Just six months after it was launched, the Countryside Alliance has pulled the plug on an initiative that was meant to demonstrate its “enduring commitment” to hunting.
The scheme, launched to much fanfare last July, allowed any new member of the Countryside Alliance to nominate a hunt to receive a £50.00 donation from its coffers.
But the scheme quickly ran into difficulties.
As the HSA pointed out at the time, one of the packs that could be nominated was the Devon-based Axe Vale Harriers. If just three Countryside Alliance members had nominated them, they could have bought themselves a brand-new terrier location collar from Bellman & Flint. This would have allowed them to continue to send hunt terriers into badger setts to attack terrified foxes, just as they did back in March 2024.
Another hunt on their drop-down menu was the Somerset-based Seavington, who have been convicted of illegal fox hunting three times. Fifty pounds would have allowed them to purchase a full season’s worth of high-quality sacks, ideal for bagging live foxes which could then be mutilated and tipped in front of the hounds, just as they did in March 2022.
The scheme ran into further difficulties when the Countryside Alliance were reduced to removing hunts from their drop-down menu when they hit the headlines. Minutes after the HSA published a harrowing video of the Lake District-based Coniston Foxhounds digging out a fox, the Alliance scrambled to remove them from their list.
They did the same thing a fortnight later, after the police investigation – which has resulted in sixteen arrests to date – showed that the Teme Valley Hunt had also been present.
With hunts being caught out daily by hunt sabs, the Countryside Alliance has decided to pull the plug on a scheme that has bought them nothing but embarrassment.
An HSA spokesperson added,
“These days, the primary concern of Countryside Alliance staff is to protect their own jobs. They know they have messed up the defence of hunting and have increasingly abandoned this cause to the tiny, inept British Hound Sports Association – a rebrand of the infamous and wholly discredited Hunting Office. The failure of their scheme reflects a wider inability of the pro-hunt lobby to defend the utterly indefensible.”
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