Cleared, falconer who used golden eagle to kill foxes
A FALCONER who used an eagle to catch and kill foxes has been cleared of breaching hunting laws.
John Mease, 45, used the huge bird of prey to catch the animals before ‘dispatching’ them with a knife.
He was accused in court of using the golden eagle as a ‘smokescreen’ for hunting with hounds.
But he insisted he was a pest controller and had killed a fox as quickly as possible – by driving a blade through its eye – after the eagle caught it.
Mr Mease faced trial over two incidents involving the eagle and the Fitzwilliam Hunt, based in Peterborough.
Hunting with hounds was banned in 2005 but the legislation permits dogs to ‘flush out’ a fox. They cannot kill it – but it can be caught by a bird of prey.
During the two-day trial, Mr Mease denied hunting for sport, saying: ‘I am a pest controller. I respect all animals. I don’t get pleasure in dispatching a fox. There is no nice death. This is just how it is.’
Headcam footage taken by Mr Mease of the first incident in November 2013 showed him driving a quad bike up to his bird with the animal it had caught, before putting a knife through the fox’s eye.
A total of 47 seconds elapsed from the
‘Flush it out for the bird of prey’
moment it was seized in the eagle’s talons to when it was killed. Mr Mease accepted it would have been preferable to kill the fox sooner. But he insisted: ‘No one else could have done it quicker.’
He was cleared of a charge of causing unnecessary cruelty to an animal.
He was also cleared of using hounds to kill a fox during a New Year’s Day hunt in 2016. However, huntsman George Adams, 66, was convicted of the same charge.
Video footage taken by hunt saboteur Stephen Milton showed the 40-hound hunt in a field near Wansford, Cambridgeshire. The hounds picked up the scent of a fox, Peterborough magistrates were told, and Mr Milton said he didn’t hear anyone calling off the dogs.
Footage from Mr Mease’s headcam captured him saying the fox would have escaped if hunt saboteurs had not blocked its escape route – a claim they denied.
Adams, who joined the hunt in 1981 and became a huntsman three years later, said he had not seen the fox before it was killed.
Asked if he intended to let the hounds kill it, he replied: ‘Absolutely not. We wanted to flush it out for the bird of prey.’
Mr Mease said he had been unable to release the eagle because of the risk to saboteurs in the field.
Responding to the suggestion he could have radioed Adams to call the hunt off, he said: ‘A hunt is a fluid thing. It was changing minute by minute. It was the heat of the moment, and it was the first time I had come across saboteurs.’
He also explained that, while he was in charge of the golden eagle, he had no control over the pack of hounds, which was Adams’ responsibility. Prosecutor Joe Bird described Mr Mease and his bird as a ruse used by the hunt to continue its activities unchanged following the hunting ban.
‘The set up was never going to work. It was a smokescreen,’ he said. ‘There were so many occasions when they would not have been able to fly the eagle.’
But Stephen Welford, defending both men, said: ‘There is video footage of Mease using his eagle to kill a fox. That would not exist if it was a smokescreen.’
Adams was fined £1,000, with £930 costs. District Judge John Woollard said it was clear that Mr Mease had no control over the hounds during the hunt.
After the trial, Hunt Saboteurs Association spokesman Lee Moon said: ‘Although a fox had to suffer and die due to the blatant ... actions of the defendants, we are pleased we were able to bring at least one of them to justice.’
He added: ‘ The loopholes and exemptions in the current act have always been cynically exploited by hunts to operate much as they would have done prior to the ban.
‘The guilty verdict proves that hunting with a full pack of hounds is not the same as falconry and the judge in summing up confirmed as much.’
Adrian Simpson, of the Countryside Alliance, said the judge hadmade the wrong decision and Adams was planning to appeal against the verdict.