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Last night, the nation watched in horror at Channel 4 News once again exposed illegal fox hunting across the UK. One of the most distressing sequences – supplied to Channel 4 News by the HSA – shows a terrierman dragging a terrified fox from her refuge and throwing her to the feet of the pack.
It may be a new year, but hunts are still illegally hunting foxes, using violence and causing road chaos. And some are even invited on to MOD land to do so!
It’s official! The BHSA has confirmed that the Southdown & Eridge Hunt and the East Sussex & Romney Marsh Hunt are merging together! This great news means that there will now be one less fox hunt in the South East.
This season the campaign to close the Cottesmore Hunt has grown stronger. Every fundraiser has been targeted, a week of action was held during the cubbing season as we sabbed them five times during that week and we have been hitting them more often at their midweek meets.
But with this success comes a price and when dealing with the most notoriously violent fox hunt in Britain over the last five years then there was only going to be one outcome. Hunt Violence.
Last September ‘rent a thugs’ appeared at the Blackmore and Sparkford Vale Hunt, assaulting Sabs from Weymouth Animal Rights (WAR) and stealing equipment. They have now been charged with assault and theft by Dorset Police.
Just a week after two hounds belonging to a Dartmoor hunt were run over and killed on a public highway, another gruesome scene emerged from within Dartmoor National Park on Saturday when the Lamerton Hunt disembowelled a fox in front of Plymouth & West Devon Hunt Sabs.
It’s a New Year, and hunts are dreaming up new ways to try to hide their illegal activities. When Calder Valley Hunt Sabs rolled up to a meet of North York & West of Yore Hunt near Catterick, North Yorkshire on Saturday it was immediately clear that fox hunting was in progress. The terrier crew were seen on quad bikes, with the classic set-up of a terrier box on the front and a storage locker – containing spades, digging bars, and the other tools of their vile trade – on the back.
Followers of the South Down & Eridge, with East Sussex & Romney Marsh hunt attacked a stranded Hunt Sab vehicle New Years Day. One member of South Coast Hunt Saboteurs was hospitalised, and the vehicle was left with all but one of its windows smashed.
A father and son have been banned from keeping animals after pleading guilty to two counts of causing unnecessary suffering to an animal at Folkestone magistrates on 20th December.
Just before Christmas, huntsman Chris Woodward was convicted of illegally hunting a fox and ordered to pay a fine & costs totalling £1,375.
The Hunt Saboteurs Association has received reports of two foxhounds who were tragically hit and killed by cars today on the busy A30 today, near Okehampton, Devon.
Covert cameras have caught the Mendip Farmers Hunt blocking an active badger sett just hours before hunt hounds rampage through the area.
These are the desperate cries of a Powys resident as they filmed hunt hounds tearing a fox to pieces in their neighbour’s garden.
Two days after the HSA released video of the Avon Vale Hunt throwing a live fox to hounds, we have been given permission to share horrifying footage of a hunt in Powys on the afternoon of Wednesday 22nd November.
News coming in is that one of the two males arrested following the assault and robbery of hunt sabs is none other than Kieron Fookes, twin brother of recently convicted wildlife criminal Aaron Fookes, the former whipper-in of the Avon Vale Hunt.
As hunts across the country prepare to gather for their Boxing Day meets, the HSA has been passed horrifying footage of so-called ‘trail hunters’ digging a fox from its underground refuge and throwing it – alive – to a pack of hounds.
Following the recent conviction and plea hearings of a number of huntsman and hunt terriermen, the HSA is making a further appeal for sight of several sick videos hunting videos referenced in court.
In particular, we are interested in a video that shows former Avon Vale Hunt master Stuart Radbourne and his fox-baiting mate Oliver Thompson throwing a live fox to the hounds in front of hunt supporters – including a child – on Christmas Eve, 2020.
Ex-Essex & Suffolk huntsman, Sam Staniland. was in court last Monday facing six animal welfare charges relating to terrier work.
The court heard how Staniland, who already has a conviction under the Hunting Act from his time at the Meynell & South Staffs, failed to prevent injuries and suffering to multiple terriers, a foxhound, and two lurchers by causing, and failing to prevent, dogs from fighting with foxes and badgers.
Another fake trail-laying event and another embarrassment for hunting’s incompetent governing body, the British Hound Sports Association. This time, the BHSA have chosen to use the Queen song Don’t Stop Me Now to accompany their latest poorly produced video of foxhounds running through a field.
A badger protector from Wiltshire has accepted substantial damages after being arrested on false – and subsequently withdrawn – claims made by a badger cull shooter. Wiltshire Police agreed a settlement on a case brought against them and admitted unlawful detainment, trespass against the person, assault and battery and a GDPR breach of the badger protectors’ personal information to a third party.
There could not be a more obvious case of illegal hunting than that captured on camera by fox hunter Harry Mayo at a meet of the Avon Vale Hunt in Brokerswood in December 2022. The video, which showed Avon Vale terrierman Alex Warden retrieve his terrier from a badger sett, as someone lifted the doomed fox from the ground and threw them to the waiting hounds who proceeded to tear the terrified animal apart.
