Hare hunters under fire over ‘sheep worrying’

Anti-hunt campaigners have criticised hare hunters for allowing their dogs to ‘worry sheep’ near Northwich at the weekend.

Members of the North West League Against Cruel Sports claim they saw the hunters hunting hares for sport with a pack of 30 beagles dogs. They allege that, during the chase, beagles ran riot through a flock of sheep scattering the frightened animals in a field at Great Budworth.

But organisers of the Royal Rock Beagles Hare Hunt, which hunted from Belmont Hall at Great Budworth on Saturday, say they have been hunting in fields of animals for more than 150 years and had the full backing of the landowners.

A woman who claims she witnessed the incident said: “There was nothing the hunt master or the whippers-in could do as they were too far away. It went on for some time and the sheep must have been really distressed, especially at lambing time.”

A spokesman for the League Against Cruel Sports said: 'Apart from the moral and animal welfare issues involved in chasing and killing wild animals with dogs for entertainment – in this case a threatened species, the brown hare – this incident shows once again that allowing a pack of dogs trained to kill to run loose in the countryside, their direction dictated by the animal they hunt, is a recipe for disaster. It is, of course, and offence to allow dogs to worry sheep and no doubt the owner will be none to happy, particularly as sheep are in lamb at this time of year and such distress can lead to abortion.'

But Peter Jones, master of the Royal Rock Beagles, said: 'There seems to be some big story about the fact that we have our hounds in the same field as livestock, but that has been going on for the last 150 years. We had the permission of the landowners and farmers and had no complaints from them about the hunt on Saturday.'

Published in the Northwich Chronicle, 11th February 2004

Note: The Royal Rock Beagles are kennelled with the Flint and Denbigh Hunt in North Wales. In 1994 masters of the Flint and Denbigh hunt shot 24 of their own hounds for worrying and killing a sheep.

During the same meet at Belmont Hall last year Beagles got caught on sheep wire.