DEFRA consultation on banning trail hunting.

Siggy said:

Consultation on Proposals to Prohibit Trail Hunting in England and Wales - Defra - Citizen Space

This site contains consultations that are run by Defra.

consult.defra.gov.uk

please could people take time to review this. In my opinion the use of dogs to follow up wounded deer will remain legal under the section 1 of the hunting with dogs act 2004 but there is a risk that we will no long be able to lay blood trails to train our dogs. Obviously untrained dogs are going to be less effective so this is an unintended consequence which will have profound welfare impact.

I believe we need a specific exemption to allow us to train dogs

Secondly we need to avoid legislation that tightens up the requirement that dogs they need to be "under control" already defined but the Hunting with Dogs act 2004 - dogs need to be able to work independently when they are following up highly mobile deer -e.g. leg shot/head shot or in thick or dangerous terrain - e.g steep clear fell or blackthorn/bramble scrub.
(Ideally we would have a revision of the 2004 act which would allow deer stalkers dogs to work independently without direct control but I think that is too much to ask for.)

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WW. said:

Another thread on here already on this.

Also, even training a dog on actually injured/running deer would arguably be using animal scent for training. It could become impossible to use dogs at all. That on top of impacts in other areas such as conservation (pest detection).

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Siggy said:

hi,
there is a thread about the proposal from 27-Dec and one about the petition, but I believe this is the first one about the actual consultation which came out yesterday.

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venery said:

It seems to me the Antis target registered Hunts and are not roaming the countryside looking for the odd deer stalker training his gun dog with blood trails.

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venery said:

They are unlikely to be in same The only time i came head to head with Antis and had car chases at night down lanes in Devon ( turn your lights off that confuses them) and avoiding their patrols (their torches are like 2nd WW search lights) after taking a shot was on the legal pig cull.

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venery said:

After the first year many of the townies just gave up. I have avoided public footpaths and trained my two HPR's on deer without a problem.

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