Following the HSA’s devastating exposure of the Axe Vale Harriers digging out a fox, we have been passed new video showing the Wrexham-based Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn Hunt using terriers to locate foxes in a badger sett.
Just two days before National Trail Hunting Day – the farcical event that has become known as Smokescreen Saturday – we release damning footage of what one of the participating hunts gets up to when police, politicians and journalists are not invited to attend.
The HSA is today urging our supporters to share the first of our hard-hitting election videos. Narrated by Chris Packham, the video attempts the impossible task of distilling the cruelty, criminality and chaos of hunting into just two minutes!
Pro-bloodsports group the British Hound Sports Association (BHSA) claims it will hold a ‘National Trail Hunting Day’ on Saturday 14th September 2024.
Right-minded citizens the nation over were shocked and appalled at footage broadcast last year on ITV News of a fox being eviscerated on a family patio by a pack of hounds.
Politicians of all parties frequently state that the issue of fox hunting produces some of their biggest mailbags. In this week of manifesto launches, the HSA takes a quick look at the major party’s positions on hunting.
Almost twenty years after the passing of the Hunting Act, the HSA today releases yet more clear-cut footage of illegal hunting. However, in a familiar sequence of events, the CPS failed to get this compelling case to court.
After much speculation the General Election has finally been called and will take place on 4th July 2024. With this comes a likely change in Government, and the biggest chance yet that the law will be changed to make the Hunting Act 2004 fit for purpose, actually banning the hunting of wild animals with a pack of hounds as it should have done 20 years ago.
Greg Baker, huntsman of the Carmarthenshire-based Llandeilo Farmers Hunt, was today sentenced to 20 weeks prison, suspended for 2 years, 150 hours of unpaid work plus a £150 surcharge after being found guilty of causing unnecessary suffering to a number of animals. He did not receive a disqualification. When the RSPCA raided Baker’s squalid property, […]
Last Saturday, multiple sab groups mobilised to disrupt the final meet of the Devon & Somerset Staghounds on Exmoor. While several deer were saved, sabs were unable to prevent the death of one stag who was hunted to exhaustion.
More drama this week as the Avon Vale implosion is still being dragged out before the courts. This time, it was the turn of Tom Ledbury, an Avon Vale Hunt terrierman, who was sentenced this week to a 12 month community order requiring him to carry out 240 hours of unpaid work, for his role in a video which surfaced last year following raids conducted by RSPCA and police officers around the country including hunt kennels and the homes of ‘terriermen’.
If you’ve turned on the TV to see a hunting-related story over the past few years, it’s almost certainly been about one of the many illegal acts or animal cruelty offences carried out by hunts and the fanatics that follow them.
When the fox hunting old guard were scrambling to explain what they’d be doing after the Hunting Act came into force into 2005, they were keen to make sure everyone knew just how pointless “trail hunting” was, and how urgently they wanted to get back to the good old days of killing foxes legally.
19 years ago today the press assembled, sabs popped champagne corks and hunters spoke of outright defiance as a new law was enacted aimed at stopping the cruelty of hunting with hounds.
A father and son have been banned from keeping animals after pleading guilty to two counts of causing unnecessary suffering to an animal at Folkestone magistrates on 20th December.
Just before Christmas, huntsman Chris Woodward was convicted of illegally hunting a fox and ordered to pay a fine & costs totalling £1,375.
As hunts across the country prepare to gather for their Boxing Day meets, the HSA has been passed horrifying footage of so-called ‘trail hunters’ digging a fox from its underground refuge and throwing it – alive – to a pack of hounds.
Ex-Essex & Suffolk huntsman, Sam Staniland. was in court last Monday facing six animal welfare charges relating to terrier work.
The court heard how Staniland, who already has a conviction under the Hunting Act from his time at the Meynell & South Staffs, failed to prevent injuries and suffering to multiple terriers, a foxhound, and two lurchers by causing, and failing to prevent, dogs from fighting with foxes and badgers.
There could not be a more obvious case of illegal hunting than that captured on camera by fox hunter Harry Mayo at a meet of the Avon Vale Hunt in Brokerswood in December 2022. The video, which showed Avon Vale terrierman Alex Warden retrieve his terrier from a badger sett, as someone lifted the doomed fox from the ground and threw them to the waiting hounds who proceeded to tear the terrified animal apart.
Friday 8th December saw the second of the British Hound Sports Association’s (BHSA) totally shambolic ‘Trail Hunting Demonstrations’. Much as the first ‘demonstration’ back in October, Friday’s event proved to be another failed attempt from those in the bloodsport’s so-called ‘governing body’ to portray hunts as working within the law.
