The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
The animal serial killings terrorising a tranquil village
Guy Kelly visits the idyllic part of Hampshire where grim finds – and talk of ‘gangs’– have left the locals in shock
In the grand, dense oak trees towering above Broughton Community Shop in Hampshire, a few dozen rooks have been cawing noisily this month. The superstitious might be wary of such an augury, but dozens of the black birds nest in the spot every year, watching over the goings-on, and they never normally have much to report.
“It’s very quiet here. Nothing happens in Broughton, but in a good way, if you know what I mean,” one local resident, Sue, remarks while walking her Maltese, Freddie, along the high street. “After everything this week, I think everybody just wants it to go back to that.”
Last Friday morning, the usual tranquillity of this small and tight-knit community (population approximately 1,000) was shattered by an utterly gruesome discovery: the bloody corpses of some 50 hares and two raptors, dumped overnight outside the front door of the village shop.
Blood had been smeared across the glass doors. The birds, a kite and a barn owl, both protected species under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, were shoved on to the door handles themselves, meaning the early volunteer who discovered the scene couldn’t even access the building without first dealing with the horror.
“He was very, very upset, the guy who found it,” says Mike Hensman, 74, treasurer of the shop since it opened in December 2019. “He’s a country guy like me – he shoots, he’s used to seeing that sort of stuff, but this was bad.
Blood on the windows … we had to clean it all off.”
The police were, he says, “really on it, they’ve been good, responsive. They were very, very keen” and they have everything they need, meaning CCTV of the perpetrators. Clear footage? His face lights up. “Oh yeah, they’ve got it all and they like it. It’s really good…”
Broughton is hardly Midsomer when it comes to sinister and bewildering crimes. Nestled in a particularly quaint part of the already picturesque Test valley, its noticeboard advertises lunch clubs, golf societies, Easter church services and appeals to help the lonely.
With Wallop Brook babbling through it, a churchyard famed for a dovecote said to have been gifted by Richard III, a thriving local pub and Hensman’s magnificent community shop and cafe, you can understand why the average house price is a wince-inducing £939,000. Teslas, Porsches and Range Rovers parked outside those houses confirm it’s very much a solvent area. And now a bloody crime scene.
“Ah, the Broughton massacre,” said one local man, asked about the discovery at the shop last week. He was quickly chided by a friend, who felt it was better if such vivid language were avoided. And yet it’s not even an isolated incident.
Last month, the carcasses of 25 hares, rabbits, pheasants and a decapitated deer were strewn around the entrance to a primary school in the village of Awbridge, seven miles south. Police are investigating whether there may be a link.
Two days after the incident at the shop, Hampshire and Isle of Wight Police found a burnt-out Suzuki Grand Vitara they believed to have been involved in the shop incident. Residents were unsurprised: ask a dozen why this happened and you’d receive a dozen slightly different answers, but they agree on two things. Firstly, that it’s likely the work of “gangs” who allegedly trespass on farmers’ land and do not take kindly to having the police called, and secondly, that it’s not worth going on the record speculating about it.
But why the school? “Well, maximum message isn’t it?” says one exasperated Broughton resident. “Would you lot be here if they’d put some deer carcasses in a farmer’s gateway?” A fair point, well made.
She adds: “This could all be us putting two and two together and coming up with 46, mind…”
The words “sorry, we don’t want the windows being put in” have been uttered more than once this week. “You just don’t know who you’re dealing with, do you?” one resident said. “Well, we do, but still. We think it’s hare coursers making all their money from bets on it.”
Hare coursing – in which dogs, usually lurchers, greyhounds or sighthounds, chase hares by sight and kill them – has been banned in England and Wales since 2004, yet after a surge of reported illegal coursing,
Parliament introduced new laws two years ago to crack down further.
“That happens all over the country, doesn’t it?” Hensman says, which is true, but this is a particularly ripe area for blood sports. The village pub names – The Greyhound and The Tally Ho! – nod to that connection, and hares are, or were, relatively common in these parts.
The Test valley and its neighbouring Salisbury Plain are dominated by flat, open farmland, chalk plateaus and scattered brush – ideal for hares.
In recent years, coursing has moved online. Farmers and gamekeepers have reported criminal gangs driving on to private fields, setting their dogs on hares or deer, and live-streaming the chase on the dark web, where it is alleged betting syndicates all over the world, but especially in China, put money on which dog will win.
Invariably, the practice takes place at night, using powerful lights mounted to 4x4s, or at dusk and dawn – when the hares are most active. Yet in some cases, the gangs are brazen enough to do it in daylight. Since 2022, the maximum penalty for trespassing in pursuit of game was increased to an unlimited fine and the possibility of up to six months’ imprisonment, as well as having to pay kennel costs where relevant. In Lincolnshire last November, for instance, a man was ordered to pay more than £18,000 in fines after admitting trespassing and using dogs to chase and kill hares.
Yet rural policing is difficult, slow and often under-resourced – even if Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary has a dedicated team of officers called Country Watch whose main priority is to disrupt and tackle the crimes affecting our rural communities. Farmers can be minded to defend their property themselves: one in north Hampshire, sick of gangs trespassing on his land for illegal blood sports, has taken to digging a trench around every field on his 1,200-acre farm, then using a forklift truck to move vast concrete blocks into the only remaining gateway whenever he or his staff aren’t using it.
In Broughton, Hensman remains circumspect. “My theory [about why the shop was targeted] is that we’re just a random symbol of the community.” He adds: “I think they drove up here to have some fun.”
Some fun? “I don’t know. These guys… you can’t understand them.” He “wouldn’t point the finger at anybody, because that’s not right. The police can do that job.”
And they are. Sergeant Stuart Ross, of Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary, said: “We know the effect this incident has had on the local community. To be clear, mindless criminal acts such as this one will not be tolerated. Those responsible will face the full force of the law and consequences for their actions.” But that hasn’t stopped a sense of shock creeping through the village. “We’re in our little bubble here, and always are.
Through Covid and everything, we always feel safe, and we’re not scared, but that little bubble has popped a bit. It’s sad really,” one resident says.
Sue, who volunteers at the shop and has lived in Broughton for 25 years – “so I’m not really a local” – hasn’t seen anything like this before. “It’s just beyond comprehension; we’re shocked to the core. You hear about people seeing strange men coming up drives in balaclavas or in fields – robbing houses or garages, I guess, but this is really weird,” she says.
“What we want to know is why, but I don’t suppose we ever will. And you hardly ever see a hare around here anymore, but I don’t suppose we will for years now. That’s the worst thing, in a way, the damage to the ecosystem.”
Hensman puts the saga down to
“just a part and parcel of living in the country”. And above his head, the rooks continued to caw, louder than ever. One collective noun for them is a “storytelling”. They certainly have some tales to tell after this week.
‘Hare coursing is streamed online and syndicates worldwide bet on which dog will win’