Today, the HSA can exclusively reveal that Philip Kennedy, recently convicted kennel huntsman of the Stowe Beagles, is the son of Steve Kennedy, the longtime secretary of the Coniston Foxhounds, the fell pack at the centre of the country’s largest-ever investigation into illegal foxhunting.
This revelation explains why the Stowe Beagles have made so many trips to Coniston country and raises further troubling questions about safeguarding failures that may have allowed Stowe students to be inducted into a world of cruelty and criminality.
Although the Coniston’s ‘digging out’ of a fox, and the Stowe’s brutal mauling of hare took place in very different parts of the country there are striking similarities between the two videos.
The first is the way that both hunting parties are made up of intergenerational groups. In the Coniston video it is an older man who uses a specialist device to locate the underground battle between fox and terrier, but it is the younger hunters who are most enthusiastic in dragging the animals out. In the Stowe video, it is the older man – Kennedy – who begins the round of congratulatory handshakes but it is younger hunters who are visibly keenest to be in at the kill.
Another similarity is the sadistic gloating as each animal is torn to pieces. In the Coniston video, a young hunt member takes the terrified fox to a wooded area where he throws her to the hounds. In the Stowe video, students can be seen rushing in to gloat over the savaging of the hare. In both cases, this behaviour is compelling evidence that these hunts are regularly engaged in illegal hunting. In the hunting world this practice is known and as “the worry” or “breaking up” the fox or hare: it is to keep the hounds ‘in blood’ and ensure that they maintain their motivation for hunting their quarry.
An HSA spokesperson commented,
“We thank our sources within the hunting community for revealing the family connection between the Coniston Foxhounds and the Stowe Beagles, which helps explain the abject cruelty on display in both videos. We continue to call for the immediate disbanding of both hunts and – until this happens – they will both be priority targets for hunt saboteurs.“
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