HSA News

In those heady days, when many in the hunting world still believed they were safe from our attentions the hunters were a little more honest about what happens in the early part of the season with beagle and basset packs. They meet in the early mornings or late afternoon, as with cub hunting with foxhunts, to avoid the heat of a late summer’s midday.

The unscrupulous fox hunters have attempted to conceal their cub hunting by rebranding it as “autumn” hunting. However, beaglers know that hunting young hares is so abhorrent that they simply deny it takes place.

Today the HSA is releasing a longer version of the horrific video in which the Axe Vale Harriers terrier gang were filmed digging a fox from a badger sett.

In case you didn’t know – and you almost certainly didn’t – Saturday was National Trail Hunting Day, better known as Smokescreen Saturday. Organised by the pro-hunt British Hound Sports Association, the much-vaunted event was billed as “the day we begin to change minds” on the legitimacy of trail hunting.

Hunting has effectively been stopped on Ministry of Defence (MOD) land, with the issuing of licences to hunts currently suspended.

In a Freedom of Information request seen by the Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA) last week, the MOD confirmed that 11 hunts had applied for licences to use MOD land for so-called ‘trail hunting activities’ ahead of the new hunting season, but that no licences had been issued.

The recently released footage of terriermen from the Axe Vale Harriers pulling a fox and an injured terrier out of a badger sett once again draws into question the legitimacy and authority of hunting’s so-called ‘governing body,’ the British Hound Sports Association (BHSA).

HSA is today releasing covert footage captured of members of Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn’s Hunt (aka the Wynnstay Hunt) blocking active badger setts ahead of a hunting day.

One of the key organisers of National Trail Hunting Day – or Smokescreen Saturday, as it has come to be known – has multiple convictions under the Hunting Act.

Hunts have already been caught out, sneaking out at the crack of dawn to participate in one of their dirty little secrets – cubbing – otherwise known as cub hunting, or dressed up by the hunters as ‘autumn hunting’.

Police are investigating after hunt sabs released disturbing footage of a man kicking and punching a horse at a hunt kennels on Saturday.