Hunt parade ‘a lame PR exercise to mask reality’

ANIMAL welfare campaigners from the League Against Cruel Sports have branded plans for the Blackmore and Sparkford Vale Hunt Boxing Day parade as a “lame public relations exercise” which masks the hunt’s brutality.

The hunt parade, the biggest day in the hunting calendar, is set to take place at Castle Cary Rugby Club in Somerset despite a series of highprofile incidents which have raised serious questions about its behaviour.

In the past two years alone, the hunt has been linked to assaults on anti-hunt monitors, faced a police probe after its hounds were filmed attacking and killing a fox, and seen four of its hounds killed on a railway line.

Figures compiled by the League show the Somerset fox hunt is one of the worst offenders in the country in respect to both suspected illegal hunting and incidents where they caused havoc in rural communities.

Emma Judd, head of campaigns at the League Against Cruel Sports, said: “The Blackmore and Sparkford Vale Hunt Boxing Day parade is nothing but a lame public relations exercise designed to cover up the reality of the harm they cause to wildlife, rural communities and to people who are purely there to make sure they are complying with the law. They are attempting to mask that brutal reality, but their masks are slipping.”

The League’s figures show the Blackmore and Sparkford Vale Hunt was involved in 19 cases of suspected illegal hunting and 24 cases of hunt havoc which include incidents such as trespassing on private land and running amok on busy roads and railway lines. They were compiled over just five months during the last hunting season, which took place between November 2022 and April 2023.

Trail hunting, the excuse developed by fox hunts after fox hunting was banned, has become increasingly called into question and discredited in the past few years.

Chief Superintendent Matt Longman, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead on fox hunting crime, described trail hunting this summer as a “smokescreen for continuing illegal hunting” and suggested the Hunting Act 2004 was not fit for purpose.

Ms Judd added: “No one really believes the hunts’ claims anymore that they are following trails when all the evidence points towards foxes being chased and killed.

“It’s time for change. It’s time for hunting laws to be strengthened in the UK so that the barbaric and sordid world of fox hunting is finally consigned to the history books.”

A spokesman for the Countryside Alliance said: “Figures presented by the League cannot be taken at face value and often consist of dubious reports from alleged members of the public, as well as spurious evidence gathered from social media. Time and time again evidence from antihunting groups is proven to paint a false picture and lacks appropriate context.

“Despite the best efforts of a small number of killjoy, anti – hunting bores to prevent them, hundreds of festive Boxing Day meets will be taking place again this year, as they always have done, bringing thousands of people together from all walks of life across towns and villages.”