‘Struggling With Venue’: Smokescreen Saturday Descends Into Farce

Less than a month out from what is meant to the British Hound Sports Association’s showpiece event, it is clear that their National Trail Hunting Day – dubbed ‘Smokescreen Saturday’ by the HSA – is rapidly descending into farce. 

Details of the event have finally made it on to the BHSA website and thus laid bare its inept organisation and a general lack of enthusiasm from the hunting community. Many speakers, venues and even host packs remain unconfirmed – despite the fact that hunts are “requiring” their supporters to attend.  

The Devon event is emblematic of this general problem. While the East Devon Foxhounds are confirmed as hosting the event, the BHSA have used the what3words app to confirm the location as: struggling with venue.

There are two possibilities here. Either the BHSA has been unable to secure a venue for its absurd event in the supposed hunting heartland of Devon, or it really is to going to be held at struggling.with.venue – a location deep in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, approximately 800 kilometres west of Western Sahara, a disputed territory claimed by both Morocco and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. In the mad world of the BHSA, both explanations seem equally plausible.

This isn’t the first time that presentational gaffes have assailed the bungling BHSA. A publicity video of a previous ‘trail laying’ exhibition was widely mocked after it inexplicably cut to disturbing footage of BHSA representative Simon Dunn eating a sandwich in his car.

An HSA spokesperson commented:

“It is abundantly clear that the amateurish BHSA have already made a mess of organising their big day out. But the idea was fundamentally flawed from the outset: the very fact that they are organising a one-off, public-facing event shows they have something to hide on the 12,000 other hunt days where they meet in secret and outsiders are most certainly not welcome! 

Any police officers, journalists or MPs invited to Smokescreen Saturday should decline their invitation and instead turn up unannounced at a real hunt. They will then quickly learn the truth about so-called trail hunting.”