You may have noticed a new logo amongst Hunt Saboteurs Association releases and social media posts – one that features a running hare. This has been introduced to highlight the different species of animals hunted in this country and protected by the HSA.
In the UK, brown hares (and sometimes the lesser seen mountain hares) have long been persecuted, chased and killed for ‘sport.’ Despite being in significant decline, and legislation to stop this in recent decades, they are still hunted today.
Hare hunting takes a number of forms. In the traditional hunt sense, there are three varieties: packs of harriers which are hunted by staff on horseback, beagle packs and basset hound packs, both of which are hunted on foot. These are all scent hounds and they work as a pack to find, follow and then kill the hare.
Most of these hunts are affiliated to hunting’s inept ‘governing body,’ the British Hound Sports Association. The Hunting Act banned this kind of hunting in 2005, but hunters continue much as they did before, hiding behind the smokescreen of ‘trail hunting’ or other loopholes, such as claiming they are hunting rabbits.
Sight hounds (such as greyhounds and lurchers) are used for hare coursing, being run against each other to see which dog catches the hare first.
The Hunting Act also banned hare coursing. Before 2005 groups were organised into coursing clubs with pre-arranged meets, but now this takes place illegally and increasingly involves gangs making money from illicit online betting. Police have taken a tougher stance against this than they have the traditional hare hunts.
Additionally, in the eastern counties of England, hare shoots take place, with hares scared towards a line of waiting guns, or shooters walking across fields ready with guns for the hares they put up.
Since the first sab of a hare hunt, the Eton College Beagles back in the 1965/66 season, hare hunting in all of its forms has been opposed and stopped where possible by the HSA.
Over the preceding decades, it’s the beagle packs (of which there are more than the other organised hare hunts) that have got the most attention from hunt sabs. Sabs had huge success not only with their local hunts, but also at sabotaging larger hunting festivals which saw many packs gathering together in a particular area to hunt over a week or so.
1976 saw the first sabotage of the Waterloo Cup, the biggest hare coursing event in the calendar, something that was repeated over the following decades and often with serious consequences (such as mass arrests and serious injury) for the brave people taking part in the disruption.
The HSA’s successes against the hare hunts have been notable in recent years. The HSA has sabbed big events such as the Alston Hare Week and Northumberland Beagling Festival out of existence, and has also disrupted a number of smaller festivals across the country.
The number of beagle, harrier and basset packs is in sharp decline as hunts fold or merge in order to survive in some form. Those that are left have been driven further underground due to fear of hunt sabs finding and disrupting them, and they comprise an ever shrinking group of supporters.
There’s still a way to go until they’re all consigned to the history books, but as long as hares are hunted, the HSA will be there.
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