The law, hunts and landowners
Hunting wild mammals with hounds was made illegal in 2004, and that position has not changed since. Landowners, who allow hunts to use their land, are also involved.
Section 3 (i) of the Hunting Act 2004 states this:
“A person commits an offence if he knowingly permits land which belongs to him to be entered or used in the course of the commission of an offence under Section 1”
Section 1 of the Hunting Act states:
“A person commits an offence if he hunts a wild mammal with a dog”
This means that if a hunt is caught breaking the law on your land, and you have given them permission to be there, you may also be prosecuted.
Most hunts are now being monitored by the police, members of the public, anti-hunt groups. With improved technology (drones, high-powered video cameras, trail cameras), more and more hunts are being caught red-handed. At the time of writing, fourteen hunts are facing prosecution. For details of these, click here. One of those is a landowner, charged under Section 3 of the Hunting Act.
Hunts claim to be “trail hunting”. However, there is significant doubt about trail hunting. We know that the hunts themselves have described trail hunting as a “smokescreen” for fox hunting. For more information about this, and how we know hunts are hunting live quarry, please look at “how do we know they are hunting foxes” link above.
If you need help and advice about how to keep the hunt from trespassing on your land, please email us.
We therefore urge you as a landowner to stop hunts from using your land. For years the hunts have routinely broken the law (they still do) and some landowners have been complicit in this. Please take the step and ban the hunt from using your land to commit wildlife crime.
Resources and advice for landowners
Useful links:
AAF Landowners, Tenants and Residents Facebook Group! 
This group is for everybody who is plagued by the hunt in their own neighbourhood. We want to hear your stories and we want to help.
MORE ADVICE AND RESOURCES ARE COMING SHORTLY. IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS, PLEASE EMAIL info@actionagainstfoxunting.org
leaflets
Leafleting is a good way of letting everyone in your neighbourhood know that they are not alone in wanting to see the back of the hunt. For delivery in areas where the reckless, irresponsible, anti-social and dangerous behaviour of the hunt has to stop. If you want some, email Queenie leafletsbyaaf@gmail.com
The pdf is also available – click on the picture to see both sides of the leaflet.
Please contact us for further advice info@actionagainststaghunting-org.stackstaging.com
A word from Paul Hildreth
We are delighted that Peterborough City Council has banned hunts from their lands. We are also very pleased that a number of major landowners have suspended trail hunt licences pending the results of the police investigation into the leaked webinars. However, the police investigation is NOT into whether illegal hunting has taken place but into whether any laws were broken in the webinars themselves. Obviously we will be delighted if the investigation finds this to be the case and prosecutions result but we fear that it will be very difficult for the police to make anything ‘stick’ in this respect.
The hunts will then gleefully try to make political capital out of this and try to claim they have been exonerated but we cannot let the public lose site of the main issue here – namely that the webinar presenters confirmed what we have been saying since the ban was introduced, that trail hunting is a cover for illegal hunting. We cannot let the fact that an investigation is taking place detract from this key point.
Now that the hunts themselves have confirmed that trail hunting is a smokescreen for illegal hunting, landowners have no excuse and must now permanently ban the hunts from their land.
Please feel free to share this open letter far and wide – let’s spread it as far as possible to let the landowners know in no uncertain terms that if they continue to allow trail-hunting on their land they will be complicit in illegal hunting. They can no longer claim ignorance and hid behind platitudes.
Paul Hildreth
