dying world of the hare-hunting basset and beagle packs.
Police Chief Matthew Longman called for a review of the Hunting Act in a recent Channel 4 exposé into Warwickshire Police’s secret protocol with the local hunt. ‘The Hunting Act is going to need reform, and to close some of these loopholes which are continually being exploited,’ said Longman.
Last Wednesday, sabs from Calder Valley, Sheffield and East Yorkshire Coast hit the very elusive Catterick Beagles. Sabs were shocked to find the meet was hosted by Aysgarth School, a posh prep school in Newton le Willows, North Yorkshire.
Sabs from eight different groups joined forces last week to sab the annual Two Bridges Hunt Club meet on Dartmoor.
Here at HSA Towers, we are used to hearing hunters come up with delusional theories, far fetched stories and generally bonkers alternative realities. However, last week their fantasist-in-chief the factually challenged Mr Tim Bonner, came out with an impressive pack of fibs on his personal venting platform, the Countryside Alliance blog.
Warning: this post contains distressing images The disembowelled body of a fox was found in an unnamed wood near Hankerton in Wiltshire on 7th February 2024, just moments after hunt hounds were seen leaving the wood, some covered with blood. Cotswold Hunt Sabs (CHS) and Cirencester Illegal Hunt Watch (CIHW) were in the area keeping an eye […]
19 years ago today the press assembled, sabs popped champagne corks and hunters spoke of outright defiance as a new law was enacted aimed at stopping the cruelty of hunting with hounds.
Inspired by Gregg Wallace’s recent article, a Hunt Sab talks us through their typical Saturday.
On Saturday the 17th February, almost exactly 19 years after fox hunting was made illegal, the army will host a meet of the notorious Quorn Hunt at the Defence Animal Training Regiment Headquarters at Remount Barracks, Melton Mowbray. Soldiers will be on duty to facilitate the meet and the entire event will be funded by taxpayers money.
We have been reliably informed, from several independent sources, that the Oakley hunt will fold at the end of this season.
A couple of weeks ago, the HSA reported on the merger of two of the south east’s last remaining fox hunts. The new outfit will be known as the ‘Southdown & Eridge with East Sussex & Romney Marsh Hunt.’ Not exactly catchy, is it?
The Royal Agricultural College Beagles are the student hare hunt of the Royal Agricultural University based in Cirencester. They have been feeling the pressure recently, with 7 hunting days lost to sabs so far this season. Frustrated, on Saturday they turned to the age-old hunt tactic of intimidation.
The Somerset-based ‘Weston & Banwell with West Somerset Vale Hunt’ deliberately hunted and killed a fox last Wednesday, the 31st January. Sabs from Mendip, Bristol, and Somerset groups were in attendance and saved several other foxes throughout the day.
Last Thursday, Channel 4 News screened an extended report on illegal fox hunting in the UK. One horrifying sequence – supplied to Channel 4 News by the HSA – shows members of the Wiltshire-based Avon Vale Hunt digging a fox from her underground refuge and throwing her to the hounds.
Cumbria and Lancashire Hunt Sab update us on their campaign against foxhunting in the rugged Cumbrian fells, where hunters pursue foxes on foot.
