MORE FROM THE SABS

 In an emergency announcement late on Friday night, hunting’s crisis-hit governing body – the British Hound Sports Association – advised its member packs not to take terriers out on hunts following ‘recent events’.

These events include:

1. East Essex Hunt terrierman Paul O’Shea being secretly filmed torturing a fox with a pitchfork.

2. multi-agency police operation against terriermen across southern England.

3. The already-infamous Avon Vale video in which terriers are used to bolt foxes so they can be fed to the hounds.

Needless to say, fox hunts roundly ignored their own regulators, turning out their usual gangs of masked-up thugs, quad bikes, terriers, and digging equipment. Terriers were confirmed in action at the Blackmore & Sparkford Vale, Mendip Farmers, Fernie, Fitzwilliam, North Cumberland, and Melbreak Foxhounds. Other hunts were hiding terriers in vehicles, in an effort to cast a ‘smokescreen’ over their activities.

It was also ‘business as usual’ in other respects: the Devon-based Stevenstone Hunt disembowelled yet another fox and the Cottesmore huntsman landed his horse on a member of Hertfordshire Hunt Saboteurs. Mercifully, the brave sab is ok, but – yet again – it could so easily have been different. South Wales sabs were attacked and had equipment stolen at the Sennybridge Farmers Hunt.

(NB. I have not included the photos taken)

A HSA spokesperson commented.

We have long known that hunting is wholly upregulated and that the BHSA is a bad joke. It is the same legal entity, run by the same people, from the same address, as the discredited Hunting Office. Indeed, as the widespread ignoring of their terrier edict has shown, the BHSA has absolutely no authority with hunters on the ground. Hunting is not some legitimate, regulated activity; it is blatant criminality of the most depraved kind.”