Hunt fanatics blamed as police probe grisly message

Police are investigating the dumping of a dead fox on the doorstep of a local anti-hunt campaigner.

Janet Smart, who sits on the executive board of the League Against Cruel Sports, stumbled across the fox after she heard a gunshot outside her house. She assumed it was the regular pigeon shooting near her home at Huxley, near Chester, but when she went to empty a bin at the back door she saw the corpse from a fresh kill.

Fortunately her seven-year-old son, who lives with her and her policeman husband and their 17-year-old daughter, did not see the dead animal – which she believes was put there by hunt fanatics.

Mrs Smart said: “The people who did this must be really sick. Fortunately it was I and not my son who discovered it. Goodness knows how it would have affected him had he stumbled across it. This incident only strengthens my resolve to the opposition of hunting. Nothing will put me off – I will continue.”

Mrs Smart has lived in the heartland of hunting country for six years and has been targeted in previous incidents. In March 1996 a local huntsman was cautioned by police for making threatening phone calls to her.

The new incident comes in the run-up to a Parliamentary Bill – Wild mammals: Hunting with dogs – for the second time in November. Anti-hunt campaigner Chris Owen said: “Northing like this has happened before here. The trigger must be the up-coming Bill. Janet is a prominent local campaigner and she has been threatened on numerous occasions. Now it seems to be reaching a climax.”

A spokesman for the Field Sports Society condemned the incident and said he wanted to distance his group and his members from such an act. He stressed that it is not known who killed the fox or whether it was a hunt supporter at all.

By Nikki Allen, Chester Evening Leader, September 24, 1997