Hunting FAQS

Drag hunting is a form of legal hunting, where hounds follow an artificial scent. Clean boot hunting, often carried out with ‘bloodhounds,’ is similar but hounds follow a human runner.

‘Trail hunting’ on the other hand was created by the fox and hare hunting community in 2005 as a solution to what they saw as a ‘temporary’ ban. They use the same types of hounds as before, follow animal based scents and put hounds through the natural habitat of prey species (such as foxes or hares).

This is used as cover so they can continue hunting animals as they did before. This was confirmed in 2020 when the Hunt Saboteurs Association published leaked videos from ‘the Hunting Office’ – hunting’s governing body – where they describe ‘trail hunting’ as a “smokescreen” and a “jolly good wheeze.”

You can see more on that here:
www.huntsabs.org.uk/mass-criminality-in-hunting-community-revealed-through-leaked-webinars

Terrier work is a practice undertaken by terriermen on hunts – they’re the people often on quad bikes with terriers in boxes and spades. It involves putting a terrier into an underground earth to bait or kill the fox, or to ‘bolt’ the fox so it can be killed or pursued by hounds above ground as part of the hunt. Terrier men on hunts also ‘dig out’ foxes for the same reason, often damaging protected badger setts (where foxes sometimes take refuge) in the process.

It is totally unnecessary if hunts are legally following trails (which they falsely claim to), and is particularly cruel, harming terriers and foxes as well as other species such as badgers. It should have been made illegal with the Hunting Act 2004, but terriermen often use an exemption in the Act to get around this, which says it can be carried out to protect game birds.

Even Hunting’s governing bodies understand that terrierwork is inexcusable – in the leaked Hunting Office webinars it was described as “hunting’s soft underbelly” – and the BHSA have recently admitted that it has no place in ‘legal hunting’ and have tried to impose a self-enforced ban. But it’s still happening, and that’s why the next Government MUST act quickly to ban it.

What happens to hounds when a total ban takes place is down to the hunts who ‘own’ the hounds. The hunting community insists that hounds cannot be rehomed, a fact which has been disproved on many occasions.

Hunts already kill hounds each year when they reach the age of around 7 as they slow down. They will also kill puppies which do not meet the standards they expect of hunting hounds. With an average of 20 hounds being killed by 196 hunts each year, we can as a rough estimate say that around 3,900 healthy hounds are deliberately killed, half puppies and half aging hounds.

The Countryside Alliance said it had no record of the number of hounds killed, but claimed the figure was more like 2,000, disgusting when you remember that these are healthy animals.

Chief Executive of the Countryside Alliance, Tim Bonner, claimed, “Hounds can, and do regularly, hunt to the age of nine, 10 or even older. “There are around 10,000 foxhounds in registered kennels in England and Wales but there is no central record of how many are drafted (given to other hunts), die or are put down each year but it is probably around 2,000.”

No, fox numbers are controlled by food and land available as apex predators. Foxes are territorial animals, and the size of their territory is related to food availability. This is further complicated by factoring in the dispersal of the food and time to gather such food. Depending on these factors and seasonal variation, territory can vary between 0.1km2 in urban environments to 40km2 in the countryside.

The local fox population is therefore regulated by the amount and availability of the food supply.

See the full article here.