The Dorset-based Park Beagles have folded, according to pro-hunt lobby group the Countryside Alliance. As with the Sandhurst & Aldershot Beagles , which we reported last week, the Park Beagles have become a so-called ‘hunt club’, which means they have given up their hounds and staff and will therefore continue to exist in name only.
Back in March 2023, North Dorset Hunt Sabs witnessed the Park Beagles perform one of the lamest ever attempts at the smokescreen of ‘trail hunting’. Surprised by the sudden presence of the sabs, one of the supporters rummaged about in his car to find a glove which he then tied to a long piece of bailer twine. He then doused the glove with a mysterious, invisible substance which he poured from an empty Coke bottle (also produced from his evidently very messy car) and set off to drag it around a couple of fields.
No such seasonal pantomime was in place last Christmas, when the Park Beagles were covertly filmed by an independent monitor. Instead of gloves or empty Coke bottles, the monitor filmed the hunters and hounds pursue a hare up onto Eggardon Hill, a scheduled monument owned by the National Trust. Fortunately, the terrified, hard-hunted hare escaped on this occasion.
Sabs will also fondly remember sabbing the Park Beagles up in Cumbria during the infamous Alston Hare Week hunting festival of 2014. The Park Beagles were one of several southern packs who had travelled hundreds of miles to hunt hares around the moors of Alston in Cumbria and were furious when they had to abandon their nasty little holiday.
An HSA spokesperson commented,
“The demise of the Park Beagles is more good news for our struggling hare population. Frankly, it is hard to keep up with the rate that hunts – particularly the hare-hunting beagle and basset packs – are either folding, amalgamating with their neighbours or, as with the Park, becoming a ‘club’ – an entity that exists in name only. With the government consultation on the Hunting Act to begin soon, the HSA is working hard to make sure hunters will need a lot more than gloves, bailing twine and empty Coke bottles to get away with illegal hunting.”
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