Last night, millions watched on in horror as Channel 4 News screened a major report on illegal fox hunting. The piece was largely composed of footage captured by hunt saboteurs in recent weeks and months.
Each of the incidents shown was deeply disturbing in its own right; taken together they provide irrefutable evidence that fox hunting – proceeding exactly as it did before 2004 Hunting Act – is rampant across the country.
In particular, the footage highlights how fox hunting has never been about the random pursuit of foxes but is, instead, a highly organised activity. Hunt employees go to great efforts to ensure that foxes will be found in predictable locations and hunted with ease throughout the autumn and winter.
Between June and August 2025 – prior to the current hunting season – covert cameras captured the terrierman of the Gloucestershire-based Heythrop Hunt repeatedly dumping bin-bags full of dead chickens at ‘feeding stations’ in wooded locations near Longborough, Gloucestershire. The cameras later recorded a vixen and her cubs who have been drawn to the area by the hunt-supplied food. By October, these same cameras picked up the Heythrop Hunt rampaging through the woods in pursuit of the very foxes they had sustained throughout the summer.
The next two videos – shot from drones during the winter hunting season – show the fruits of the summer’s labour: a plentiful supply of foxes to be hunted and killed for the benefit of paying subscribers.
On 20th December 2025, Wiltshire Hunt Sabs’ skilled drone pilot captured the Beaufort Hunt engaged in some of the most blatant illegal hunting ever caught on film.
The drone picks up the gruelling, heart-in-the-mouth pursuit of a fox across a series of fields and woods. With the lead hounds inches from her brush, the brave fox executes a desperate turn which buys her just enough time to get through a hedge and away.
In a later sequence, filmed on the same day, another fox is hunted and torn apart by hounds. Hunt staff are then seen rushing in to dispose of the mangled body – material evidence of their criminality – by taking it from the hounds and removing it on a quad bike.
Throughout the footage, Beaufort hunt staff and paying riders can be seen enjoying the pursuit of the fox. Indeed, this footage is all the more remarkable because it was captured despite the Beaufort Hunt spending thousands of pounds on a team of sinister stalkers whose job is to harass sabs at every opportunity.
And just in case anyone was fooled into the idea that the Beaufort were a bunch of ‘bad apples’, Channel 4 also screened near-identical drone footage from Mendip Hunt Sabs of another hunt – the Mendip Farmers – chasing and killing a fox. Again, we see a fox flushed from cover; again, we see hunt staff and riders enjoying the sick spectacle; and – yet again – we see a fox being bowled over in the open and torn to pieces.
But what happens to a fox who manages to seek refuge underground? As the HSA has repeatedly demonstrated, illegal fox hunts go to great lengths to ensure that foxes are trapped above ground on hunt days, so they can be chased for extended periods.
Channel 4 News answered the question by screening drone video from Devon County Hunt Sabs of the Eggesford Hunt digging out a fox. This grim footage – shot on Boxing Day 2025 – shows the squalid reality of fox hunting behind the pageantry that had taken place earlier in the day.
As the video opens, the huntsman, two terriermen, a child and the teeming pack of hounds are at a burrow where a hunted fox has sought sanctuary. The terriermen can be seen using shovels to dislodge huge boulders or masonry in their perverted desperation to get at the fox. Suddenly, the terrified fox bolts and is immediately pursued by the hounds – her fate is unknown.
This is, of course, blatant criminality but, incredibly, it would not even have been acceptable twenty years ago under the rules governing fox hunting before the passing of the Hunting Act!
Yet again, Channel 4 News has blown the lid off the huge criminal conspiracy behind the rearing, hunting and killing of foxes that takes place behind the smokescreen of ‘trail hunting.’ Their report highlights the urgent need for a total reform of the Hunting Act that will stop the hunters in their tracks.
In response to Channel 4’s report, TV naturalist Chris Packham commented:
‘Vile savages. Like psychopathic zombies from a dystopian movie where life is exterminated just for their vacuous pleasure. And so it goes on and on. Every day that our government delays on their promise to ban Foxhunting our wildlife is needlessly murdered. For God’s sakes get the ban done.’
An HSA spokesperson added,
“Hunt saboteurs are dedicated to saving the lives of hunted animals at every opportunity. And – as Channel 4 News have so ably demonstrated – we are increasingly leveraging technology to sabotage their activities. Whether it is capturing the detail of chickens being dumped in a remote wood or the huge scale of a fox hunt in full swing – hunt saboteurs are not going to stop until all forms of hunting are consigned to the dustbin of history.”
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