The HSA, with the help of footage commissioned by the Green Britain Foundation, are able to once again expose one of the shooting industry’s dirty secrets; stink pits and snares on the sister of the Duke of Westminster’s shooting estate; Shocklach Hall, in Cheshire.
You can view the video below but be warned it’s a grim, hideous watch.
Stink pits are used to attract animals who are seen as a threat to game bird populations, such as foxes and badgers, into indiscriminate wire snare traps. Once caught in a snare, any unfortunate animal will suffer a lingering death, injury, or their final fate at the end of a gamekeeper’s gun.
While stink pits have been found filled with any bits of dead animal a game keeper may have lying around, it is usually the bodies of animals killed elsewhere on a shooting estate which are used to attract the next victims. While the product of some macabre bloodsports recycling scheme, stink pits themselves operate in a legal grey area as animal carcasses are not supposed to be disposed to rot in the countryside.
If you find a stink pit, reporting its location and the landowner to your local Trading Standards could get it tidied up! The Shocklach Hall stink pit was also positioned close to a watercourse, risking pollution from rotting corpses. You can hear more about how snares work here.
Shocklach Hall is owned by Lady Tamara van Cutsem, sister of the seventh Duke of Westminster, Richard Hugh Grosvenor. The stink pit uncovered at Shocklach Hall contained a mass of hare, fox, rabbit, coot, corvid and other rotted corpses including an erythristic badger.
Hidden cameras were deployed, capturing grim footage of the Shocklach Hall gamekeeper dumping handfuls of bodies on the pile. While no animals were caught during the course of the investigation, it was noted that the game keeper did not check his snares every day. Meaning any animal unfortunate enough to find themselves caught could have been suffering for days as a result of the gamekeeper’s lawbreaking. A fox on the Duke of Westminster’s nearby Eaton Hall Estate was luckier; finding themselves caught in a snare before activists found and freed them.
The power wielded by the aristocracy is not only used to influence general life, but the shooting fraternity as well. Richard Grosvenor’s father, Hugh, was President of the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust. Though at the time, the GWCT was more transparently known as “The Game Conservancy Trust”, you know, before the shooters realised they needed “conservation” to sell their myths to the public. The GWCT are one of the shooting lobby’s leading bodies, working hard to cast their bloodthirsty sport in a favourable light.
Funnily enough, Hugh Grosvenor’s Hillborough Estate, favoured by the Royal Family for a day’s shooting, was also the subject of controversy. In 2022, the Hillborough Estate gamekeeper was filmed abusing a Goshawk, lured into and caught in a ladder trap. An uncanny reflection of the recently published brutal killing of a Buzzard on a North Yorkshire estate filmed by the RSPB.
The list is endless. It seems wherever you turn in the shooting industry, brutality towards animals is carried out by the lackeys of the rich and powerful. Is it any wonder that gamekeepers are regularly caught acting with perceived impunity when their ultimate paymaster has a title?
It seems unlikely that the Shocklach Hall keeper would have given a second thought to the illegally snared badger, left lying in a stink pit on land connected to royalty. Just metres away from this grim scene in Wales, the whole practice of snaring became illegal in 2024; Scotland brought in a ban the same year.
While the current UK government promises that an English ban on snaring will follow, footage from Ruabon Moor, the only Welsh grouse shooting estate, taken in 2025 showed snares were still in use. Helpfully illustrating that shooting cannot survive without persecuting ALL undesirable animals and that vigilance from those out on the ground is still the best line of defence for wildlife. Incidentally, Ruabon Moor is owned by Harry Watkin-Williams Wynn of the Wynnstay Hunt who have often been known to try and chase any foxes who haven’t been snared on the Shocklach Hall Estate.
HSA’s Shooting Officer said
“With spring on the horizon, shooting estates will soon begin the widespread killing of any species who will threaten their profits and factory farmed, often imported, game bird bounty. Despite promises made by those currently in government, we must not relent in our efforts to prevent animals from harm in the hope that someone else will sort it for us.”
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