Hunts go of control. Here are just three examples since the Ban…
In November 2006 parents watched in horror as hunt dogs, one dripping with blood, rampaged through Hestercombe Gardens near Taunton during a children’s Hallowe’en event. The dogs stormed through the gardens shortly after a terrified fox dashed through, just as children – all in fancy dress – were taking part in a Hallowe’en’.
On 29 November 2007 Elizabeth Cash was with her five-year-old grandson at her home in Upton Snodsbury…”We were suddenly surrounded by … fox hounds tearing around our garden, trampling over flower beds, pushing through fencing and terrorising my grandson who was lost among the pack of hounds,” she said. “The hounds dragged it (the fox) out in our full view to be torn apart before our eyes.”
On 15th January 2009 a pack of hunting hounds savaged a pet Persian cat belonging to Judy and Brian Dawson of Ipswich. Neighbour David Thorn ‘heard a screaming noise… the dogs were treating it as if it was a rag doll… the dogs were completely out of control.’
An experienced senior Hunt Master of the Cotswold Hunt, said in 2006 “We cannot at all times control a pack of hounds. On occasion they go away from the Huntsman and there is very little that we are able to do to call them back.” Which means that as long as there is hunting with dogs after live prey, there will be invasions of private land and highway and the killing of domestic animals. Registered drag hounds packs where the dogs follow an artificial scent or a human runner, have no single recorded incident of trespass or pet killing.
