Here at Wildlife Matters, we have never understood how anyone can get pleasure from chasing a wild animal to exhaustion and then watching a pack of hounds tear the animal to pieces! Anyone who can convince themselves that this is a sport, tradition or a means of pest control has some severe mental and/or emotional problems.
Hunting wild animals with packs of dogs was made illegal under the Hunting Act of 2005. The response of the blood hunters was to devise a hybrid bastardisation of blood and drag hunting that has become known as Trial Hunting. Let’s be clear: Trail Hunting is just a cover for the blood hunters to continue their blood lust with the conscious intent to mislead the Police and make it difficult for them to be prosecuted under the Hunting Act. How sick and depraved do you have to be to devise a scheme to continue your blood lust in plain site?
Wildlife Matters fully supports the Hunting Act but is working with other anti-hunting groups to bring in a series of amendments to the Hunting Act that will make it a practical and enforceable piece of legislation that will finally bring blood hunting to an end.
Wildlife Matters believes that the following amendments would make the Hunting Act fit for purpose and bring about the end of blood hunting.
Seven Amendments to Strengthen the Hunting Act
1. The use of dogs below ground should be prohibited
This is arguably where the worst cruelty occurs in hunting, not only to wild foxes or badgers pursued underground with limited opportunity to escape but also to the terrier dogs sent below ground to find these animals and either flush them out or hold them at bay.
2. A ‘reckless’ provision should be inserted to stop hunters from using the false alibi of trail hunting
There is no such sport as trail hunting. It is simply a cover for illegal hunting. The best way to deal with the false alibi of trail hunting is to include a reckless provision in the Hunting Act. This would enable people to be prosecuted, not only when it can be proven they intended to hunt wild mammals with dogs but also if it can be proven they were reckless by not preventing their dogs from doing so.
3. Sentencing powers should be increased
Like many animal protection laws, the effectiveness of the Hunting Act is limited by the lenient punishments available to the courts. However, penalties under the Hunting Act are weak compared to other animal legislation. We believe this disparity trivialises Hunting Act offences in the eyes of many offenders and the legal system. We are calling for sentences to be brought in line with the Protection of Badgers Act and Wild Mammals Protection Act, with a maximum penalty of six months imprisonment.
4. Removing the Observation and Research exemption that has been systematically abused by stag hunts
The three remaining stag hunts in England have been trying out different exemptions of the Hunting Act to enable them to continue hunting. They tried the ‘flushing to guns’ exemption and the ‘rescuing an injured mammal’ exemption, but they both failed as they were successfully prosecuted for abusing these exemptions. However, when they tried the ‘Research and Observation’ exemption, that one did work, as no prosecutions have progressed when this exemption has been used as a defence. As there are not any genuine researchers relying on this exemption, it should be entirely removed from the Act.
5. An extension of the available time to charge suspects with breaching the Act
Under the current law, a defendant must be charged within six months of committing an offence. In practice, this means that police forces often need more resources to secure a charge within that time and consequently, suspected illegal hunting can go unpunished.
6. Application of ‘vicarious liability’ to cover the employers and landowners of those in breach of the Act
In illegal hunting cases, it is often the ‘terrier men’ or the huntsman – paid employees or contractors of the hunt – who are charged and subsequently prosecuted. However, responsibility should also lie with those who run the hunt (such as the hunt masters) and those who own the land where hunting took place and authorised the hunt to use it. Adding a ‘Vicarious liability’ clause would mean that those who instigate or enable the illegal hunt can also be prosecuted.
7. The reversal of the burden of proof in “exempt hunting” cases
Reversing the burden of proof for cases where a suspect uses the “exempt hunting” defence would mean that the burden would no longer be on the prosecution but on the defence, meaning hunts would need to prove they indeed followed all the conditions stipulated by the Hunting Act 2004 relevant to the type of exempt hunting they claim they were doing, such as “flushing to guns” or “falconry”. This is a crucial part of the recent amendments, announced in February 2022, to the Scottish Hunting Act.
With these seven amendments in place, it would be a foolish and reckless person who took a pack of hounds out onto a piece of land. There may be some who continue to believe they ‘have a right’ to wild kill animals on their land or land owned by friends or colleagues, but the law would be on the side of the majority of the British public who oppose that view. How can it be right that you can brutally murder a fox, deer, hare or any other wild mammal on your land and not be subject to the same punishments as if you had done the same to another person?
With the exposure of the Hunting Office Zoom meetings from August 2020, blood hunting in Britain was critically injured. It lost the confidence and faith of significant landowners throughout the UK, which has reduced the amount of land they have ‘permission’ to trial hunt on.
Wildlife Matters supports more direct action in exposing the blood hunters and by keeping the groups who work on the frontline for over 40 weeks of the year to stop the hunters of wildlife. These groups are volunteer-led and funded by donations. We want to ensure they have the right technical equipment and the know-how to continue to expose trail hunting as the pack of lies it is in reality.
We are also campaigning for the 7 critical amendments, as detailed above, to be made to the Hunting Act and for the Police to be resourced to ensure that prosecutions from illegal hunting become the norm and not the exception.
Will you help us bring an end to Hunting wild animals with packs of Dogs in the UK? Please support us here
Further information on ending fox hunting with dogs
Further information on ending Stag hunting with dogs
Further information on ending Hare hunting with dogs
Further information on ending Mink hunting with dogs
Donate directly to the Hunt Sabs here
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