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Last week former huntsman Sam Staniland pleaded guilty to three animal cruelty offences relating to illegal hunting and animal fighting.
Between 2020 and 2023, foxes and badgers were targeted by Staniland in a number of incidents in Essex, with lurchers, patterdale terriers and a foxhound also being injured in the process. He was facing three further charges, but they were dismissed as part of proceedings.
He will be sentenced at Norwich Magistrates’ Court next month.
These incidents occurred while Staniland was huntsman of the Essex & Suffolk Hunt, and the case was brought by the RSPCA and Suffolk Police following evidence discovered when police seized his phone during an investigation into a separate fox hunting incident.
This evidence led to an RSPCA raid on the hunt kennels in January 2023, part of a series of raids in which six men involved in three different hunts were arrested, and 22 terriers were seized.
This case once again shines a light on the blurred lines between so-called ‘trail hunting’ and animal abuse, with staff employed by these hunts engaging in illegal hunting, animal fighting and operating as organised crime groups.
Last year, terriermen with the Kent Hounds were found guilty of similar offences, and in 2023, former huntsman of the Old Berks Hunt, Ollie Thompson was convicted for baiting a captured fox with a terrier and for his part in the infamous Avon Vale Hunt dig out and fox kill.
These incidents show that this sickening behaviour is widespread, and again brings into question why hunts and their employees are still engaging in the cruel practise of ‘terrierwork.’
Staniland is no stranger to the courts. In November 2019 he was convicted after admitting to illegal hunting at a cub hunting meet of the Meynell and South Staffordshire Hunt, of which he was huntsman at the time.
A measly sentence – just a few £hundred fine – and ineffective leadership from hunting’s ‘governing body’ (the Hunting Office – now the British Hound Sports Association), meant Staniland was able to take employment at another hunt elsewhere in the country after this, where these most recent offences took place.
A Hunt Saboteurs Association spokesperson said,
“This case confirms what hunt sabs have been saying for years: illegality and cruelty are rife within so-called ‘trail hunts,’ the hunting community cannot, will not and should not be left to police itself, and the Hunting Act is not currently working as a deterrent to stop those convicted from causing more suffering to wild animals and those in their care.
The Government must immediately end the cruel practise of ‘terrierwork,’ and look at a stronger range of measures to clamp down on the hunters riding roughshod over the law as part of their promised changes to the Hunting Act.”
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