A scenic view of Roseberry Topping hill in North Yorkshire, with a collapsed shed featuring a rusty red roof in the foreground and a cloudy sky above.

A Water Tank, Legal Loopholes, and the Persistence of Bloodsports

One of my first photographs on this blog featured an abandoned concrete water tank below the escarpment of Great Ayton Moor. I had visited it often as a checkpoint on various orienteering courses. On a sunny day, its corrugated tin roof gleamed with a rich, rusty patina. Sadly, the roof has not survived recent storms. I had speculated at the time that the tank once supplied water to the long-demolished Summer Hill Farm, about four hundred metres away, but I have since found another old water tank in the wood directly above the farm.

A small, dilapidated wooden shed with a rusty red corrugated iron roof is nestled into a brown, grassy hillside with a panoramic view of a green valley in the distance.
Flashback to February 2015

That photograph was taken in February 2015. Tempus fugit and all that. A decade earlier, in 2005, hunting with dogs became illegal in England and Wales at midnight on this day, 18 February.

The Hunting Act 2004 was meant to put an end to the hunting of most wild mammals with dogs in England and Wales. It ought to have been a simple piece of legislation, which would have been unfortunate for the hunting community, since in theory a straightforward law is harder to evade. But various pro-hunt politicians ensured that the Act included a selection of exemptions, considerably weakening it. Ever since, legal experts have been industriously identifying grey areas and other ways to render the law ineffective.

For instance, the Act does not prohibit the use of dogs to flush out an unidentified wild mammal, nor does it affect so-called “trail hunting” or traditional drag hunting, where hounds follow an artificial scent. The difference is that, in drag hunting, no animals are harmed, whereas trail hunting is often a convenient excuse for more traditional bloodsport.

Hence trail hunting is a legal, if controversial, substitute for hunting with hounds. A trail of animal urine—often fox, likely imported, that itself raises questions—is laid before the hunt, to be followed by the hounds and a group of followers on foot or horseback. The practice is designed to resemble traditional fox hunting as closely as possible, with the trail laid in areas where foxes or hares are likely to be. Crucially, those laying the trail are not supposed to inform the hunt leaders of its location. This means that if the hounds pursue a live animal instead, the hunt can claim ignorance. If trail hunting is indeed a genuine sport, then it is rather unfortunate that hunts are so often reported as out of control on roads and railways, trespassing on private land, distressing livestock and domestic pets, and still killing wildlife.

Curiously, trail hunts are frequently accompanied by terrier men—typically on quad bikes—along with their dogs, which were traditionally used to flush foxes out of cover. Their continued presence does little to dispel doubts about the legitimacy of trail hunting claims. Monitoring reports suggest that genuine trail laying is a very rare occurrence.

In one particularly bizarre attempt to bypass the law, a pro-hunting organisation called Hunting Kind has sought legal recognition for hunters as an ethnic minority under the UK Equality Act 20101The Guardian, 12 Aug 2024. “Pro-foxhunting group says UK hunters should be protected ethnic minority. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/aug/12/pro-foxhunting-group-says-uk-hunters-protected-ethnic-minority. A human rights lawyer is said to support this peculiar notion, arguing that hunters meet all five criteria for ethnic minority status. The organisation insists that this classification would grant them the same legal protections as other minority groups, shielding them from discrimination such as job losses and unkind remarks on social media. Critics regard this claim as absurd. Meanwhile, Hunting Kind continues to argue that hunting is beneficial for wildlife management, denies accusations of cruelty, and calls for a more enlightened understanding of animal welfare.


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One response to “A Water Tank, Legal Loopholes, and the Persistence of Bloodsports”

  1. Mark Adams avatar

    Yes, but fox hunting gets publicity and opposition because it’s so visible. Compare, say, buying eggs produced in a factory farm or bacon produced in the horrendous but hidden farming of pigs.

    What we don’t see we tolerate because we are stupefied by motivated reasoning.

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