STAG HUNTERS FOUND GUILTY OF BREAKING BAN

Steven Morris
Guardian Unlimited

A professional huntsman and a volunteer helper today became the first members of a stag hunt to be found guilty of breaking the ban on hunting wild mammals with dogs.
Richard Down, an employee of the Quantock Staghounds in Somerset, and Adrian Pillivant, a lorry driver who was acting as a volunteer "whipper-in", were each ordered to pay a £500 fine and £1,000 costs.

A judge decided that the pair had used two pairs of staghounds to pursue red deer for almost three hours and over 10 miles.

Down, 44, and Pillivant, 36, had argued that they were using the dogs to flush deer out to three marksman - which can be exempt under the Hunting Act 2004 if the animals are shot dead "as soon as possible". They also insisted that they were hunting to control the deer, which compete with livestock for food.
But district judge David Parsons concluded that the purpose of the hunt was "sport and recreation, preserving a way of life that the participants and the defendants are not prepared to give up".

The judge, sitting in Bristol, added that the pair were "disingenuous in attempting to deceive me into believing they were exempt hunting". After the ruling, members of the tightly knit staghunting community expressed dismay and shock.

They said they had taken advice from the police, lawyers and the pro-hunting group the Countryside Alliance, which supported the defendants' case, and believed that the Quantock Staghounds and the two other stag hunts that operate in Somerset and Devon were operating within the law.

A spokesman for the Countryside Alliance said that in the light of the convictions the three hunts would have to consider carefully how to work in future.

The League Against Cruel Sports, which brought the prosecution, said the convictions showed that hunts were continuing to break the ban, which came into force two and a half years ago, and that the law, heavily criticised when it came into force, could work.

The League brought the first successful case against a huntsman, fox hunter Tony Wright, last year. The appeal against his conviction will be heard in Devon next month. The first prosecution against a fox hunt led by the police and Crown Prosecution Service is due to take place in the autumn.

On the day Down and Pillivant were judged to have broken the ban, the Quantock Staghounds met at Crowcombe, near Taunton. At least 17 riders, including children, followed the hunt, and others watched from quad bikes and four-wheel vehicles.

As monitors from the League watched, groups of deer were flushed out on three occasions over two and three quarter hours, and six animals shot. Four dogs were used, two at a time.

Supporters of Down and Pillivant said what they did should be viewed as separate events - deer were flushed and killed as soon as possible. But the judge said: "This was a continual act of hunting over a period of two and three quarter hours ... some of the deer found at the first flush were present at the final flush ... the dogs may well have been deployed in relay to use fresh dogs to chase the deer faster and harder, to tire them quicker and to compensate for having to hunt with only two dogs."

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